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Rental market creates more homelessness in Fresno than drug abuse or mental illness

The Fresno Bee - 6/26/2022

With COVID-19 moratorium on evictions expiring on June 30, we are at risk of seeing a big increase in the homeless population in Fresno. The maltreatment of and tragic loss of lives of homeless individuals on Fresno streets is becoming recurring news and an unfortunate manifestation of the homelessness crisis. The calamity of these events should spur us to protect the homeless population and investigate the roots of the homelessness crisis to overcome it.

In “Homelessness is a Housing Problem,” a book that came out this year, authors Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern — a professor of real estate and a data scientist — take a deep look at the causes of homelessness. The authors examine available demographic data from a group of the nation’s biggest counties and cities for the period 2007–19. They point out the structural roots of the homelessness problem to explain the variance in the homelessness per capita rates in different U.S. urban areas.

The message of the book is that what causes the higher homelessness rates in some cities compared to others is not individual characteristics, but structural problems that have to do with the housing market.

A person who has a problem with substance abuse or mental illness has substantially higher chances of being homeless if this person lives in Los Angeles or Boston than if he lives in Detroit or Chicago, which have lower than national average rates of homelessness per capita.

Why do some cities have high rates of homelessness?

Since the homelessness problem emerged in American cities in the early 1980s, popular explanations for homelessness circulated. Among these are personal attributes that put the explanation at the individual level, such as being subject to substance abuse, poverty, mental illness, unemployment, racial discrimination and domestic abuse.

As the “Homelessness is a Housing Problem” shows, these personal attributes increase the risk of being homeless. However, none of these personal attributes explain the variation in homelessness among different cities. Even though Detroit has a higher poverty rate than New York, it does not have a higher homelessness rate.

Utah and Wisconsin have a high number of mental illness cases per capita, but that does not translate into a higher-than-average homelessness rate. Likewise, the high unemployment rate in Philadelphia did not lead to a higher homelessness rate than New York or Boston.

Discrimination and racial marginalization led to a high representation of Blacks among the homeless population. But it does not mean that cities such as Baltimore and Detroit have higher than average homelessness rates. Actually, while these cities have relatively high African American populations, they also have the lowest rates of homelessness among the urban areas studied.

Furthermore, it is common in California to blame homelessness on the nice weather. Yet comparisons with cold-weather cities such as Boston and New York show that homelessness rates are not sensitive to weather. What differs, though, is the type of homelessness.

There are more unsheltered homeless people in California than in East Coast cities, which invested in enhancing shelter capacity due to the harsh weather. It is worth noting that even if homeless shelters became free from many of the poor conditions common to them, temporary shelters by themselves are no solution to end homelessness.

Migration to welfare-generous cities is also a popular cited explanation. But data on national migration trends does not show that migrants in the lowest income bracket seek different destinations than those from other income brackets. Additionally, 80 percent of the homeless population becomes homeless in the area where they originally lived in.

Another common claim is that permissive liberal policies lead to increased rates of homelessness in the nation’s large cities. However, cities such as Cleveland, Chicago and Detroit have been governed by Democratic mayors but have low rates of homelessness.

Lastly, contrary to common misconceptions, having a job is not a guarantee against homelessness. A 2021 study of national homelessness shows more than half of those in homeless shelters earned income from formal employment during the same year in which they were homeless. Among the unsheltered homeless, 40 percent have a job.

Homelessness is a housing problem

According to Colburn and Aldern’s book, the homelessness rate in a county or city positively correlates with the city’s rental housing costs and rental vacancy rates. Both variables are a good proxy of the conditions of the local housing market, which is the main driver of homelessness among vulnerable populations in society.

The book argues that structural housing constraints in a city emanate from two sources: the geography of the city — such as bordering mountain ranges or bodies of water, such as a lake or a sea — and housing regulations, such as single-family zoning. Additionally, inequality in a city is a good predictor of the rate of homelessness in that city.

Hence, the research shows that homelessness is not a result of individual failures — rather it is the structure of the housing market that drives homelessness and affordable housing problems. Homelessness is the child of the affordable housing crisis.

Therefore, a set of policies is needed to tackle these constraints, but first affordable housing should be considered a basic human right, not a commodity whose production is determined by market forces of supply and demand like a smartphone or a flat-screen TV.

Enhance affordable housing

Releasing the strains on affordable housing in California requires a robust response at both the state and local levels. Supporting the private market industry by itself will not solve the housing problem.

A housing supply boom of fancy condos and further single-family zoning and construction will not trickle down into affordable housing for low-income households. Among the measures that should be taken are enhancing the eviction protection program, expanding multi-family residential zoning, rent assistance, housing vouchers and public housing.

While some of these measures are already in place, they are not large enough to provide meaningful protection for low-income households. Meanwhile, we must applaud and support community organizing advocacy initiatives such as the Fresno Homeless Union and Fresno Tenant Union.

The housing plight striking our community is not an individual problem. It is a result of the social and economic failures of our system. It is on us to mobilize sufficient resources to bring an end to homelessness and the affordable housing shortage.

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