As of this writing, the future of the Trump administration is unknown. What comes next may be the end of a contentious legacy of a single-term president or another four years in autocratic overdrive.
However history remembers this period, it must note that during the past four years, nearly 20,000 more people became homeless in this country, reaching a total of nearly 570,000 people as of 2019. More of them are now living unsheltered, and they are disproportionately Black, Indigenous, people of color and women. Those figures are based on annual tallies that are widely considered to be gross undercounts of the actual number of people experiencing homelessness.
This was the landscape in 2019, when, more than halfway through his presidency, President Donald Trump began talking about homelessness. In a tone unrecognizable to recent administrations, Republican or Democrat, Trump sympathized with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson on national TV as he lamented the “junkies” and “filth” on city streets.
Causing particular ire were the West Coast cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as New York City.
“It’s disgraceful,” Trump said in the July 2019 interview, pivoting within seconds to the politics of the matter. “This is the liberal establishment. This is what I’m fighting,” he said, proposing a federal intervention on liberal “sanctuary city” streets.
“Now, we have to take the people and do something,” he continued. “And, you know, we’re really not very equipped as a government to be doing that kind of work. That’s not really the kind of work that the government probably should be doing.”
By September of the same year, the rhetoric had ramped up. Trump repeatedly called out liberal bastions Los Angeles and San Francisco, calling them an “embarrassment,” among other terms, and repeating open-ended warnings of federal intervention on homelessness. The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration was in talks to carry out sweeping changes to address visual homelessness, targeting California. Citing unnamed sources, the newspaper reported that among the ideas under consideration are “razing existing tent camps for the homeless, creating new temporary facilities and refurbishing existing government facilities. … The changes would attempt to give the federal government a larger role in supervising housing and health care for residents.”
On Sept. 10, administration officials toured several shelter facilities in L.A., along with a former Federal Aviation Administration building near Los Angeles for its potential to house unsheltered residents. That December, the regional director of U.S. Housing and Urban Development, Jeffrey McMorris, toured the never-occupied Wapato Jail in Multnomah County.
That same month, the administration’s Council of Economic Advisers released its report “The State of Homelessness in America.” Among the report’s conclusions were the need for greater police intervention and reducing tolerability of homeless camps, the belief that high shelter quality encourages homelessness, and that mental illness and substance abuse were the fundamental causes of homelessness.
Overarching it all was that the evidence-based concept of Housing First, the guiding policy of national and local homeless programs for nearly two decades, including Portland, doesn’t work.
By mid-November, Trump had fired the head of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, Matthew Doherty, and within weeks replaced him with Robert Marbut, who some advocates say espouses “dehumanizing and ineffective methods,” calling his appointment a major setback.
More tangible than politically motivated rhetoric, Marbut’s appointment signaled a major shift toward a “law and order” approach to homelessness compared to previous administrations.
Today, the nation is in the throes of a pandemic, financial uncertainty, and an economic future experts foresee generating devastating levels of poverty and homelessness. For political expediency, the administration jettisoned homelessness for Black Lives Matter protests in its fallacious attacks against Democratic led cities, and even more recently has championed the clarion call of white suburbia to protect them against the “invasion” of “who knows who” might live in affordable-housing developments.
This summer, after languishing for years through an affordable housing crisis, tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs, threatening their housing stability and pushing some one step closer to homelessness. And the pandemic has brought into focus and created a new dialogue around the chronic health and human crisis on our streets, a crisis that promises to continue well beyond election day, regardless of the outcome.
Housing Fourth
Formed in 1987, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, or USICH, is the top agency coordinating the federal response to homelessness, partnering with 19 other federal member agencies and local governments and leaders.
Prior to joining USICH, Robert Marbut ran Marbut Consulting out of San Antonio, Texas, providing consulting to cities on how to address homelessness. He served as a White House Fellow to President George H.W. Bush and was the founding president and CEO of Haven for Hope in San Antonio — the facility that inspired Portland-area businessmen to partner with the Joint Office of Homeless Services in Multnomah County to create the River District Navigation Center.
His consulting process included living homeless for several days in the cities he was working for, eating at soup kitchens and spending time with people experiencing homelessness. He personally claims to have spent more than 150 days living on the streets.
In his consulting work, Marbut developed “Seven Guiding Principles of Homeless Transformation,” a list of “best practices” used within communities across the country.
Among them are focusing on coordinating services to foster a “culture of transformation,” rather than warehousing people experiencing homelessness.
But what makes Marbut controversial are his principals on rationing resources. He has said, “Privileges such as higher-quality sleeping arrangements, more privacy and elective learning opportunities should be used as rewards.” He also believes that feeding people on the streets, without associated services, “impedes recovery and may even enable and prolong the condition of homelessness for some.” He has recommended a zero-tolerance approach to homelessness encampments, and panhandling is a nonstarter.
“Unearned cash,” according to Marbut’s principles, “is very enabling and does not engage homeless individuals in job and skills training which is needed to end homelessness. Additionally, more often than not, cash is not used for food and housing but is instead used to buy drugs and alcohol which further perpetuates the homeless cycle.”
Marbut offers only anecdotal analysis of panhandlers or their spending habits in diagnosing their personal habits.
Local surveys on the demographics of panhandlers, however, show a diverse population, including a mix of extreme poverty, unemployment, mental illness, substance use disorders and homelessness.
Francisco Conejo, a senior marketing instructor and researcher with the University of Colorado, has conducted one of the most comprehensive studies of panhandling and its roots in recent times. He concluded, “Blaming drug addiction or laziness is the traditional perspective on panhandlers, a simple and convenient explanation for a complex problem.”
Marbut is critical of cities that focus on the symptoms of homelessness, such as food, clothing and emergency shelter, rather than root causes. “The root triggers and causes of homelessness,” he wrote for a consultant client, “are almost all behavioral health in nature, such as addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder and domestic violence. In order to engage in meaningful recovery, the focus must be on the root triggers of homelessness, not symptoms.”
With a focus on behavioral issues, Marbut opposes Housing First, the model for getting people into permanent, supportive housing as a launching point for recovery and sustainability, despite decades of evidence and broad acknowledgment that it reduces homelessness. The Housing First approach prioritizes permanent housing, using it as a platform for addressing other needs, such as employment, substance abuse and mental health treatment. Marbut’s philosophy reverses that order, using housing as a reward for personal transformation.
He believes, as he has said in numerous interviews, in “housing fourth.”
“I worry that without federal leadership helping move things forward, that federal leadership can instead move things backward and make things worse.”
His appointment to USICH was immediately condemned by housing and homeless advocates.
“He is somebody who in his public-facing work and the things that he says seems to think that homelessness is really just a problem because of addiction and mental illness, which is categorically not true,” said Megan Hustings with the National Coalition for the Homeless. “A lot of times, those things pop up after you’ve become homeless, gone through trauma and are trying to deal with that trauma.”
Soon after Marbut’s appointment, the National Low Income Housing Coalition and the National Alliance to End Homelessness came out with a joint statement slamming Marbut’s approach as outdated and his boasts of success unfounded. They argue Marbut ignores decades of learning, research and bipartisan agreement on the success of prioritizing permanent supportive housing as a foundation for mental health and substance abuse treatment, and ultimately stabilization, and that his approach ignores structural issues and blames people experiencing homelessness and support programs, attitudes that have ultimately led to the increase in homelessness.
“Marbut has no strategy to help people address these structural problems,” the coalition states on Marbut’s policies. “He proposes no housing strategy. While he recognizes that behavioral health services are necessary, forcing people into congregate shelters and advocating for a mandatory, punitive behavior modification approach are at odds with well-established best practice.”
Street Roots contacted USICH, requesting an interview with Marbut about his proposals. Despite initial willingness expressed from the agency, follow-up inquiries went unanswered.
Whatever high-level focus on homelessness that existed in the Obama White House was gone when the leadership changed, said Matthew Doherty, who preceded Marbut as head of USICH. And when it did take an interest, he said, it was in a new direction.
“Unfortunately, when the administration started to pay more interest and attention to the issues, they really did seem to be coming from the perspective of using law enforcement and criminalization measures and moving away from best practices to how they thought we should be pursuing the work,” said Doherty, who was appointed by President Barack Obama to lead USICH in 2015.
“The worst part for me was seeing the kind of communication coming out of the administration with just no seeming concern for the people experiencing homelessness themselves,” Doherty said. “All of the concern was on the impact of homelessness on other people, and really no primary focus on what do the people experiencing homelessness need — how can we help them end their homelessness. And I think whenever we’re not centering the people who are experiencing the crisis themselves, we’re likely making bad decisions for the people who most need our help.”
Doherty worries that a shift toward criminalization and shelters and away from housing undermines the lawmaker’s understanding of what works and what needs to be done, prompting bad policy choices.
“The reality is everything that’s been advocated counter to Housing First, they’re not new ideas. They’re old ideas. They’re failed ideas. They are things that the homeless service system has moved past because they know that they’re not the right ideas,” Doherty said. “But it’s still a strong risk that things can always move backwards — sometimes they can jump backwards — and I worry that without federal leadership helping move things forward, that federal leadership can instead move things backward and make things worse.”
The impact over time is the loss of investments in programs that work, and even slowing down the process for people to exit homelessness successfully, Doherty said.
“It gives a message that what people are doing now doesn’t work, when in fact it does, and it tells the public that we need to do something different when largely what we need is more of what’s working,” Doherty said.
Money Talks
In his 2021 proposed budget, as in previous years, Trump seeks to dramatically reduce spending on housing efforts.
Overall, the proposed HUD budget is reduced more than 15% below 2020 figures, and cuts to funding in the area of public housing are 43% below last year, according to analysis by the Center for Budget Policy and Analysis.
In addition to reductions to tenant-based housing vouchers — eliminating 160,000 vouchers for low-income households nationwide — the budget would increase the rent obligation of low-income renters on assistance from 30% of adjusted income to 35% of gross income, with a minimum monthly rent of $50.
The administration also intends to eliminate low-income housing investment programs, including the Public Housing Capital Fund, the HOME program and the Community Development Block Grant, which preserve and create affordable housing, and the Choice Neighborhoods programs for revitalizing struggling neighborhoods. It calls instead for more state and local responsibility in addressing affordable-housing needs.
HOME and block grant programs amounted to more than $17 million in assistance to Portland this past fiscal year for housing and homeless programs.
In his testimony on the budget before a House Appropriations Committee in March, HUD Secretary Ben Carson said he is trying to “work around the system,” saying that his bureau is handcuffed by Housing First priorities as outlined by Congress and that he’s looking to allocate money to recipients who get results, without offering specifics on the results they’re seeking.
In his testimony, he was questioned about his proposal to eliminate multiple funding streams for creating and preserving affordable housing, including the HOME program, which since 1992 has budgeted $34 billion to preserve and build affordable housing.
Carson responded by saying he supported those efforts, but he questioned the role of the federal government to provide that assistance.
“The question is,” he said, “who should fund them, and can they be better funded and taken care of at the local level, as opposed to at the federal level, when the federal government already has a $23 trillion debt and growing?”
Sarah Saadian, vice president of public policy with the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said the administration is trading housing for a failed approach, one that will reduce resources and actually increase homelessness.
“Not only are they ignoring the underlying, structural housing-market reasons why people are experiencing homelessness, but by calling for those budget cuts, it would make those systemic factors even worse,” Saadian told Street Roots. “So it’s a real misunderstanding of the underlying causes of homelessness and what the solutions are.”
As in years past, Congress is not expected to approve Trump’s proposed cuts to housing and homelessness programs but rather retain funding consistent with previous levels. The House passed a funding package that increases HUD’s budget by nearly $5 billion over 2020, restores funding for the block grant and HOME programs, and includes additional funds for more housing vouchers and Section 8 rental assistance.
Steve Berg with the National Alliance to End Homelessness said that while there’s no longer a presidential priority around homelessness, he’s heartened to see progress on the congressional level in terms of taking responsibility for supporting more housing for low-income people. He thinks there could be substantial increases in money to help people afford rent so they don’t lose their housing.
“It’s not an issue of know-how,” Berg told Street Roots. “We’ve got federal programs that do that. It just needs to be brought to scale.”
Crime and Punishment
Trump has declared himself the “law and order” president, signaling a historically police-forward approach in addressing turmoil borne of inequality.
That inequality is on full view in the rising numbers of unsheltered homeless people, with disproportionate rates of African Americans left without suitable habitation. African Americans accounted for 40% of all people experiencing homelessness in 2019 and 52% of people experiencing homelessness as members of families with children, despite being only 13% of the U.S. population, according to HUD.
Following the law-and-order posture, the White House has called for a mix of punitive and nonpunitive approaches by police to correct the “tolerability of sleeping on the street,” which, White House advisors say, increases homelessness. It’s an idea that’s been a good sell to those who are not living homeless, and it has fueled a cycle of homeless camp sweeps and displacements from the Great Depression to today.
But the premise is ludicrous, said Megan Hustings with the National Coalition for the Homeless. “It’s really just a punitive thing. These types of laws that criminalize folks, that give people tickets or fines or displace them or lead to arrest, those things create barriers for people who are already struggling, who are already displaced, who are already unable to find the resources they need to get back into housing. It’s totally counterproductive.”
Steve Berg with the National Alliance to End Homelessness noted that the punitive approach is also tremendously expensive and pits advocates against police.
“It sets up a situation where the homeless people and anyone working in their interest is in conflict with the local government and the police, and that is just not helpful in terms of solving the problem,” he said. “People complain that the homeless people don’t want to go into the program. If the program is run by an agency that is essentially criminalizing their existence, that just makes it very difficult for any homeless person to trust that the programs are doing anything that’s going to help them.”
Even before layering on a crime of homelessness, poor people, people of color and people with mental illness are already overpoliced nationwide. Black people made up 27% of all people arrested in the U.S. in 2018, double their share of the country’s population, according to FBI statistics.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness estimates that more than 2 million arrests each year involve people with serious mental illnesses, making jails and prisons our de facto mental institutions.
The national Treatment Advocacy Center estimates that the risk of being killed during a police incident is 16 times greater for individuals with untreated mental illness than for other civilians approached or stopped by officers. In terms of poverty, an analysis by the Prison Policy Initiative show that, nationwide, 1 out of 3 people arrested once in 2017 — and half of those arrested twice or more — had an income of $10,000 or less.
In 2018, an investigation by The Oregonian found that half of all people arrested by the Portland Police Bureau in 2017 were homeless. The vast majority of those arrests were for nonviolent offenses, including failing to appear in court or violating parole or probation.
“The policing issue shows up in a couple of different ways, and none of them are actually about helping people who are houseless,” said Marisa Zapata, director of the Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative at Portland State University. “So when you have created a situation where people are already going to be on the edge and you add policing into it, you have people who have a harder time qualifying for apartments, qualifying for loans, and you have a higher proportion of people who are going to jail and then, when released, have no jobs and end up often with bad credit history — and then end up being homeless.”
The emphasis on policing from Marbut and the Trump administration runs counter to efforts in recent years to curb criminalization by the federal government. The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty notes that starting in 2015, HUD began rewarding grant applicants for communities that are reducing criminalization of homelessness.
And the U.S. Department of Justice came out in support of the landmark Bell v. Boise decision that said criminally punishing homeless people for their lack of housing when there were no housing alternatives violated Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. The decision was upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and more recently, the Supreme Court declined to take up an appeal of the case, upholding the lower courts’ decisions. And multiple federal courts have concluded that anti-panhandling laws violate First Amendment protections of freedom of speech.
Prior to 2016, homelessness on a national level was actually decreasing. HUD started tracking homelessness with Point-in-Time counts in 2007, and by 2015, the number of people counted each year had declined by nearly 100,000 people, to 578,000. By 2016, the count was below 550,000. Given the nature of reaching people experiencing homelessness, these are not precise figures and are considered undercounts. And also given the nature of homelessness in general, these figures are less important than the nationwide systemic factors that, year after year, leave more than a half-million adults and children living without the basic security of a stable home.
As the long-term economic impacts of the pandemic take hold, how the federal government responds will decide how we envision homelessness, whether it is filth to be swept away or a housing and social crisis that is within our means to solve.