Bill’s Homelessness Problem

Tuesday, Mayor de Blasio announced that Gilbert Taylor would be stepping down as head of the Department of Homeless Services. This is only the most recent acknowledgment by the mayor that his earlier proclamations about the magnitude of the homelessness problem were mistaken.

But though a revamp of the agency’s “organizational structure” is promised, it’s still unclear if the mayor grasps why polls continue to show public disapproval of his approach to homelessness. The problem is not a lack of streamlining in the delivery of homeless services. It’s a simple lack of focus on moving the homeless off of streets, into shelters and onto the path to recovery.

New York City’s problem with homelessness begins with the term. Ever since it gained currency in the 1970s, “homelessness” has confused the debate by conflating two very different policy challenges. The sheltered homeless population comes mainly from poor outer-borough neighborhoods; the street homeless are concentrated in Manhattan and the transit system.

The sheltered homeless are mostly families headed by single mothers; the street homeless are mostly single men.

Addressing sheltered homelessness involves preventing people from entering the shelter system to begin with and determining a sustainable exit strategy for those who do. The main challenge for street homelessness is getting people into shelter in the first place.

The public is concerned with too many people sleeping and panhandling on the subway and city streets. But when asked what they’re doing about homelessness, de Blasio administration officials invariably point to their plans to bring down the sheltered census, such as through the Living in Communities rent subsidy program. They have far less to say about new initiatives to address street homelessness. (At $1.2 billion, the Department of Homeless Services’ budget is massive, but the vast majority of those resources go towards maintaining the current shelter system.)

Rhetorically, de Blasio could do everyone a great service by making more of an effort to distinguish between the problems of sheltered and street homelessness. He should speak forcefully and often about the disgrace of people camping on subway grates, in doorways and on park benches. In the words of the city’s 1992 Commission on the Homeless, chaired by Andrew Cuomo, “It is totally unacceptable for persons to sleep in our public spaces.”

(In talking about Taylor’s departure Tuesday, de Blasio did finally stress this distinction. He should continue doing that.)

Practically, the city needs to improve its method of counting the street homeless by conducting a count during the summer and winter and, ideally, administering it with paid professionals instead of volunteers. Without more accurate data on street homelessness, debates over which policies work best will remain dominated by ideology.

The city must improve on recent efforts to move the mentally ill from sleeping on streets and in the transit system onto medications. This requires continued use of the state’s assisted outpatient treatment, or Kendra’s Law, which imposes on mentally ill individuals a legal obligation to take their medication.

Too much emphasis has been placed on supportive housing as a solution to homelessness. De Blasio recently announced a plan to create 15,000 new units of supportive housing — at a cost to the city of over $2 billion in capital funds and another $100 million in operating expenditures. Advocates are calling on state government to deliver as many as 15,000 additional units.

Supportive housing is premised on the sensible proposition that many homeless individuals need services, not just low rents. It should be central to the city and state’s efforts to address severe mental illness.

But, in terms of homelessness policy, the evidence suggests that supportive housing is not the silver bullet that homelessness advocates claim it to be. In a recent survey of supportive housing programs nationwide, the American Enterprise Institute’s Kevin Corinth found that they promise no long-term solution to homelessness.

The de Blasio administration need not commit to ending homelessness — there is no silver bullet here — but simply to achieving appreciable reductions in the street homeless population. This is both a fairer and more practical standard — and it is what the public is asking for.

Meantime, the mayor’s critics on the right should understand that exaggerating the sense of crisis and demanding an abrupt end to it plays directly into the hands of advocates pushing a flawed policy agenda that will lead to a dramatic expansion in government dependency.

Homelessness is likely to be with us for the foreseeable future. A narrower policy agenda that focuses on the most critical part of the problem is superior to an expansive but counterproductive one.

This piece originally appeared in New York Daily News