Homelessness is on the rise in America. With the recent increase of homeless encampments throughout communities, local municipalities are under increased scrutiny on how to address the issue. To promote greater social order and improve public safety \u2013 for those in the encampments and the broader community \u2013 the recent Supreme Court decision in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson will greatly impact local policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We believe this decision will allow local governments and law enforcement agencies to determine how best to respond to homelessness in their own communities, allowing greater local autonomy in policy decision-making and implementation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Esther Larson, Philanthropy Roundtable\u2019s senior director of programs, interviewed Devon Kurtz, public safety policy director at Cicero Institute, to better understand this issue. The Cicero Institute is a nonpartisan public policy organization with deep experience in public policy and technology, law and entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Q: Homeless rates across America are only increasing. What do you see as the key contributing factors to this reality?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Kurtz:<\/strong> When we talk about homelessness, we often refer to it casually as a monolith. But that\u2019s exactly the same problem with the policies most states use to respond to it. Homelessness is very complex with distinct subpopulations with varied needs and challenges. For example, it is important to distinguish between sheltered and unsheltered homeless populations, the latter of which refers to people who live in tents and sleeping bags on the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n America is not experiencing a homelessness crisis as much as an unsheltered homelessness crisis. All but 12 states have seen the proportion of their homeless population without shelter increase over the last five years, and 22 states have seen unsheltered homelessness increase by more than 50%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The imprecision of how we talk about homelessness and in how we make policy means that most states are missing the mark. Federal homelessness policies take a one-size-fits-all approach known as Housing First, which prioritizes low-barrier housing interventions that offer people apartments without any requirements for behavioral health treatment or sobriety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But more importantly, Housing First explicitly moves funding away from other types of programs that might be better suited to help high-risk, high-need individuals. The vast majority of states have moved in this direction, as federal funding decisions tend to drive local policies in the homelessness space. The result has been a growing gap between the capacity of communities to respond to different types of homelessness and the increasingly complex needs of those individuals living on the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Q: Policies at the federal, state and local levels have contributed both positively and negatively to homelessness in America today. What policies have had the greatest impact on homelessness \u2013 for good or bad?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Kurtz:<\/strong> Federal Housing First policies are at the root of most of the decisions made at every level of government in regard to homelessness. In addition to changing how resources are allocated, Housing First\u2019s philosophy also de-emphasizes any sort of mandatory or coerced interventions, such as involuntary mental health treatment or legal prohibitions against street camping.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Homelessness is on the rise in America. With the recent increase of homeless encampments throughout communities, local municipalities are under increased scrutiny on how to address the issue. To promote greater social order and improve public safety \u2013 for those in the encampments and the broader community \u2013 the recent Supreme Court decision in City […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":679,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"news":[],"events":[],"class_list":["post-678","news_events","type-news_events","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanmiddleeastcouncil.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_events\/678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanmiddleeastcouncil.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_events"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanmiddleeastcouncil.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news_events"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanmiddleeastcouncil.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanmiddleeastcouncil.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanmiddleeastcouncil.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news?post=678"},{"taxonomy":"events","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanmiddleeastcouncil.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/events?post=678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}