Homelessness in California: "It's not normal the level of homelessness we have here."

[Music] for decades california has been one of the states with a large homeless population in recent years however the challenges have severely worsened in the golden state between 2014 and 2020 the homelessness point in time counts in california rose by 42 percent from under 120 000 to over 160 thousand while the rest of the country together had a nine percent decrease on any given night california has more than 160 000 homeless persons seventy percent of them sleep in unsheltered conditions that means they sleep on sidewalks or intense world vehicles my name is jialou streeter i'm a research scholar and the director of partnerships at the stanford institute for economic policy research we wanted to take a deep dive into homelessness because this is an area that poses significant challenges to californians the homelessness problem in california is very challenging for several reasons about 70 percent of all homeless in california are unsheltered in comparison new york also has a large homeless population but only five percent of new york's homeless are unsheltered most people are unsheltered because there is not shelter available to them uh so it's not as though there's you know this huge vacancy rate in the shelters that people could go into in california you have encampments that have grown to hundreds of people and when you have a situation like that where these encampments have sort of brand names you're more likely to sort of attract more street homelessness when you already have a certain kind of critical mass of it the second challenge is the order of magnitude especially in cities like san francisco and la for example in la over 60 000 people are homeless and the vast majority of them sleep on the street that's problematic there is a scalability issue when a community has a small number of homeless they know how to bring that number to zero now we have sixty thousand in la we may not have enough resources and we may not have a scalable solution california is not it's not normal the level of homelessness we have here it's not like it's the sway in every state california is about 12 of the u.s population but we have 25 of the nation's homelessness and 50 of the nation's unsheltered homeless so this is not normal and it doesn't have to be this way and it's because primarily of the extreme cost of housing here there was no accountability message there was no political imperative coming from the state and as a consequence we're in a multi-decade housing crisis the third challenge is that a significant proportion of the unsheltered homeless population have mental health or drug addiction challenges it creates a vicious circle they need proper medication they need treatment but being unsheltered makes it a lot harder for them to recover the other unique thing about the homelessness problem in those two cities is especially in san francisco the fraction of the population that is estimated to have serious mental illness or substance abuse problem is incredibly high we have open drug scenes which we euphemistically refer to as homeless encampments which are places where people gather to buy sell and use very hard drugs this is not marijuana or even alcohol anymore that we're talking about one thing that separates california from the rest of the country is between 2014 and 2020 california not only has a substantial increase in homelessness but its homeless population is growing faster and faster new york also had an increase but its homeless population has essentially plateaued in recent years in most other cities and states homelessness is either not a big problem or is declining in los angeles county on any given day we have about 207 people who exit homelessness and go back into housing and we have 227 people become homeless and if you caught those numbers what that means is we actually have an ever increasing number of people becoming homeless in our county homeless populations have poor health and are three times more likely to die than similarly aged general population they are also more likely to be involved in crimes as either a victim or a suspect local residents and businesses are also impacted by the crisis in surveys conducted by san francisco chamber of commerce in 2019 and 2020 about 70 percent of san francisco residents said the quality of life had declined and 80 percent of them consider crime to have worsened and roughly 88 saw homelessness as having worsened in recent years californians are angry beyond it they're pissed um you know the fact that you can walk into a store and steal 950 worth of merchandise with no consequences you can go right out and do heroin and methamphetamine with the same no consequences that's crazy and we're seeing again that type of disorder pervade as we're seeing rising crime throughout california with no consequences for actions as super we want to understand what's gone wrong and why homelessness seems to be such an intractable problem is this the result of failed policies and misguided efforts is homelessness too complex and intractable to solve in a state so large do we accept what's happening in our cities and live with the public health and safety problems associated with homelessness despite their negative impact on homeowners and business owners as well as the homeless themselves we're making this documentary to hear from various stakeholders including policy insiders local residents and homeless individuals to delve into some of the issues driving the crisis and offer their ideas on how to address them we will focus on some of the economic factors including housing regulations housing shortage and unaffordability we will see why after spending billions of dollars hundreds and thousands of people are still sleeping on the streets or encampments we examine the mental health and the drug addiction crisis and how they intertwine with homelessness in california [Music] housing is very expensive in san francisco it's incredibly expensive in la uh and the availability of very cheap housing is uh just not there according to zillow in 2022 the typical value of homes in san francisco is over 1.5 million dollars it's about 1.4 million dollars in san jose and 950 thousand dollars in la and san diego according to hud the u.s department of housing and urban development the median rent for a two-bedroom apartment is close to 3 dollars in san francisco county in comparison the national median rent is about twelve hundred dollars for example over fifty percent of californians are known uh of health near renters are known what is uh called rent burden meaning they spend in excess of about a third of their family income on rent so if you were to lose your job say in south bend you could live cheaply in south bank because housing prices are so small but in those two cities it's incredibly it's incredibly expensive and so that safety net is not there income inequality and the is imprinted itself on the rental housing market and really distorted that market such that there's been a real a tremendous loss of affordable units um especially things that might have been kind of marginal but where a lot of fragile uh people with you know intermittent incomes very low incomes with disabilities they were able to hang on into some of these living situations that it basically disappeared some people blame california's lack of affordable housing on capitalism and high-tech companies and their well-paid employees we have a capitalist economy that favors people who are making a lot of money and we're all doing quite well you know if we have investments in real estate our money has increased but for the people who are on fixed income people who are on a minimum wage they are left out of this economy you know and what are we going to do about them where did people go where was the plan for those people you know now all the new young tech people are living in the in the housing and working at google and everybody's doing well but complaining about the tent cities that are right around their building well those are not accidental every time you build something that is all cool and glass and steel you are creating fallout because the people that you've displaced of course cannot afford to live there in fact they can't afford to live anywhere else what sam said is true but it's only half of the story many cities in the world don't have street homelessness and encampments at the level seen in california why because their supply of housing has kept up with the demand california however is well known for its regulations that block will slow down new housing starting in the 70s we passed a slew of state and local laws that made it harder to build housing at the local level in the 70s and 80s cities down zoned and basically banned multi-unit construction in the vast majority of california allowing only for single-family homes and about 70 percent of california in addition uh we restricted height limits we uh just really just dramatically cut back on the ability to build more housing at the state level we passed the california environmental quality act sequa in the early 70s which was always intended to protect the environment it over time has been applied aggressively toward stopping new housing and cities adopted all sorts of long approval processes and so over time we kept layering all these new difficulties for building housing and it's no wonder that we're building so little housing anyone can file a lawsuit under sql and even do so anonymously for a non-environmental purpose in some cases sql lawsuits were filed on behalf of newly formed associations a lawsuit may allege any sql violation that was raised by any party at any time prior to agency approval sql should never be able to stop building a new bus line that gets people out of their cars it should not be able to stop infill development of housing so when you're putting housing near jobs or near public transportation that's inherently climate friendly sql should not have anything to say about slowing that down or stopping it so sequa is broken and needs to be fixed the politics of fixing it are very hard [Music] between the late 1960s and the early 1980s california passed a series of housing laws including the housing accountability act the state density bonus the housing element law the accessory dwelling unit law and a few others these are all good important laws but they had no teeth in them and so cities would either ignore them or they would just go through an empty you know meaningless process to to to comply in a way that didn't do anything and so um there were dead letters because we have a system of what's called local control a lot of cities control their zoning and their municipalities and part of it is a balance of public services whether it be fire police uh you know storm drainage you know the cities are strapped in in order to kind of deal with infrastructure needs and support services so in some cases housing is seen as being a burden to some jurisdictions because in some cases they may view it as housing is more expensive it costs cities more money land use regulations and zoning that really are local tools to prevent building more housing um and and developing at the rate of the growth of those local those local communities from having purchased the property in 2012 and having gone to get the zone changed in 2013 and applying for the permit for the approval in 2013 and getting that approved in 2016 and then applying for the building permit by mid-2017 we were allowed to uh proceed with the demolition of the previous structures here until you know the construction took until 2020 it's agonizing and the costs there's no point where there's any reprieve you know if there's any change every delay ends up causing um estimates by contractors and subcontractors to increase and by time we were building there were steel tariffs being put in so all the steel had to be you know so so yeah a delay is not just time it's the cost and it's the plan that that's in place that that's being thrown off i mean the decade to build one building you can't do it again i mean how long do you live you know do one more project i'll be retired no way so it's just an experience i did not enjoy and i don't plan to repeat everyone knows the term nimby not in my backyard i like to refer to it as banana build absolutely nothing anywhere near anybody over the years there's been many creative ways to stop development even if it's good development and so um having you know like a bill like sb 35 that senator weiner proposed and was able to get through allowed for certainty so that we didn't have to have discretionary hearings so in other words neighbors you know because oftentimes people inflame their perspective so they send out leaflets or big you know next door announcements that the world's going to fall apart because this new housing development's coming in and so every neighbor comes out and says no no no the town of woodside um which didn't want to have duplexes or fourplexes the town of woodside said we're we're exempt from sb9 because you know gosh the california the california mountain line is here um and there are dangerous exemptions within sb9 now you might want to ask yourself it turns out so i have friends who live in the town of woodside but this gives you a sense of how powerful nimby is and in terms of the politics of it it tends to be right smack dab in the middle of progressives who do not want more density in their neighborhood that may or may not be legal i'm not actually literally i'm not in a position to judge that but look i think we all know what their motivation is right with respect i don't see them as huge champions of mountain lions right they're against housing now whether they've done something that's legal or illegal is for the lawyers to work out but we know what the motivation is there so you've got a handful of cities that are doing the wrong thing on purpose and they know what they're doing and our message is we're watching and we're going to take steps to ensure that you build housing because when woodside doesn't build housing it makes san francisco's housing crisis worse so now all of those laws are much stronger cities can't ignore them anymore and we've given a lot of enforcement power to the attorney general and to the housing and community development department hcd our housing agency they have more tools to crack down on cities that are violating the law either to work with those cities to help them comply or when you have bad actors that are just that don't want to comply to force them to comply through penalties through litigation so we've really put a lot more teeth and accountability into our housing laws [Music] many expensive cities in the world like new york city boston tokyo and hong kong all have a mature and efficient public transportation system in california however public transportation is less developed people working the city are forced to either pay high rent or endure long commuting hours the number of people with one-way commutes of 90 minutes or more the so-called super commuters doubled in san francisco and some counties in the bay area between 2009 and 2017. if there was this transportation infrastructure like there is for example in new york city where the the metro is very cheap it runs everywhere it runs frequently uh you can live 30 40 miles away and take the subway in right we don't have that infrastructure um the bart system the caltrain system it doesn't go as far and it and it's it's really priced um you know our our our clients spend so much on old cars and clog up the freeways because public transportation just isn't that convenient here voters at some point willing to trust government and willing to buy into bond issues in 2008 we bought into a bond issue for high-speed rail that high-speed rail could have been so successful if it was set up around areas such as san francisco silicon valley los angeles the challenges of going through sequa has made it impossible for this for the state to get the kind of roadway easements that they needed um kind of figuring out how to get through some of the most challenging terrains and mountains has been really hard for the train to get from san francisco to l.a easily but of course what we're doing now is connecting bakersfield to merced nothing against people living in bakersfield merced but the social value of creating high-speed and accessible transit to the very expensive locations from areas where people can afford to live um that would have been huge and so we can do that but we just we have to we have to take the first step and again sadly nobody's talking about that infrastructure projects are very political because it's going through things like people's ag farms you know and they're buying land and they're changing the way land is being used i think it's wrought with really difficult challenges around i think the route was a complete political compromise you know where can they buy it how can they buy it what lands available and um you know as a result it's not ideal there has long been disputes between shelter first and housing first shelter first or better known as the linear staircase model was the practice of the day before the turn of the century the basic idea is shelter is a basic human right and should be provided to all homeless later when the person was deemed housing ready would he or she be provided with housing the criteria would include receiving drug treatment mental health treatment going back to labor force and being a good neighbor however in the 1990s and early 2000s some people running homeless shelters realized that this model was not perfect dr sam sambaris proposed a new model housing first which would provide chronically homeless persons with an apartment of their own without any prerequisites on psychiatric treatments or sobriety i left the hospital and i started pathways to housing a non-profit organization i got a fund i got a grant from the state office of mental health and i said i'm going to house people who are severely mentally ill going in and out of bellevue and i'm gonna put them in an apartment of their own with support services and people said uh you know that's kind of crazy you know it's like people need supervision you need a group home you know i said well there's lots of group homes and you know there's lots of all of those programs this group of people does not want to go there they want a place of their own i mean people were very clear it's like i'll i'll stay on the street rather than go to these places where i have to comply with all these uh different uh things i have to be sober i have to take medication i have to promise to go to therapy i have to go to bed at a certain time wake up at a certain time and this is was okay for a lot of people dr sam sambaris published a number of widely cited research articles in the early 2000s based on his practice of the housing first model he was held as the man who solved homelessness and housing first model gained enormous popularity among academics and policy makers when i was in washington and we were promoting in the bush administration we promoted housing first it was controversial to some people because they thought how could the bush administration be identified with the idea of placing homeless people into housing right away there is a kind of follow the money type of aspect to the housing first question the federal government which is a significant source of funding for homeless programs um you know essentially requires housing first there are there are people in the home who got into the homeless services business over the last let's say 20 years you find far more of them in line with housing first because in order to finance programs you kind of have to be online with it what hud did is they didn't require applicants to adopt housing first in order to receive funding what they did was they prioritized the point system of scoring applications so that it would be it'd be really difficult to score high and not demonstrate that you've adopted a housing first approach so it's it's not necessarily a requirement but for all intents and purposes this is a requirement to get the funding at least to score high enough to get the to get the higher levels of funding in the 2000s a significant shift began at the state and local level with agencies and communities increasingly moving away from shelters and transitional housing strategies and instead moving toward housing first focusing on building of permanent supportive housing as san francisco's mayor gavin newsom adopted a 10-year plan in 2004 which called for eliminating emergency shelters as a result san francisco's emergency shelter capacity froze between 2004 and 2014. while all the resources were poured into building permanent supportive housing however housing development was extremely slow between 2004 and 2014 san francisco built 2699 units of permanent supportive housing the decision to stop building shelters in 2004 received wide support among experts but in retrospect many acknowledged it was a bad policy then mayor newsom said we are no longer going to build homeless shelters um we're going to put all of our money in permanent supportive housing and i amongst many like applauded that i'm like yes let's focus on the solutions but what we all fail to think about in the 10-year plan to end chronic homelessness like well there was 2000 chronically homeless people so let's build 2000 units of permanent supportive housing well that's smart but nobody thought about the inflow and this stuff takes time so i think what mary lee and especially mayor bree did was it course corrected so you've got between 2002 and 2015 like hardly any shelters got opened and we course corrected in 2016 policy decisions that people make that are based on feelings and opposed as opposed to data have really long-term impacts that don't get seen for years today san francisco has gone back to building more shelters trying to make up for what was lost during the 10-year plan period still shelters only receive about 21 percent of the city's homelessness budget while alliance share goes into housing what happened in san francisco happened across california in 2016 la voters approved proposition hhh which authorized the city officials to issue up to 1.2 billion dollars bonds with the aim of reducing homelessness by developing and remodeling permanent supportive housing in 2020 the la city controllers office issued an audit of how the prop hhh money was spent and what they found was staggering according to the controller's public report projects in the primary triple h pipeline are taking between three to six years to complete with most set to open between 2023 and 2026 almost a decade after the passing of the proposition as of 2021 five years after the passing of the proposition only 14 of the projects have been completed a total of 1142 apartments development costs are high and continue to rise in 2021 the average per unit cost was almost 600 000 some units are extremely expensive to build fourteen percent of the units exceeded seven hundred thousand dollars and at least one project is estimated to cost nearly eight hundred thirty seven thousand dollars per unit that price tag six hundred thousand dollars per apartment unit is not an outlier in california high cost of land high cost of construction specifically in an area like the bay area that's very urban the the land is more expensive um and the the cost of construction is higher so roughly it does cost anywhere from five hundred thousand to seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars per unit to build affordable housing i think that the shared housing model is the future and that uh that's the only way it's to be the number one program that's going to be the engine of reducing homelessness in california because we're not going to build our way out of it we didn't build our way out of it in new york city i think that the people in the homelessness sector uh and i apologize if this sounds critical but you know i think there's a paternalism streak there's also a bit of a denial about some of the capabilities of people in the ingenuity and you know energy that people who are homeless can put into this situation and they also seem to think that the only solution is an apartment by yourself spending billions of dollars on permanent supportive housing is only the first step because these housing units are permanent governments need to pay for the operating costs forever this raises a question as we house more and more homeless individuals are our governments able to pay for the ever rising costs with one-time dollars and you may be able to do something like purchase a building or renovate a building and that is something that we're doing with the state dollars like for example with the home key program but that does not give you the ongoing funding that you're going to need to operate that building or to pay for the services for the clients are going to be housed in that building let's talk about like what it costs to actually provide permanent supportive housing in san francisco and that's housing for homeless people that has on-site support services which many many people you know need to stay house fixed successfully that's that costs closer to three thousand dollars a month and why does it cost that because it's freaking expensive to live here i would like somebody to find me a one-bedroom apartment in san francisco for two thousand dollars like buildbug um doesn't exist that's a unicorn there's like a range of like housing first programs that we have to look at and again san francisco unfortunately we tend to think that's just permanent supportive housing but it's not most people would agree that having a safe place to sleep is a human right however people differ largely on what that place should be what's the solution a solution is making sure that we have every human being in san francisco has a permanent affordable house you can't just give everyone a house you certainly can no every every human being has a right to housing you're talking about a bedroom apartment yeah for everyone for anyone on the street should get a one bedroom apartment housing is a human right shelter is not housing we have more billionaires per capita in san francisco than anywhere in the world we have the resource we're just not distributing them appropriately but if we text them more then they will leave right no they will not and i don't care they can leave we will live here and happily have a more diverse and beautiful city without the billionaires if they want to leave we will take care of each other in a passionate and compassionate way prophecy has passed by the voters in san francisco which is giving us 400 million dollars a year to spend on housing services that's taking from the wealthy and giving to the poor that's the good that's the right direction to go we need to do more of that like how much more i feel like you know if you tax the rich even more for example people like elon musk they're gone bye-bye have fun in space you love and i don't give a i think shelter's a human right that's what the united nations actually is saying by the way i mean the intention of that statement when they wrote that was not having a apartment unit in san francisco is your human right it was not that at all in terms of technicalities the biggest distinction between permanent supportive housing and transitional housing is is the lease which which if you can get people in on a lease now what's happening is the fair housing act governs evictions which is another objective of the housing first advocates get more people covered under this civil rights entitlement of the fair housing act so that fewer people can be evicted for things other than failure to pay rent destruction of property or criminal activity [Music] under housing first chronically homeless individuals those who have been homeless for a long time and also have mental health or drug addiction problems are provided with permanent supportive housing a key component of housing first is that those permanent supportive housing should offer wraparound services including mental health and drug addiction treatments however in practice the model encounters many challenges besides the prohibitive costs of building housing one challenge is that because services are offered but participation is not required people with mental illnesses with drug addiction may very well choose not to participate some of the disadvantages of the supportive housing program is that those treatments are optional and individuals with a severe problems severe mental illness substance use problems would in many cases find it hard to participate in those programs or be willing to participate in these programs without you know a additional push or incentive to to participate in those programs and that's what leads to a very large proportion of people who are enrolled in permanent supportive housing programs to exit those programs and return to homelessness so according to my data in los angeles county between 10 to 20 percent of uh individuals who start permanent supportive housing programs would eventually return to homelessness the requirement is not on the participant the requirement is on the provider the provider is required to provide services to the participant but there's no skin in the game for the participants they have every opportunity to reject every service that is offered to them second understanding this arrangement if you're a provider what kind of services would you provide you would provide low-cost services that don't impact your bottom line your operational costs if they're rejected so the services are things like what i call drive by case management or transportation services when housing first was originally proposed by dr sam sambaris in new york he had an 128 ratio between staff and clients on site however in practice that ratio varies across different permanent supportive housing sites those teams called assertive community treatment teams or programs for assertive community treatment have a one to ten caseload ratio one to ten you know or less one to eight if the person is also homeless and needs not only clinical but needs housing so you have to work with landlords and other neighbors and so on but that's a reasonable caseload ratio for people who have severe mental illness the biggest challenge that i had being a case manager was connecting people to services because one first of all my caseload was 40 people okay which meant that i could talk to a couple of people so some people i would only talk to you once a month some people i would talk to once a week it's it's terrible it it's it's malpractice if you do it on the cheap and you're compromising program fidelity this is where program fidelity is tied to outcomes people think of housing first if there's a doctor and a psychiatrist on site that's a joke that does not happen that's a bunch of crap i'm sorry to be so direct maybe that happened 20 years ago in new york with the guy that founded housing first because he himself was a therapist and everybody in his unit was struggling with mental illness so he had a bunch of clinicians on board there the reality is is that it's usually a few case managers some people with lived experience and recovery from addiction maybe formerly homeless people that are trying to help out their brothers and sisters because they've been there and they know what it's like to have been on the street okay and that's great but it's not all these wraparound services that everybody promotes it to be let's just be real what we did for 20 years was we funded shelters to become multi-service social welfare healthcare organizations that essentially provided a low quality of service uh by unlicensed professionals to people okay so that to me was the wrong direction housing first as a concept as a principal was a corrective to that to say we should get people what they need with most and what the homeless system can deliver is getting people into housing but at the same time yes housing first has also become ideological uh and some people just are holding on to it in a narrow interpretation you know and that they can only be one way when we know that you know there's a lot of diversity in the population and we have to figure out the solution for each person while billions of dollars are spent on building a few thousand permanent supportive structures so many people are still sleeping on the streets la county in san francisco city have been reasonably hospitable to the homeless over time with allowed encampments they've allowed people to live outside um they didn't rouse them like you know say they did in new york city under rudy giuliani so as a result it encouraged some people to uh to migrate there um so i think san francisco has more migratory individuals that are coming in to live there certainly the weather helps in that situation um so there might be some of that as well the official data would tell you that about 30 of unsheltered people come from out of san francisco county i don't believe that that data is actually very accurate at least 50 of the people in tents who i spent a year and a half or a year engaging with every day when i was at hsuc uh are not from san francisco but i think a lot of people are coming here uh seeking drugs um it's easy to get here it's inexpensive you go to the tenderloin however and the demographic is different you'll have a lot of young white kids that are on the street that are not from san francisco and i'm sorry to be so blunt i'm just being honest they come from northern california they come from oregon and up as far north as washington mainly it's a regional magnet primarily for people that live like in santa rosa that lived in santa rosa sacramento you know maybe mendocino counties they come from the central valley yuba city uh merced uh fresno and they come to san francisco they're not from here they might be from california but they're not natives of san francisco i want to stay here because the difference of the people that are here i'm from new york i'm from the bronx and new york as you know is the melting pot of the world people like ruder over there but here people in california laid back easy california style you've got millionaires living next to horns it's a community here yeah it really is you know so many folks saying it's just housing first etc all of these you know buzzwords and nomenclature but things were getting worse on the street i'm very pro housing we need to develop more housing in california and the fact of the matter is it's the most difficult state in the nation to build it because of so many rules and regulations that this legislature and governors have ignored it's too difficult and it takes too long to build housing in california period so you can talk about housing first all you want but if it takes you seven years to build something it's not going to work housing first and permanent supportive housing in a way it's been so oversold that people realize you can't tell me that i'm not going to see any difference on the streets until every single person who's homeless has their own housing unit because i know what that means is that i'm just going to be waiting forever you need to tell me what you're going to do about public disorder while we're waiting for all the housing to arrive while all of that's happening all these people are on the street waiting on the street using drugs right because of all the trauma the daily trauma that they're facing on the street half of those people aren't going to be alive to realize that housing when it comes online and that's where the real tragedy is occurring here in california even when the shelter space is available some homeless choose the streets over shelters some homeless sleep in shelters at night but go back to their tents during the day why would they do that i think it was close to 60 percent of all unsheltered homeless people preferred a tent village over an actual congregate shelter not over other kinds of housing but but over a shelter i want to stay here why oh they have curfews they restrict how much property you can have they want to tell you when you're going to come in and out and everything like that and i really don't need that i know that shelters are aren't great i know they have rules like no weapons most of the time no pets sometimes they allow them now and no drugs inside but i promise you it's better than what's out there on the street waiting for you i don't care what people say they're on the street they've gotten used to it i got used to living on the street you rationalize it really quickly and you start meeting people out there and you think you have friends those same friends will steal from you too because they're drug addicts like i was people were you know living in an encampment and they were just doing they were really like caught up in their substance use and they just needed to be close to their to their dealer and they didn't want to go into a place where they weren't going to be able to use safely and you know we're worried about their own safety um you know you're in a hotel room by yourself or even in housing by yourself you know it's you're safer if you're with somebody else and you're with with a group of people bridge housing created this new metric this new term that they called dual residency so somebody has a bed inside the shelter and then they have a tent outside and that's how that they were able to show us that you know our resources were not being you know ill-spent and so for us the residents that's not what we were told or agreed to so that was incredibly frustrating to hear that they hadn't you know created this new metric now to explain that people had you know resources inside but they still had tents outside it was anywhere between 10 and 15 of the people who we engaged with were either housed in private housing that they told us about or we were able to look them up in our data system i spoke about and to see that they were housed somewhere or they had shelter somewhere or they were in a sip hotel or even in a safe sleeping site i totally understand why people were doing that but if you think about it then it's costing the city like on both ends like we're having to try to resolve the situation of you know an unsafe encampment um in you know in a public thoroughfare public space none of them excuse um taking up a space in two places that doesn't mean that i think it's okay for people to create chaos in urban neighborhoods and i think you know if somebody's gone to a point in their life where they're pooping in public i mean they're in pretty bad shape people don't and people don't like decide they want to poop in public um for no for no real reason um you know there's probably some substance use or mental health issues going on not okay to have a tent set up that's blocking a sidewalk during the day you can't have a permanent campsite um in a city uh you know anywhere unless it's in an authorized area that's just not healthy and not good for anybody you can't sleep in front of somebody's house in front of somebody's business we're not going to allow you to urinate and defecate in our public spaces and our parks you don't have a right to set up an unsanitary encampment in front of somebody's house or business it's not who we are but again it's also saying we're not going to allow uh tent encampments uh all over our cities and all of the the harm that it does not only to the individuals but also to our you know our quality of life in our in our neighborhoods i mean kids need to be able to walk safely to their schools without stepping over needles and feces most of my neighbors with small children have already left and that's just because it's too much for their kids to walk by people are voting with their feet they're leaving and so if we don't make some fundamental changes to how expensive it is to live here we don't make fundamental changes to our quality of life on the issues like homelessness and housing we're going to see that exodus continue [Music] you

Channel: Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR)

Views: 600,061

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Id: 0IHEMHc2yfY

Length: 46min 34sec (2794 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 06 2022