Houston and Abilene do a better job of dealing with homelessness

 Washington Examiner:

When it comes to homelessness in America, cities such as Los AngelesSeattle, and even Dallas might want to take a page out of Houston's playbook.

The southeast Texas city has managed to cut its homelessness rate in half in the last decade by using a coordinated strategy that includes partnerships between the public and private sectors.

Houston is the fourth-largest city in America, with a population of more than 2.3 million residents.

In 2020, more than 30,000 people in the Houston area — Harris, Fort Bend, and Montgomery counties — needed some type of homeless assistance. That number jumped to 45,000 if prevention and other services such as food or clothing aid were factored in, according to the Coalition for the Homeless. On any given night in the Houston region, there were 3,974 people living outside, according to the 2020 Homeless Count and Survey.

But whereas comparable cities such as Chicago and Phoenix saw their homelessness numbers rise, Houston has seen a 54% decrease in overall homelessness since 2011.

The real secret behind Houston's success is the constant communication between the city, the county, business communities, and nonprofit groups that provide food, clothing, shelter, and other services to the area's homeless population, officials said.

Marc Eichenbaum, special assistant to Mayor Sylvester Turner on homeless initiatives, said the city also invested in long-term housing, which ended up saving millions of dollars. It wasn't about bringing services to growing encampments but instead focused on permanent housing.

PARENTS FURIOUS OVER HOMELESS CAMP ON SCHOOL PROPERTY - BUT BOARD SAYS IT'S A TEACHABLE MOMENT

The chronically homeless population had been costing taxpayers $103 million a year, he said.

“We were able to cut those costs by more than 70% by paying for long-term housing with wrap-around supportive services,” Eichenbaum told KXAN. “It’s fiscally conservative. It is a wise financial investment to permanently house your homeless.”

So far, Houston has provided more than 19,000 individuals with services and housing.

“It takes both," he said. "You can’t just put somebody in housing without services, and it’s not very successful just providing services on the streets. Of the 19,000, more than 90% of them stayed housed two years after their placement.”

Houston's success caught the eye of Austin officials, who saw a boom in homelessness on their streets.

In February, the Austin City Council passed a new initiative, the Homeless Encampment Assistance Link, to connect people experiencing homelessness to housing or a safe, housing-focused shelter. The measure would eventually create permanent housing that would ideally eliminate the need for unsheltered camping.

The first phase of HEAL is expected to be completed by the end of the summer, according to the city's Homeless Strategy Office. It targets four homeless campsites that have been deemed dangerous.

Dianna Grey, Austin’s homeless strategy officer, said in early April that the homeless camps, which are located in south-central, east, downtown, and northwest Austin, would be established as noncamping areas by the end of August. Before then, Grey said the plan would also involve quickly moving all of the people into housing, be it temporary or permanent.

“What we’re seeing now is our community coming together to put the resources behind the proven housing and outreach strategies identified in Austin and across the country,” Grey said. “HEAL is, by design, an iterative and collaborative initiative that will not only have an immediate impact on the lives of people living in unstable and inhumane conditions, but will also build the entire system’s capacity to make homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring.”

HEAL's preliminary budget is $4.3 million. Negotiation of contracts and agreements for outreach, shelter, case management, housing, and other support has already started.

LOS ANGELES POLICE ATTACKED WITH 'ROCKS' AND 'SMOKE BOMBS' AFTER TRYING TO CLEAR OUT HOMELESS ENCAMPMENT

Another Texas city seeing its homelessness numbers go down is Abilene, located about 180 miles west of Dallas. Abilene is the center of a 22-county area referred to as the Big County, with a total population of about 120,000.

Over the past few years, service providers there built a "by-name list" of every unhoused person and have worked with those individuals to find housing and other services.

In 2019, Abilene declared that it had reached "functional zero" for homeless veterans, meaning that the number of veterans who became homeless each month was less than the number the city is able to house. In 2020, Abilene announced it had reached "functional zero" for chronic homelessness as well, becoming one in a very small group of U.S. cities to claim that status. Its focus now is on youth and family homelessness.

...

San Francisco, Seattle, and LA are all significantly worse off with people pooping on the streets and a total loss of control of the situation.  Part of the problem in those areas is that Housing is unaffordable even for people with jobs.  Austin made the mistake of pandering to the campers rather than attacking the core problem.  It looks like it is trying to work its way out of the mess it made by copying the West Coast model.  Austin, like the West Coast cities, is run by liberals.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains