Homelessness: Myth vs. Fact!

Fact: This is an extension of structural victim-blaming, and is a product of the myth of meritocracy. The “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” narrative belies the reality that systemic racism and structural inequities persist in our economic and housing institutions. Surging rent, rising cost of living, low vacancy rates, stagnant wage growth, and eroded social safety net programs are all concrete reasons why homelessness persists in our society. These are alongside policies that functionally criminalize poverty (anti-camping ordinances, for example) and threaten to disproportionately funnel poor people and people of color into a cycle of incarceration.

Fact: Many homeless people have jobs. According to the Comprehensive Income Dataset Project at UChicago, approximately 40 percent of the unsheltered homeless population in America have annual earnings from formal employment. Employment alone is not enough to prevent homelessness: in Washington state, a worker needs to earn $29.31 an hour to afford a 2-bedroom rental - nearly double the state’s minimum wage ($14.49/hour). Additionally, temporary/seasonal employment may provide only temporary housing, which can also contribute to cycles of housing instability and homelessness (Shier, Jones, and Graham, 2012). These factors, combined with the significant logistical barriers that exist for many people experiencing homelessness, make getting and keeping a job extremely difficult when living without shelter.

Fact: The root causes of homelessness are structural, including lack of affordable housing, low vacancy rates, and high rates of inequality. While health conditions, including substance use disorders, are interrelated to both causes and effects of homelessness, they are not typically cited as the primary cause of homelessness by people who are unhoused. According to the Seattle/King County 2020 Point in Time Count, 16 percent of surveyed respondents reported a lost job as the primary reason for being unhoused, compared to 11 percent who cited drug or alcohol addiction. In Spokane City/Spokane County, according to the 2020 Point in Time Count, the most cited reason for homelessness was domestic violence, followed by family conflict, lack of income, and eviction. Of the top 10 primary causes of homelessness, drug or alcohol use listed fifth.

Fact: It is true that many unhoused people struggle with untreated or inadequately treated mental health illnesses though this is certainly not the experience of all unhoused people. The experience of homelessness can be extremely traumatic and itself a risk factor for causing or exacerbating mental health and other chronic illnesses. According to a 2016 homeless needs assessment conducted by the City of Seattle, 42 percent of unhoused survey respondents struggled with depression, 31 percent with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and 24 percent with Bipolar Disorder. Lack of access to healthcare services was also highlighted as a significant issue: 30 percent of unhoused respondents in Seattle reported they went without needed health care since experiencing homelessness. In Spokane City/Spokane County, 34 percent of surveyed people in the 2020 Point in Time Count reported experiencing serious mental illness.

Fact: While low-barrier access to healthcare services are critically important to address acute health issues for people experiencing homelessness, it is nearly impossible to meaningfully address chronic health issues when living without shelter. This is why public policies based on Housing First principles - which recognize housing stability as human right and a primary determinant of health - are needed to address the root causes of poor health associated with homelessness.

Fact: Research examining the impacts of encampment sweeps overwhelmingly find they negatively impact the health of encampment residents. According to research by Qi et al. (2022), sweeps often result in material loss (including medical items) and increased instability (including geographic and community displacement), which can harm the physical and mental health of residents. Sweeps have also been found to disrupt the management of chronic health conditions and infectious diseases, break connections between people and their health and social service providers, cause trauma, and increase the usage of emergency departments and inpatient hospital care (Cohen, Yetvin, and Khadduri, 2019); (Junejo, Skinner, and Rankin, 2016); (Qi et al., 2022). Encampment sweeps can also disrupt social networks between residents who may find safety and community as well as autonomy and privacy in encampment settings (Cohen, Yetvin, and Khadduri, 2019).

Given the deleterious health impacts sweeps have for encampment residents, and their associated risk of increasing community transmissions of infectious diseases, the CDC’s Interim COVID-19 Guidance on People Experiencing Unsheltered Homelessness recommends against clearing encampments unless individual housing options are available for all residents. The CDC instead urges hygiene facilities such as bathrooms, food storage, garbage removal, and hand sanitation stations be made available to encampments residents to mitigate public health and sanitation hazards.

Fact: There are not enough affordable housing units or permanent supportive housing options available to meet the scale of need. In Seattle/King County, for example, 94 percent of unhoused people reported that they would move inside safe/affordable housing if it were available. Lack of affordable housing, low vacancy rates, and high rates of inequality are the primary drivers of homelessness. As described by Merrefield (2021), when housing supply cannot keep up with demand, housing prices increase. This is especially true in urban areas - like Seattle - where influxes of high-income workers drive up housing prices. Policy makers must prioritize both ***increasing the supply of affordable housing options***, and ***implementing tenant protection policies*** that ensure long-term housing stability and affordability.

Fact: Even when shelter space is available, it may not meet the diverse needs of unhoused people. There are many reasons why a particular shelter may not be appropriate for a person experiencing homelessness. Some key factors to consider are:

• Does the shelter take families?

• Do residents have their own space?

• Is there space for residents' belongings where they are not at risk of getting stolen?

• Do residents feel comfortable based on their gender identity?

• Are residents safe from violence?

• Will going to a shelter force someone to go into an involuntary substance-use withdrawal?

• Will the shelter allow residents to bring their pet/companion animal?

• Is there a religious component to the shelter that a resident may feel uncomfortable with?

Fact: Criminalizing homelessness increases incarceration and continues a “revolving-door” between imprisonment and housing instability and/or homelessness (Kushel et al., 2005). Cities with punitive responses to homelessness necessarily increase police interactions with unhoused populations, which may superficially - and only temporarily - decrease the number of visibly unhoused persons by jailing them (Batko et al., 2020).

Fact: Frequent interactions with the justice system not only ensnare people in a homelessness-jail cycle, but also create a rotation between emergency public services like shelters, emergency rooms, and detox facilities. “This cycle does nothing to help people access the housing and services they need, such as mental health or substance use treatment” (Urban Institute: Five Charts That Explain the Homelessness-Jail Cycle—and How to Break It). Further, involvement with the legal system is itself a risk factor for homelessness due to the potential for economic instability and legal debt. As described by Mogk et al. (2020), “Legal financial obligations, such as court fees, fines and restitution, can endanger the financial security of those ensnared in the criminal justice system”.

Fact: The majority of homeless people in Washington are from Washington. According to the 2019 Seattle/King County Point in Time Count, for example, 84 percent of respondents reported living in Seattle/King County immediately prior to loss of housing. 11 percent lived in another Washington county prior to loss of housing, while only 5 percent were residing out of state. Nearly half (46%) of survey respondents indicated they were born in King County or had lived in King County for ten years or more. Similarly in Spokane City/County, according to the 2020 Point in Time Count, 72 percent of respondents lived in Spokane City/County immediately prior to homelessness.

Fact: High rates of homelessness in these cities are a result of increased cost of housing and low vacancy rates, which are primarily impacting local residents. In Washington, for example,

according to the 2020 Bringing WA Home Affordable Housing Report, the wages needed to afford a fair-market rent apartment have increased by 51 percent since 2015, while the estimated average renter wage has increased by only 29 percent. At the same time, Washington has one of the lowest rental vacancy rates in the country with just a 3.8 percent vacancy rate in the fourth quarter of 2020. And, as the median home price has soared by 40 percent in the last five years, homeownership is increasingly out of reach for many Washingtonians.