The Ongoing Problem of Family Homelessness
The recession is hitting poor families hard. Even before the recession, across the country over 600,000 families were experiencing homelessness; children were the fastest growing subset of the homeless population. When the recession hit, thousands of families wobbling on the bring tipped over and fell face-first into homelessness, suddenly finding themselves living in the dark shadows of the most affluent country in the world. Cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles reported a doubling in the size of their waitlists for family shelters. Here in San Francisco, families are waiting six months to get into a shelter. At the same time the struggles faced by homeless families is tremendous and many families have trouble maintaining hope as the days go by.
In any well functioning society a sign of true stability is a sound family unit—the stronger the families, the more stable the community.
However, when the family is broken and in trouble, that means the foundation of the society is not as strong as it should be. Although there are many causes to homelessness, for many families the greatest cause is the high cost of rent. So many landlords require that a tenant make two to three times the rent, and with that usually being as high as $1,700 or more a month in San Francisco, many low-income families simply cannot afford to live in the city at all, but can’t afford to leave it either.
This is where the Coalition on Homelessness has stepped in and become a formidable force in the fight against family homelessness and poverty. For the last several years, its volunteers have fought for and won a subsidy to help homeless families in their fight for a better way of life. This doesn’t mean that they have not had their share of obstacles and hard times as the Mayor’s Office and the Human Services Agency have done their best to hinder the progress and minimize the gains of the homeless families of the campaign.
The purpose of the on-going Housing First for Homeless Families Campaign is to get families directly into housing off the streets without having to go through the red tape of a “readiness process”—meaning shelter or transitional housing program.
This idea goes against the belief of some social workers that you must have a “continuum” and that homeless people must be made “housing-ready.” At the Coalition, they feel that homeless people are already “housing-ready.” However, following a lot of work by the families in the Housing First for Families Campaign, a family can get a $500 a month subsidy to make market-rate housing affordable, but they have only a year to increase their monthly income or else apply for an extension. The way that the program is handled is by the City taking action without input or choice from homeless people on the structure or funding of programs designed to help them.
Under the Bush government, the Federal government focused its efforts on “chronically homeless” people—a demographic with a shifting definition that focused on single adults with addictive disorders or other mental health challenges, and that continually excluded homeless families, thereby limiting the funding available for programs for homeless families. In San Francisco the Coalition was able to get families included in the definition at least on paper were as they are still trying to manifest this in reality. Families see their plight through the context of poverty and this can only be remedied with the aid of a job providing a living wage as well as education, child care, health care and public benefits.
Homeless Children are the fastest growing segment of the homeless population. More than 500 children under the age of 17 live in San Francisco Emergency and Transitional Shelters in a single day. Over 150 families linger on waitlists for shelter beds to open up in San Francisco.
The children that are currently facing homelessness are more likely to have developmental problems, educational delays, behavioral problems and learning disabilities. Low self-esteem, shame and the stress of homelessness are all results of not have a stable living unit. Although homeless families tend to be younger, pregnant, and of an ethnic minority and also less likely to have a rental subsidy, they are not more likely to be mentally ill, depressed, or less educated. Subsidized housing has been shown to cure homelessness and a nine-city study found that 88% of families with a housing subsidy continued to be housed 18 months after placement while two New York City studies showed that 93% continued to be housed two years after placement.
Homeless families have not been invited by the mayoral administration to take part in any policy discussions in recent years. During this time the Mayor called for 3,000 housing units for homeless people, the great majority of which would be inaccessible to homeless families.
What are some of the necessary steps needed to curb homelessness in the city of San Francisco? Well for starters the money used to pay for the programs should not be money taken away from poverty abatement programs set aside to help assist those that are in need of them, be they funds for treatment, employment, child care, public benefits, or legal services. The Human Services Agency has imposed a measure that strongly hinders the progress of families once they receive the $500 subsidy because they only have two years to improve their income by $6,000 in order to afford the housing. The City’s housing pipeline has 3,000 housing units slated for homeless individuals. Only 329 (16%) of these units are set aside for homeless families. The combined waitlist for hosuing in San Francisco has surpassed 37,000 households.
The financial impact of homelessness in San Francisco is that on average the City is spending $92.52 per night to keep a family of three in a shelter and $8,035.20 for a 90-day stay in one of the family shelters; the City is spending $34, 479 to keep a family of three in a shelter for one year. It would only cost the City $6,000 to house a family for one year with the subsidy the Coalition has in place. That is a savings of over $28,000!
The solution to homelessness is not difficult at all: it simply takes compassion on the part of the rest of society to realize that we are all helpers, one to another. No human being is greater simply because they seem to have just a little or even a lot more than someone else. At any given moment the tables can turn and often times they do.
The City has what it takes to allocate the funds to make a tremendous difference in combating homelessness. Homelessness is a reality that some people face on a day-to-day basis. Having to move from shelter to shelter or bounce from a shelter to a relative’s place sleeping on floors and doubled-up in rooms with no space real makes doing the task of living a normal life difficult. The life-style is very depressing and being able to go directly into a home would make the quality of life better. Also raising the wages of even the lowest jobs while at the same time regulating the price of goods and services with every cost of living raise so that all people can comfortably maintain a family with a quality livelihood would be a tremendous help.
Better yet, we must ensure that during this recession, we keep every family we can in housing, until the economy turns back around.
Duran