Don’t Panic Over Federal Cuts for Homeless Programs

The upset is palpable. News reports that the Trump administration is planning to cut state grants to build permanent housing for homeless people has led state officials and homeless activists to claim that the likely decision will send thousands of people back on the streets just as California is turning the corner on this massive problem.

The usually levelheaded CalMatters reported that the expected deep cuts are the “latest blow in a seemingly endless barrage of bad news for the California agencies tasked with fighting homelessness.” The “news has sent counties throughout California into a panic” and they are “bracing to lose hundreds of millions of dollars,” the publication added.

It’s time to take the proverbial chill pill. Yes, I believe the homelessness situation is a travesty and addressing it is a legitimate government function—for the sake of people living on the streets and the rest of us who want to reclaim public parks and sidewalks. But dig a little deeper, and the cuts might not be as troubling as expected. As Politico reported, those funds “will be cut and moved to transitional housing assistance with some work or service requirements.”

In other words, the money might not evaporate, but instead will be reprogrammed to support a different set of mostly reasonable policies. CalMatters noted the permanent-housing money pool “will shrink from $3.3 billion down to about $1.1 billion.” But that’s a nationwide number. So the “hundreds of millions of dollars” our state potentially loses is a rounding error in a total budget that tops $322 billion. If fighting homelessness is a priority, lawmakers can shift funds from less-urgent matters.

Sure, I dislike the Trump administration’s constant culture-war approach. Instead of analyzing what’s working and what isn’t, the White House is looking to remove funds from service providers that don’t conform to its conservative social views. As LAist reported, the administration’s new Continuum of Care rules penalize organizations and agencies from sanctuary cities, those that offer harm-reduction programs, and also those that recognize transgender people.

Drug addiction, immigration violations (mainly from recent asylum seekers), and mental illness are rampant among the homeless population, so it’s cruel to deny funds to groups that are on the front lines of the problem. Gender issues shouldn’t even come into play here. These groups need to assist anyone in dire straits. The feds ought to focus on providing help, not advance their tangential cultural agendas.

Nevertheless, I agree with the administration’s expectation that funding recipients “operate in a city, county, or state that prohibits public camping.” Unlike those other rules, this one applies directly to the homelessness problem.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Grant’s Pass decision last year finally freed localities to clear out park encampments. It overturned the Ninth Circuit’s wacky Boise decision, which considered anti-camping statutes to be cruel and unusual punishment. Many California cities have taken advantage of the new latitude. Those that don’t should look for funding elsewhere.

So, California can fill in the gap—or localities can figure out ways to conform to the new guidelines, even if some of them are ridiculous. More significantly, our state needs to rethink its overall approach toward providing “permanent” housing.

The state’s official policy is called Housing First. As a fact sheet on the state’s Housing and Community Development website explains, “Under the Housing First approach, anyone experiencing homelessness should be connected to a permanent home as quickly as possible, and programs should remove barriers to accessing the housing, like requirements for sobriety or absence of criminal history.”

That approach is fine for a portion of the homeless population but is a failure as a broad-based policy for two reasons. First, it doesn’t address underlying social problems. Housing First was originally meant for mothers with young children who had suddenly lost their housing due to, say, a domestic-abuse situation. Fine, but it’s a recipe for disaster when applied to homeless people with debilitating addictions or mental delusions. They need social services, not just apartments. The state needs to consider a variety of options.

Second, California doesn’t build anything inexpensively and efficiently. With onerous state regulations and union work requirements, new permanent housing costs a fortune—and the state can’t build it quickly enough to meet the needs of 187,000 homeless people. Recent projects have cost upwards of $1 million a unit. The federal and state governments will never have the kind of money available to fix the problem at that rate. And, of course, the promise of “free” permanent housing will lure many people who could otherwise find their own accommodations. The waiting lists would be virtually endless.

California’s homeless population has been dropping after years of growth. But I’d be wary of those who claim that moving funds from permanent-housing programs will undo that welcome progress. Officials need to spend more time reforming existing programs and less time getting overwrought.

This column was first published in The Orange County Register.