California’s housing-first policies work. Failed homelessness strategies of the 1980s don’t

California programs that prioritize housing ended homelessness for tens of thousands of people last year. Yet, in recent months, a vocal minority of state leaders have called for a rollback of our housing first laws — laws that emphasize permanent housing to people experiencing homelessness without first requiring them to access services or treatment.

A recent repeal attempt, while unsuccessful, amplified statements that housing-first strategies aren’t working. A recent Sacramento Bee op-ed about staff members at a Sacramento nonprofit who serve mothers recovering from substance abuse argued that California’s housing first policy had failed.

Opinion

Meanwhile, the CARE Court proposal the Legislature is considering would coerce people struggling with mental illness into institutionalized treatment without any resources for housing, contrary to the very essence of housing first rules. And the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation — whose population is nearly 20% unhoused — is receiving a permanent exemption from these laws.

The concept of housing first is central to some of the most effective solutions to address homelessness in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Those successes in helping people get off the streets, combined with decades of fact-based research, prove that it’s a model that works.

Conversely, decades-old policies that caused trauma among those who fell through the cracks and erected unnecessary barriers to housing proved what did not work.

After seeing the housing-first model find success and bipartisan consensus in other states, including the Bush administration adopting housing first as a national practice, California’s Legislature passed Senate Bill 1380 in 2016, enshrining the model statewide.

Since then, the rhetoric against these policies has stemmed from those seeing homelessness as a personal failure. But blaming people and families experiencing homelessness for substance use, unemployment, mental illness or poverty shifts accountability away from the true external factors that cause homelessness, like our state’s housing affordability crisis.

There’s no denying that more Californians are experiencing homelessness than just a few years ago. We have all seen tents and encampments spring up across our communities. But the argument that lowering barriers to housing actually increases the number of people unhoused is not only inaccurate, it’s a dangerous misconception that could devastate progress.

Study after study shows that families entering housing first programs get treatment more often and reduce their use of drugs and alcohol as well as their stays in hospitals. Tenants are able to decrease their use of psychiatric acute care facilities through voluntary participation in treatment. Since 2007, federally-adopted housing first policies has led to huge reductions in homelessness nationwide.

A three-year “Housing Options Study” from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development showed that families who received housing-first services not only exited homelessness for good, but reduced family separation, domestic violence, substance use and children’s absences and the need for behavioral problems at school. Programs like “Keeping Families Together” demonstrated that connecting families experiencing homelessness and child-welfare involvement to housing-first supportive housing led overwhelmingly to family reunification in stable homes.

The same study also researched approaches from the ‘80s and found that evicting families from transitional housing when parents relapsed or violated rules did not mitigate family separation or improve child well-being. In fact, even after families followed the rules of historically punitive transitional housing programs, the study found “no evidence that this distinctive approach achieved its goals any better than did leaving families to find their way out of shelter.”

Relapse is part of recovery. Yet, when forced back on the streets after a setback, a person’s odds of maintaining sobriety, treatment, court orders — or even surviving — dramatically declined.

Lawmakers at the state and local level should follow the evidence. Prioritizing housing is the most effective way to treat homelessness.

Stephanie Klasky-Gamer is president and CEO of LA Family Housing, an organization that helps people transition out of homelessness and poverty. Beth Stokes is the executive director of Episcopal Community Services, an organization that helps unhoused and low-income individuals and families obtain housing, jobs, shelter and essential services.