Housing should be a right
and not a privilege. Every American deserves a
safe and stable place to call home. Rent growth is
accelerated coast to coast in big cities, rural
areas, east, west, south, north—it's across the
entire economy. A lot of jobs that require
a bachelor's degree are going to go away. Our mortgage system is one
of the main factors that decides who has a stable
financial life and it needs to serve all of
America. And it's not doing that. Mortgage rates are on the
rise and they're not showing any signs of
slowing down. Mortgage rates have now
risen up above 5% for the first time in a long
time. And home prices have also been rising. If you look at predictions
of where mortgage rates may be, say, two or three
years from now, most people are looking at
interest rates to 7% to 7 .5%. A mortgage typically
refers to a loan used to buy a piece of real
estate for which that property serves as
collateral. Today, 63% of homeowners
in America are paying off their mortgages,
according to Zillow. Every percentage increase
in a mortgage rate significantly increases
the monthly payment, especially for low and
moderate income families. So there are good reasons
in the broader economy for raising rates. But this
isn't good news for those trying to purchase a
home. But experts say that high
rates aren't the only issue with mortgages that
could hinder Americans from achieving home
ownership. Our economy has totally
transformed in the last 50 years, and mortgages have
not. If we update our system
to better serve everyone in America, it will
profoundly advance us in having a more equitable
country. How do mortgages make it
more difficult to own a home in the United
States? And can anything be done to solve it? The price of a home often
exceeds the amount of money that most Americans
save. Mortgages exist to allow
these individuals and families to purchase a
home with a small down payment, receiving a loan
for the remaining balance. But cost still remains a
big issue. We have an affordability
crisis in the United States, and I would say
COVID actually revealed an exacerbated an existing
crisis, but it's only gotten worse. So what we fundamentally
have is a supply problem, and that correlates with
an affordability challenge. Americans today are forced
to take larger loans to finance a home. The Federal Reserve Bank
of Atlanta found that a median income household
would need to spend 34.9% of its yearly income on a
median priced home. For reference, households
that pay more than 30% of their monthly income for
housing are considered cost burden, according to
the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The cost factor is also
why there is currently a large percentage of
renters wondering if they'll even ever be able
to move from renting to owning. And even condos
and townhouses are raising in costs across cities
for half a million dollars and up, significantly
raising the down payment amount and mortgage loan
debt. Saving for a down payment
is one of the biggest barriers to
homeownership. The Center for Responsible Lending
calculated that a typical worker needs eight years
to save for a 3% down payment for a median
priced home and 30 years for 20%. While certain programs
like FHA loans allow homes to be purchased with
smaller down payment, being able to afford a
high down payment comes with its own set of
benefits. If you come in with a lot
of money down, it's easier to qualify for a
mortgage. It's also less expensive to get a
mortgage. Something like 40% of
families in America have no financial margin. They
couldn't even afford a $400 medical bill or
challenge. So the idea of being able
to save a 20% down payment is almost unimaginable. And again, it goes back
to the fact. Worse than ever right now
is that food costs are going up, energy costs
are going up, rents are skyrocketing so much
faster than incomes right now. All of those get in
the way of families being able to save for a down
payment. A number of state and
local institutions also offer what's known as
down payment assistance programs to combat this
issue. There is not nearly,
though, enough money for those down payment
programs. The other problem has
been that the programs are not standardized and it
makes it harder for lenders to use them and
more reluctant to use them. And it also makes
it harder for people to know about them and how
they qualify for them. Congress was considering a
big package of downpayment assistance for first
generation homebuyers as part of the debate over
build back better last year. But the Senate
failed to enact the bill. So we're still hoping
that might be revived. Another prominent issue is
the lack of small dollar mortgages or loans issued
for less than $100,000. Having smaller mortgages i
s important because by definition those are
going to be affordable for a family on a more
modest income. For first time
homeowners, a lot of these small dollar mortgages
are available for affordable, low cost
properties in urban, suburban or rural
communities. Prior to the pandemic,
more than a quarter of home sales nationwide
were priced below $100,000. Yet just 23.2%
were purchased using a mortgage, compared to
73.5% of homes priced at or above $100,000,
according to the Urban Institute. It is particularly hard
for people who are buying smaller houses with
smaller mortgages to find a lender and to get that
mortgage. And they also
surprisingly are more expensive. And the issue has been
getting worse. The total value of
mortgage loans between $10,000 and $70,000 and
between $70,000 and $150,000 dropped by over
53% and over 21%, respectively, from 2011
to 2021. Meanwhile, values for
loans exceeding $150,000 rose by a staggering 240%
plus in the same period. Another study found that
denial rates for small dollar loans were notably
higher than denial rates for larger loans. And it's not because
these loans are riskier. Accompanying research
found that applicants for small dollar loans had
similar credit profiles to applicants for larger
loans. The real reason is
profit. It costs about the same
amount of money to take an application and run it
through your system and fund a mortgage and have
it appraised and do all those things regardless
of how big the mortgage is. So if it cost me the
same amount of money to do a $700,000 mortgage as it
does to do a $70,000 mortgage, but I get all
my fees and my interest based on the loan amount,
so I'm going to get a lot less revenue on a $70,000
mortgage than I am on a $700,000 mortgage. The lack of small dollar
mortgages then drives these affordable homes
into the hands of retail investors looking for
profit. Small dollar homes that
could represent the first step on the path to
homeownership for a family of modest income are not
being sold with mortgages, which means they're
probably being bought for cash. That means somebody
with deep pockets is able to come in and offer to
pay cash. They often buy the homes
through automated systems where they buy them
without even seeing the house. They get an
automated appraisal, a remote inspection, and
buy houses in bulk. And that's pulling a lot
of houses out of what's already an overly scarce
affordable housing market for these smaller, less
costly houses. So a lot of harm coming
out of the difficulty of people being able to
access small dollar mortgages. In response, home buyers
may resort to dubious methods to purchase a
property. One example that is
surprisingly prevalent is people end up into
something they call contract for deeds, where
it's essentially you're renting. And if you make
every payment on the loan on time, you eventually
will own the house. But if you miss any
payment, you not only lose the house, you have no
equity in it either. And there are millions of
these transactions out there in the country
today. And it's because people don't have the
alternative. They're being pushed into
those mortgages. On top of everything, it's
generally become more difficult to qualify for
a mortgage. The Housing Credit
Availability Index, which represents the lender's
tolerance for risk, has remained almost at the
same level since the aftermath of the 2008
financial crisis. In response to the great
foreclosure crisis, lenders and investors got
very tight about their underwriting criteria and
have kept them at this sort of reactive level
since then. The deck is particularly
stacked against borrowers with low credit scores. As millions of homeowners
went into mortgage forbearance programs at
the start of the pandemic, banks raised
their borrowing standards for protection. During the fourth quarter
of 2021, less than a quarter of new mortgages
originated to borrowers with credit scores under
720. An important part of the
unfairness and the impact of that is credit scores
reflect to a great extent how much family and
personal wealth you have. If you're a wealthy
person, it is not difficult to get a
mortgage. But if you have less wealth and a lower
credit score, it's really challenging right now. And despite the many
regulations designed to prevent lending
discrimination, racial bias is still prevalent
in the mortgage industry. According to the most
recent data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act,
denial rates for home purchase applications
were 18.1% for black applicants and 12.5% for
Hispanic white applicants, compared to just 6.9% for
non-Hispanic white applicants and 9.7% for
Asian applicants. Lenders can look up
additional debts of a potential homebuyer,
including that of medical debt and student loan
debt relative to the loans that are in default,
which can limit opportunities for less
established potential homebuyers. Expecting
communities that have not historically had the
privilege of financial liberties to be
financially secure when making one of those
important purchases of their lifetime is like
expecting an athlete with no training or coaching
to win a national championship title. It's just unrealistic and
it's indeed a stretch and has certainly added to
the difficulty of home buying in the U.S.. The easiest way to solve
today's mortgage market is resolving the supply of
housing in America. If we don't increase the
supply of starter homes, first time homes and
homes that are accessible for working families with
low and moderate incomes, then it's going to be
really hard to solve it just from a lending
perspective. We've got to have more housing. If you just provide more
credit, it drives up housing prices even more
without expanding the supply. Another important aspect
is having a mortgage market that supports the
needs of all Americans. If we have more supply, we
also should work on downpayment assistance
and we think we're going to need more subsidy
there and financial counseling and
preparation to help families clean up their
credit and be well prepared to be able to
obtain loans. Several measures can also
be taken to overcome some of the systemic barriers
that prevent certain subgroups from achieving
home ownership. Our mortgage system just
has to work for today's economy and people who
are doing the right thing, scrambling to put
together a living, saving as much money as they
can. But those are just
tougher in this new economy. And our mortgage
system has to serve those people who are playing by
the rules and not getting a chance to get ahead. If we want to overcome
some of the systemic barriers to homeownership
for households of color, we really want to
recognize that and think really hard about
unpacking those systemic barriers and doing
something to address them directly, like looking
for alternative ways to assess credit, looking
for ways to count income from gig economy jobs,
and second and third jobs, and seasonal jobs, and
from other household members who are
contributing, and looking for ways to help people
with down payment assistance to establish
that collateral. Continuing to question and
improve the mortgage system in the United
States is key to preserving the ideals of
the American Dream. Our mortgage system is one
of the main factors that decides who has a stable
financial life, who has a secure place to live, who
builds financial wealth, and it needs to serve all
of America. And it's not doing that. And so unless there are
very deliberate, significant interventions
and changes in our system, we're going to look back
in 20 years and find that we're even in a worse
place than we were in 2022. Rent in America is getting
more expensive no matter where you live. Rent growth is accelerated
coast to coast. In big cities, rural
areas, east, west, south, north. It's across the
entire economy. The areas where we are
seeing the strongest rent growth are in places like
Austin, Texas. Yes, my name is Maria and
I live in Austin, Texas. During the pandemic, a
lot of people began to leave and actually the
rent dropped that year by $100. I am due to renew
my rent and there was a spike of $400. Making matters worse, few
of the new homes in construction are
affordable. Rental demand continues to
be extremely strong and the rental units that are
being built are the more expensive ones. That is
the higher end ones. Meanwhile, workers pay
isn't increasing enough to match the new rent. We had wage suppression
for 40 years and then we have the period now where
wages are growing, especially at the low
end. And so the question is
how long will that continue? Experts say the rent
increases will have an impact on the economy. A lot of the monthly
expense for the typical household is money that's
going toward the rent or to upkeep of the house. So it is a very important
part of all of consumer expenditures. In the most competitive
markets. Rents are creeping toward
record highs. Renters in smaller
markets are feeling the squeeze, too. For
example, one bedroom rentals in Gilbert,
Arizona, spiked over 116% in the past year. Meanwhile, rent for a
single family home is growing at its fastest
pace since 2005, according to CoreLogic. So how did
we get here? One answer is the bounce
back from the pandemic. You saw tech companies,
major firms moving to smaller cities. Cities
like Pittsburgh, Austin, San Antonio, Charlotte. These are cities that
really started booming because workers had more
flexibility. And when the city starts
booming, of course, the rents go up because it's
a supply and demand issue. But the story goes back
further than that, all the way back to the Great
Recession. President Obama, are you
listening? This has been building
really since the end of the financial crisis back
a little over a decade ago. A lot of communities
have made it more difficult to build more
homes closer to the urban core. Building materials,
particularly lumber, has been in short supply. That's been a problem. Labor. A lot of people
left the construction trades in the housing
bust back a decade ago, and because of changes in
foreign immigration laws, we have a lot fewer
foreign immigrants coming into the country. Many of
those folks would work in the construction trades.
Also, a lot of smaller builders, they rely on
loans from banks. And since the financial
crisis, banks, particularly smaller
banks, mid-size banks have been unable, to because
of regulatory changes and other reasons, unable to
provide enough loans. So there's a mélange of
things going on here. After the financial crash
of 2008, house building stalled. By the end of
the '10s, renters had fewer options, especially
in real estate hotspots. Pre-COVID, we saw a huge
rush to urban centers. Millennials love to live
in cities longer. They were actually living
there longer than the previous generations
their age had because they weren't able to get out
and afford to buy homes because home prices were
so high. So you had so much demand
in the cities. Then the pandemic hit. So if you look at some of
the high rise apartment buildings in the really
dense central business districts, the big
cities, rents were actually declining in the
first 12 months of the pandemic. But smaller cities like
Phoenix and Austin received more of those
remote workers. That sent prices upward
for people like Maria. Right now, I would say for
a studio is probably $2,000. But this place,
it's a one bedroom, was originally set at $1700
when I first moved in. Maria is a teacher and
needs to commute to work every day. She and many
other Americans don't have the luxury to move
further away from work to save cash. That's creating wider
issues in the economy. There's a lot of evidence
that the lack of housing closer to where the
demand is in urban cores is having a meaningful
negative consequence on long term economic
growth. So if we can figure out a way to
change zoning rules and laws and get the lumber
and land and labor that we need and able to build
closer to where the jobs are, you know, our
economy will be able to grow more quickly, more
strongly in the longer run. Renters in the
traditionally cheaper suburbs are feeling the
burn, too. Economists say that
finding any home to rent right now is uniquely
difficult. Because the vacancy rates
are really so low. It's the lowest we've
seen in a generation. Coming out of the
pandemic, it's likely for rents to keep rising. Fortunately, builders are
ramping up their building. They can make a lot of
money with rents this high and house prices this
high. So they have a lot of
incentive to put up more homes. And that's
happening slowly but surely. We are seeing
more homes put up. So that's a good sign. And we've seen an
increase in single family housing starts. That's
really important because that's the preferred
housing structure during the pandemic. So having
investors come in, buying homes maybe puts a little
upward pressure on home prices, sure, maybe it
does, But it does increase the stock of single
family rental homes available in the market
and should help to moderate rent growth. And in the cities, some
realtors are weighing whether to convert their
less busy office districts into residential
neighborhoods. The idea is to say that
there are some empty buildings, you know,
brick and mortars already established, but maybe
one can repurpose it into residential units. For the short term,
renters are dealing with the market. If I had signed the lease,
it would be taking a lot of my savings. And so I decided to move
to a new building. I'm losing about 150
square feet. These hikes are hitting
U.S. citizens at an inopportune time. Over decades, wages for
most workers have stagnated. The wages and benefits of
a typical worker were suppressed in the period
four decades after 1979. Growth was very slow. There was growing
inequality that worked against the middle and
against anybody in the bottom 90%. In 2019, Oregon became the
first state to impose statewide rent control. They cap increases at
about 7%. Cities like New York, San
Francisco and Washington, D.C. also limit rent
increases. These policies have some
benefits. One study found that
renters were about 20% more likely to stay in
their homes with rent control. Other economists
think that rent control does more harm than good. So what history has shown
is that by putting a rent control, yes, it benefits
temporarily for people to pay lower rent, but that
deters incentive to build more homes or provide
money for maintenance. So all the housing stock
steadily deteriorates over time. And one does not
want to see that. So we want to encourage
more production. The answer to rising rents
may be in the job market. Both Congress and the Fed
have pumped stimulus into the economy. It should
eventually help some workers earn higher
wages. There's been a huge
increase in the demand for goods and services. So we're going to see a
period of sustained low unemployment, I think. This has always led to
faster wage growth for those in the middle and
the bottom. The other related
question is: will we see the structural changes
that will build this into the economy rather than
be an episode, a period of low unemployment? And I
think that will require improving labor
standards, putting in the $15 minimum wage,
rebuilding collective bargaining. I think it
will mean paying attention to maintaining low
unemployment. Which means that the
answer to rising rents might be getting yourself
a raise or finding roommates. They're not building
enough affordable housing right now because for
builders, the cost of construction is so high
due to a high cost for land, labor, materials,
shortage for materials, shortages of labor, that
they can't build affordable housing. You know, it took us ten
years to get into this predicament. It's not
going to be solved next year or the year after.
It's going to be ten years before we solve this
problem. The homeless crisis in
America is worsening again. The COVID pandemic
caused a surge in housing costs and a rise in
unemployment, leaving nearly 600,000 Americans
unhoused in 2020. We have to shut down a
piece of our own humanity to be able to walk past
another human being that is in such a difficult
situation. Being homeless, your day
is anywhere spent from where I'm going to lay my
head at tonight, where I'm getting my next bite of
food from. And what people don't
typically realize when they walk past a person
who is homeless, is that this person is costing
taxpayers a lot of money. Cities across America are
spending more than ever to combat the crisis. In 2019, New York spent a
record breaking $3 billion to support its homeless
population. California is also
expected to break its record, allocating $4.8
billion of its budget to the same issue over the
next two years. And areas like that just
don't seem to be getting any better, despite the
fact that every politician claims that this is a top
priority of theirs and the budgets keep going up. Overall, homelessness in
America has only improved 10% compared to 2007. It's even worse for
certain subgroups, such as individual homelessness,
which dropped only a percent in the same
period. On the contrary, 2020 saw a 30% increase
in the unsheltered homeless, erasing over
half a decade of work since its dramatic rise
in 2015. Right now, we are trending
in the wrong direction. So the state of
homelessness right now is pretty tenuous and there
are some small increases that are taking place
across the board. So how is the U.S. addressing the homeless
crisis and can it ever be solved? Homelessness is
known to prey on some of the most vulnerable
populations in America. In 2020, 20% of those who
were unhoused suffered from severe mental
disorders, while 16% suffered from chronic
substance abuse. In response, the U.S. has long relied on a
housing ready approach to homelessness, where those
who are unhoused had to meet specific
requirements such as sobriety or completion of
treatment in order to qualify for a home. That was until this man,
Dr. Sam Tsemberis, pioneered
the Housing First initiative. At some point, myself and
the people we were working with realized that really
insisting that people changed, get sober, take
medication, get your life together in order to earn
or be awarded housing was not working. It was just, you know,
people couldn't. People were on the
street. They couldn't stay sober. They were not
interested in medication. They were interested in
being somewhere safe and secure. The Housing First
initiative follows two tenets. First, the most
effective solution to homelessness is permanent
housing. And second, all housing
for the homeless should be provided immediately
without any preconditions. Putting people in housing
first, which is what they were desperate to do,
calms that survival thing. People are safe, secure,
and then they're saying to us, I need more help
here. So then rather than
having us pushing or coercing people to get to
treatment, people get housing, and then they
want to treat. Under the George W. Bush administration, the
Housing First initiative gained the spotlight as
the key to ending homelessness. Related programs soon
received billions of dollars in support from
government agencies such as the United States
Interagency Council on Homelessness and the
Department of Housing and Urban Development. Housing First's rise
really begins in the nineties, especially the
late nineties, and I think it really gained traction
as the philosophy that should dominate these
dedicated homeless services agencies and
programs. And so we're in a
situation now where if you meet people who work at
HUD on homelessness or in major agencies in
California and New York, it's relatively rare to
not find them be committed to Housing First. If you really look at it,
this year, the federal government will give
about $2.7 billion to housing and service
providers and towns and cities across the
country. For decades, the Housing
First policy has successfully housed
individuals that need it the most. Shannon McGhee
is one of them. A nonprofit organization,
Pathways to Housing, helped Shannon move into
his supportive housing in 2020 after staying
unhoused for four years. It started in 2008, losing
my mom to lung cancer and then not having a strong
support system to support me throughout the
process, I ended up losing the family house. They
sold the family house and didn't have anywhere to
go. And that started the stint of being homeless. From being housed to now
being unhoused, the shelter for me was very
hard. It was a cultural shock. It was very hard to
adjust to the environment, the living standards. I finally got connected
to the Veteran Affairs and a social worker with them
connected me to Pathways. And since being connected
to Pathways, everything has turned around 360
degrees. I'm housed, I'm looking
for gainful employment. I'm in school now. So without having Pathways
there to kind of be that support and that coach to
guide me into housing, I wouldn't be where I'm at
now. A study in 2004 discovered
that when individuals were provided with stable,
affordable housing, with services under their
control, 79% remained stably housed at the end
of six months. Another study in 2000
found it to be more effective than
traditional programs. 88% of the participants
in Housing First programs remain housed, compared
to just 47% in the city's residential treatment
program. And it's not just in the
United States. A similar study conducted
in Canada revealed similar results, showing
participants of Housing First programs obtaining
and retaining housing at a much higher rate. The evidence has shown
that by getting people housed immediately and
eliminating the chaos of homelessness created a
space where people would be more successful. I don't have to be in that
environment anymore where I'm subjected to using
drugs or to doing things for money that I didn't
want to do. I can change my focus. Because now I can say,
Hey, you're housed. How can we get you to
your next level of finding gainful employment? What steps can we work on
now? Housing First not only
supports those in need with housing, but the
assistance they need to get back on their feet
again. It's Housing First, not
Housing Only. Because there are very
rich services, like there's a team of people,
really, whether they're social workers or social
workers and nurses and psychiatrists, people
with lived experience. It's like a support
services team. And then the team says to
you, How can I help you? They provide wraparound
support for me. So if I need assistance
in getting things such as my ID or birth
certificate, they can help with that. They support
me through that process. If I need to make
appointments at the VA hospital, they support me
through that process. With any and everything
that I pretty much need done, I have support
through Pathways to Housing. Supporters of Housing
First also argue that it's cost efficient. A comprehensive study in
2015 concluded that shelter and emergency
department costs decreased with Housing First
policies. What people don't
typically realize when they walk past the person
who's homeless is that this person is costing
taxpayers a lot of money. People get very sick when
they're homeless. They have to be taken to
the hospital. Sometimes they steal
food. They have no money. They
get arrested. Court costs, police time,
jail time. When you tally up the
annual costs of people who are homeless and very
vulnerable, it turns out we're actually spending
sometimes $50,000 a year or $100,000 a year in
some cases, and the person is still homeless. But perhaps the biggest
advantage to Housing First is the improvement in the
quality of life it provides. Being homeless and being a
parent, I kind of didn't want my child to see me
in that situation, so it kind of put a wedge in
our relationship for a little bit. But once I
got housed, now I could provide a space where we
can interact together and she wouldn't have to be
subjected to that lifestyle. Being able to
have my housing first, I know that I'm in control
of my environment now. What happens here is all
about what I create. But Housing First also
comes with its own set of criticisms. Experts like
Stephen Eide from the Manhattan Institute
believe that Housing First hasn't shown any real
result. When the public is told
that this particular policy is going to end
homelessness, what they're expecting is that they're
going to see fewer homeless people around. That homelessness numbers
will significantly drop as a result of the
implementation of this policy. And I don't think
that we've seen that in the case of Housing
First. Critics also point out
that Housing First might not be as cost effective
as it looks. Research in 2015
discovered that while permanent housing
intervention was more successful in achieving
housing stability, it was also more expensive than
temporary housing. A 2018 survey by the
National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and
Medicine also concluded that there is no
published evidence to prove that permanent
supportive housing improves health outcomes
or reduces health care costs. No government that I'm
aware of has saved money by investing in homeless
services through a Housing First approach. You can talk about
potential cost offsets. That is, if you invest
$1,000,000 in Housing First, that will trim
some of the budgets and some other service
systems. You're not going to actually save money,
reduce the cost of government, to the point
where you could be talking about, let's say, a tax
reduction as a result of investing in housing
first. So I think that there has been some
misleading of the public with respect to that
concern. There is also the question
of whether the need for housing actually triumphs
over the need for treatment. If we want more from
people, we have to be talking about far more
than just housing. But in the housing first
era, there's a way in which housing just
continues to suck all the air out of the room. And all we keep coming
back to is are we doing enough to expand the
stock of subsidized housing to help the
homeless? Meanwhile, Dr. Tsemberis argues that the
criticisms towards Housing First are designed to
blame those who are unhoused rather than to
assist them. They want to go back to
treatment and sobriety first and then housing
maybe. Because that changes the
entire narrative back to homelessness is the fault
of the individual. You know, anybody who
fails in a capitalist society like ours with no
taxation and no government, it's only
because it's their fault. Housing First hit its
first bump under the Trump administration that
sought to replace it with programs focused more on
treatment and sobriety. They were talking about
housing fourth as a policy, housing fourth,
okay? And that was very
deliberate because it's Housing First and they
were like, no, housing fourth. You know,
treatment, sobriety, employment and housing
maybe. You know, that was a
very, very targeted attack. The Biden administration,
however, showed a return to Housing First. The American Rescue Plan
Act of 2021 included 70,000 emergency housing
vouchers and a staggering $350 billion in state and
local fiscal recovery funds in an effort to aid
homelessness and housing instability. The Biden administration
absolutely supports the Housing First approach. They feel that in a
society as ours that housing should be a right
and not a privilege, that every American deserves a
safe and stable place to call home. So they are
providing the resources and the support. Critics of Housing First
believe that lawmakers need to be giving more
alternative policies a chance and approach the
homeless crisis in a more structured manner. We need to have them
invest in a broad range of programs, residential
programs, that can benefit the homeless population
in all its variety, because the homeless
population is very diverse . Within that framework,
Housing First-like programs would have a
place, low barrier programs would have a
place, but they would not rule the roost in the way
that they currently do. Those in support of
Housing First believe that more resources and
support from the government are needed to
truly end the crisis once and for all. Well, if you don't have
the resources in the program to deliver a
place to live, then your listening and your
promise to them is hollow. You need to have the
listening, let's call that the policy, which is
housing first, person first, but then you need
the resources behind the policy: apartments,
subsidy, support services in order to actually make
the package viable. We're nowhere near where
we need to be in investment, either of
building public housing or affordable housing,
having the capacity to address the homeless
problem. We're nowhere near. What's important is that
homelessness is a crisis that can be solved as
long as there is enough attention, care and
resources to support the cause. It's just very disgraceful
that in a country that's so blessed, so wealthy,
that has done some things right in the past, if not
everything, that we can't do something to fix this
problem or at least make it smaller, ameliorate
it. So there's a lot of good
work going on. So that's what gives me
hope that we can actually turn the nighttime stars
into a daytime where we just turn up the lights
enough to really end it for all. Because the
other thing gives me hope is we know how to do it. We have the cure. We have good examples of
how it's done. We need to take it to
scale.
