Homelessness has always been both a cause and result of human misery. Despite our enormous leaps in technology over the last century, we’ve made little progress in solving it. Many homeless people today aren’t much better off than 19th century residents of almshouses. This is a disaster for the homeless, our cities and society. In case there are any doubts, here are three key reasons homelessness is everyone’s problem.
1. Homelessness Degrades Humanity
Homelessness doesn’t only degrade the homeless. It degrades us all. It makes us callous to the suffering of others. It causes major stress for many people, who are just a pay check or two from homelessness.
2. Homelessness Poses Major Health Risks.
Cities with large homeless populations are seeing outbreaks of diseases we supposedly conquered centuries ago due to terrible sanitation as well as unhealthy lifestyles.
3. Homelessness Harms Our Cities
Homelessness makes our cities unattractive for tourists and conventions. It discourages residents from patronizing local businesses. Homelessness also drives middle and upper class people to the suburbs. This lowers cities’ tax bases, making it still harder to keep them livable.
We Need a Different Approach
Most North American cities have no comprehensive plan to help the homeless. Homeless services typically consist of loose networks of overcrowded, often unsafe shelters. They are only able to help a fraction of our homeless populations due to budget and space limitations.
Homeless people have few resources and little political clout. Thus homelessness is seldom a high priority issue. This needs to change. Our current homeless solutions are ineffective and/or too costly to be implemented on a large scale. For instance, housing the homeless in hotels is not a viable long term strategy. Good intentions clearly aren’t enough. We need a different approach.
Break the Vicious Circle of Homelessness and Joblessness
Homeless people often come from backgrounds of family breakdown, divorce, abuse, addiction and mental illness. This creates mental and emotional barriers which can make employment difficult for some.
However, many homeless people were previously employed and are employable. Homeless youth need to be helped to get an education to qualify for jobs. The homeless are caught up in a vicious circle of homelessness and joblessness. They can’t get homes because they don’t have jobs, and they can’t get jobs because they don’t have homes.
We need to help homeless people break this vicious circle by providing stable decent lodging and employment help. The question is: how do we do so effectively and on a realistic budget?
Immediate Goal
Our immediate goal must be harm reduction by providing shelter, meals, washrooms, showers, security and health services for the homeless.
Long Term Goal
A good long term goal is to prepare as many homeless people, as possible, to join the workforce and live productive satisfying lives. Yet we need to recognize a certain percentage of homeless people will likely never be employable.
Solution: Homeless Villages Built Around Multi-Purpose Community Centers
A comprehensive solution to homelessness could be dedicated homeless villages built around multi-purpose community centers.
Such villages would largely remove the homeless problem from our cities. By gathering the homeless together, suport and needed services can be delivered to them effectively and cost efficiently.
Community centers would offer special services geared to help and rehabilitate the homeless. They would also serve as homes of last resort by guaranteeing a safe indoor space for the homeless to live and sleep, regular meals showers etc. This alone would go a long way to alleviate our homeless crisis.
It seems logical that people would rather live indoors than outdoors. But this is not always true, as many social workers and volunteers have discovered. Some homeless people suffer from severe claustrophobia and other ailments, which make indoor living difficult. Villages can provide alternate shelter for them.
Features of Homeless Villages
* The villages should have enough land to acommodate future building and continuous upgrading of facilities. Five acres could be a minimum.
* Villages should be easily accessible to public transit.
* Villages should not be located on or near prime residential areas. This would stir up mass opposition by nearby residents, who want to preserve their neighborhoods.
* Small one-person homes (about 8 by 10 feet) would be built in the villages to house the homeless. Experience in places like Seattle suggest they can be built for around $2,000 U.S. each.
* Homeless camps anywhere else, in the city, would be strictly prohibited. This would reduce the negative impact of homelessness on our cities.
* Security guards would be provided for the village to maintain order. Guards could also assure villages are not misused by relatively well off people seeking cheap accomodations, which reduces housing available for the needy.
* Job assistance programs would be provided to the homelessness.
* Community centers would provide social activities, open to both homeless communities and outsiders, to encourage mingling, friendships and mutual help.
We Need a Broad Based Partnership to Tackle Homelessness
Of course, this requires considerable investment. Money for the homeless is not exactly flowing in our post Covid-19 world of huge national debts and deficits. Governments can’t solve homelessness through massive money printing and/or tax increases.
Large scale money printing often leads to economy crushing inflation and economic disaster. Nor are tax increases the answer. Tax increases are invariably sold as “making the rich pay their fair share”, but the real pain is always borne by middle class people. They have most of the seizable assets.
Many middle class and working people are precariously close to bankruptcy and even homelessness themselves. Most companies, of all sizes, are also struggling to stay afloat. It would be unconscionable to burden them further with tax increases.
We need to tap the human resources and goodwill of individuals, companies, nonprofits and faith-based organizations to tackle homelessness effectively. A broad based partnership is required to make this work.
Corporate funding and land donations can be encouraged with generous tax deductions, and emphasizing the public relations benefits of supporting homeless solutions.
Faith-based organizations and volunteers can supply many of the services needed to run homeless villages.
Charitable donations are crucial. In addition to the usual donations of food, clothing and money, homeless villages could accept donations of used vans and campers to increase their housing capacity, if needed.
In conclusion, there are no quick and easy solutions for homelessness. However, we can make continuous incremental progress, with a viable plan for a comprehensive solution. A solution which respects the dignity, rights and human potential of the homeless, while minimizing the negative impact of homelessness on our cities and society.
As Martin Luther King put it, “We don’t need to see the whole staircase to take the first steps”.
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