Solving homelessness better than a bandage

As a longtime advocate for the homeless and for programs that solve homelessness, I have to speak up when I see things that I feel treat homelessness like a disease that has to be contained. The homeless need access to permanent solutions, not more access to temporary solutions that keep them churning in a system that specializes in managing the symptoms of their homelessness.

The Regional Shelter System opened this week.

In communities across the country, there has been a push to move away from the traditional emergency shelter systems and into hybrid programs capable of addressing and solving the causative factors of homelessness. If we invested our community capital into developing more access to permanent solutions, we wouldn't need these containment operations. Yet we continue to feel good about activating these temporary solutions, thinking this is the best we can do. That thinking is the wrong thinking, and it is what keeps us locked into mediocrity.

The evidence has consistently shown that these programs (for the vast majority of the homeless) do nothing more than manage the symptoms of homelessness by containing it. It costs a lot of money to continually manage the homeless problem year after year, versus the cost of investing in strategic approaches to solve it.

This is a noble thing ---- to help the homeless ---- but it would be a far nobler thing to stop this containment "merry-go-round" and activate the access to permanent solutions required to defeat homelessness. With the right battle plan, homelessness is a solvable condition. What if Tri-City Hospital put patients on morphine drips to make them comfortable instead of delivering a comprehensive treatment plan to solve the underlying condition? We would be outraged. 

This is how we treat the homeless by continually placing them in emergency shelters year after year. Emergency shelters by their very nature are designed to contain, not solve problems.

It's high time that this and other communities get behind local initiatives designed to solve homelessness using the innovative and proven alternative solution-driven models that are springing up. They are bold, exciting, entrepreneurial-driven solutions focused on outcomes instead of inputs, on numbers of people who get and stay off the streets, versus the number of bed nights provided or number of meals given out.

Many will read this article and feel good, but the ugly truth of it is these programs keep people locked into a state of homelessness and perpetuate the churning effect that has led to homelessness becoming an epic social problem. We can't solve the lowest rung of poverty (homelessness) with emergency winter shelter beds. We can only contain it for a few winter months.

And the last point is this: If the traditional shelter systems worked to end homelessness, why is there more homelessness today than ever before? Pre-recession, post-recession, doesn't matter ---- the impacts of homelessness are massive. It's because these traditional homeless programs use old strategies that simply are designed to contain it, not solve it.

Chris Megison is executive director of Solutions for Change in Vista.


