This discussion is another echo of discussions that have been going on for decades. Nothing has yet been said in this thread that hasn't been said at least once before since about 1975. I'm not saying we shouldn't discuss it-just that there's a lot of reading and research to be done to be well-informed about solutions that have been attempted in the past, how much success those solutions achieved, and why they achieved that degree of success. Obviously, since the conversation is now echoing again in early 2024, no final solution has yet been found. I have a couple of opinions about why that's true, based on the last 50 years of history of homelessness and the attempts to solve it.
First, most of the conversation and attempts to solve the problem revolve around providing low-cost or free housing. And since those attempts haven't found a great degree of success yet, I conclude that most of the unhoused are not unhoused because of a lack of low-cost or free housing. Naturally, architects, developers, bankers, non-profits, community organizers, and politicians have difficulty believing this. And yet, the signs are all there. When social workers and healthcare professionals analyze the problem, they tell us that many of the unhoused lack sufficient trust in the well-meaning institutions that want to provide housing at low or no cost. They tell us that many of the unhoused lack the trust, engagement, and investment in society-at-large that is required to adopt the responsibilities that a permanent residence entails, such as: having one's name attached to a permanent address (being "on the grid"), being responsible for utility bills (even at reduced rates), and being responsible for maintaining a residence to the standard required (even if the standard is merely "free from vandalism"). They tell us that many of the unhoused perceive of the permanently housed as "normies" and do not perceive of themselves in that category. They tell us that the reasons for this departure from social norms vary, but include addictions, disabilities, and emotional illness, including such conditions acquired by veterans. This is not to characterize all the unhoused in this way, nor is it to blame victims. It is simply to state that a significant and historically growing portion of the unhoused population is persistently and measurably resistant to a direct solution to the problem. And for understandable reasons.
Second, if we take off the table the portion of the unhoused population described above and simply address the portion of the unhoused population that find themselves in that status due to poverty alone: the direct approach of providing low- or no-cost housing still creates more homelessness than it obliterates. Here's how: housing in the U.S. is still, largely, dominated by free market economics. And it will be for the foreseeable future. And the more the government interferes in that system, as well-meaning as that interference may be, the more the unintended consequences of its actions tend to get caught in the wheels of the free market. Witness Dodd-Frank: intended, at least in part, to enable low income families to get into better self-owned housing (or any self-owned housing at all), it caused a historic nationwide crash in the housing market that impacted everyone and caused a lot of other dominoes to fall, including a crash in the entire nationwide construction market, the unemployment of a third of all registered architects in the country, the unemployment of a similar proportion of all construction workers, and a recovery that took at least a decade in most regions and industries. If we consider government intervention that diverts private resources for the purpose of providing low- or no-cost housing-all such efforts have unintended consequences that increase the cost of housing throughout the community and will create more homelessness, whether that intervention takes the form of taxation, low-income housing requirements of housing developers, or some other measure. Non-profit low- or no-cost housing indirectly impacts the free market by creating an enclave of known low-value housing in its precinct, reducing property values and disincentivizing the development of new housing, creating housing shortages and increasing homelessness. Yes, it's a perverse situation-the invisible hand of the free market self-balancing like that. It's just reality.
So is the answer for the state or municipality to confiscate, centrally plan, fund, construct, control, and ration all residential property? Sure, if you want Soviet-style squalor for the masses and luxury for the elites of the political party in power. And if you want to turn architects, contractors, and building material providers into the slaves of the state. The alternative is to stop attempting to treat a social problem with an architectural solution and try a social solution instead: treat the poverty, the addictions, the disabilities, and the mental illness. Or, more radically: prevent the community problem by supporting nuclear families and extended families that sustain individuals in ways that prevent poverty, addiction, disability and mental illness from becoming a burden to the community. At least, for the center of the bell curve-then let the community deal with the outliers, instead of the inverted situation we're dealing with now. How big was this problem before the 1970's, when the decline of family structures became steeper?
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Sean Catherall AIA
Murray UT
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-26-2024 12:42 PM
From: Alexis Gregory AIA
Subject: Homelessness is at a record high in America. Volunteerism is declining.
Here is an op-ed in the Washington Post about homelessness. https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/12/21/homelessness-rising-dc-volunteers/
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Alexis Gregory AIA
Mississippi State University
Mississippi State MS
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