Homelessness in America: Progress, Stasis, Backsliding and Forewarnings

The National Alliance to End Homelessness recently issued its third report on homelessness, both nationwide and in each state and the District of Columbia.

As I’ve said before, NAEH relies mainly, as it must, on federal government sources. For homelessness itself, this means the limited and not altogether reliable point-in-time counts that recipients of homeless assistance grants report to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

That said, it seems reasonable to assume that the methods recipients use generally don’t change much from one year to the next. So the percent changes NAEH reports are probably fairly accurate.

What we see overall are continuing trends — not only for homelessness itself, but for factors that indicate high risks of homelessness.

Homelessness Nationwide

The total number of literally homeless people dropped by 0.4% last year — such a small decrease as to represent more or less a steady state. All told, 633,782 people were counted as homeless.

Decreases for veterans and individuals classified as chronically homeless were much larger — 7.2% and 6.8% respectively.

The number of homeless families remained virtually the same — 77,157, as compared to 77,186 in 2011. However, the rate of family homelessness rose in 27 states and the District.

And the number of homeless people in families rose by 1.4% to 239,403. NAEH translates this into an estimated 3,251 more homeless children who were with an adult.

Over the longer term, homelessness for all the individual populations counted has trended down. We see a few blips up from one year to the next, but lower figures for all since 2005, when HUD standardized point-in-time data collections.

On a less cheery note, 38.4% of the homeless people counted last year — 243,627 — had no form of shelter or housing at all, except perhaps a car, an abandoned building or some other indoor place “not meant for human habitation.”

This is virtually the same number as were counted in 2011.

The decreases in both chronic and veteran homelessness clearly reflect the priority that communities have placed on them in response to direction from HUD and, more recently, targeted funding from the Veterans Administration.

Most permanent supportive housing is for chronically homeless individuals, including veterans. Last year, there were more PSH beds than beds in emergency shelters or transitional housing — a time-limited type of housing that also includes services.

Homelessness Risk Factors

The risk factors NAEH reports fall into two related categories — income and housing costs.

On the income side, the official unemployment rate was lower in 2011 than in 2010 — down to a still high 8.9%.

This is a limited indicator, however, since it doesn’t include people employed part-time who wanted — and, in some cases, used to have — full-time work. Nor does it include people who didn’t look for work because it seemed futile.

The median household income was a bit lower in 2011 and the official poverty rate 0.6% higher, pushing the number of poor adults and children up to more than 48.4 million.

Some of them were undoubtedly beyond the risk stage.

On the housing cost side, fair market rents increased in 38 states. The nationwide FMR for a modest two-bedroom apartment, plus basic utilities rose 1.5%, making for a five-year increase of 15.1%.

More than 6.5 million households spent more than half their income for rent — 5.5% more than in 2010. And the bottom fifth on the income scale spent, on average, a mind-boggling 87% of their income.

Well over 7.4 million people in poor households were living doubled-up with friends or family members. This represents a 9.4% increase over 2010.

HUD reports tell us that doubling up is a major warning sign for future homelessness. In 2011, nearly 32% of people admitted to a shelter had been staying with friends or family immediately before.

The policy implications here seem blatantly obvious. Putting people back to work — and to work for the first time — would help reduce homelessness if the jobs paid a decent wage.

But we need much greater investments in affordable housing too — more support for construction and preservation, more funds for public housing operations and maintenance and considerably more for housing vouchers.

We see marked downturns in the rates of chronically homeless individuals and veterans. They show what could happen if our government got equally serious about the rest of the homeless population.

More Fixes Won’t Fix Sequestration’s Harms

Never let it be said that Congress can’t get anything done because bipartisanship is dead. Look at how swiftly Republicans and Democrats jointly acted when the air traffic controller furloughs started inconveniencing frequent flyers.

This isn’t the first time Congress has created a loophole in the law that mandates across-the-board cuts.

When the Agriculture Department announced that it would have to furlough the inspectors who must be in meat, poultry and egg processing plants, Congress found funding to keep the inspectors on the job.

Took part of it out of the department’s fund for grants to help more schools serve breakfast to low-income students.

I’m hardly the first to note that Congress has evinced no significant concern about other delays sequestration seems likely to cause — or those that will worsen.

Nor about other harms the cuts will cause — not merely furloughs that will create hardships for some as-yet unknown number of federal employees, but as many as 750,000 actual job losses in both the public and private sectors.

And lost benefits for jobless workers who’ve been unemployed long enough to qualify for federally-funded unemployment insurance benefits. Nineteen states have already rolled out cuts averaging $120 a week. The longer states wait, the bigger the cuts will have to be.

Some of the other cuts have also gotten considerable press coverage.

So you probably know that Head Start programs have begun paring back enrollment. Some of them already have waiting lists — a far more consequential sort of delay than some extra hours in an airport.

The U.S. Secretary of Education says that about 70,000 children won’t have the early learning opportunities and other benefits, e.g., health services, that Head Start provides.

One Head Start director warns that parents may have to quit their jobs to tend to their children — not unlikely, since unsubsidized child care can cost more than they earn.

And sequestration has taken a bite out of the block grant that helps pay for subsidized care.

Also out of federal programs that fund subsidized housing. Long waiting lists for housing assistance are already common. And the number of years applicants wait are often far longer than the number of hours fussed airline travelers waited.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 140,000 fewer households will have housing vouchers by early next year. Others, it says, may face rent increases — perhaps beyond their ability to pay.

Yet funds for homeless services will be cut too.

But I’m cherry-picking here, just as many say Congress just did. Those interested can find many other examples in the weekly reports the Coalition on Human Needs is publishing.

No one, I think, would doubt that Congress hasn’t acted to avert impacts like the aforementioned because the people affected don’t have the political clout that frequent fliers and agribusinesses do.

I think we’re looking at something more difficult to deal with than a power imbalance, however.

The air traffic controller and food safety inspector furloughs caused — or were about to cause — large, clear, nationwide impacts. In many other cases, the proverbial is only beginning to hit the fan — or more precisely, a vast number of fans.

Most of the genuine news we have about the impacts on low-income people and the programs that serve them are local — and often likelihoods rather than sure things.

This is partly because program directors, in many cases, don’t yet know what their share of the cut will be. Even those who do are mostly still figuring out how they’ll manage — and give various answers when asked.

We also don’t get a whole picture because stories tend to get written when some advocates have gotten reporters interested. And, face it, some programs have more heart-tug appeal than others.

In one respect, it’s good that we’re getting stories. In fact, this is a welcome — if unintended — side effect of the air traffic controller save.

Yet, in another respect, it’s dangerous. Because the more major media focus on a handful of programs — and the more grassroots campaigns call on Congress to save one or another — the more likely other FAA-type fixes become.

And most federal agencies, unlike FAA, don’t have a pot of money they can tap that they didn’t need to spend this year anyway.

So a reprieve for some programs will mean deeper cuts for others. Like as not they’ll be programs that benefit low-income people — especially those that don’t have an effective public voice or lend themselves so well to poignant individual stories.

House Republicans seem open to this. “The main thing,” says Congressman Tom Cole (R-OK), “is to secure $85 billion in savings. We are not wedded to where the savings come from.”

But the fundamental issue is the savings, a.k.a spending cuts. Sequestration is a singularly dumb way to address a problem that’s been blown out of all proportion, i.e., the federal deficit.

Yet, as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has testified, deep cuts at this point — even if not across-the-board — are likely to lead to less deficit reduction.

And the whole approach is unbalanced, since sequestration comes on top of $1.5 trillion in cuts and a mere $620 billion or so in additional revenues.

Congress ought to get rid of sequestration, which none of its members wanted — or thought would come to pass. And some, who will remain nameless, should back off their cuts-only/cuts-now solution to the long-term deficit.

That, I hope, will be the message that all who care about the well-being of our nation’s children, seniors and everyone in between will deliver. Because if we don’t hang together … Well, you know the rest.

Mayor Gray Proposes More Money for Some, But Not Enough for the Neediest

Washington City Paper‘s headline after Mayor Gray released his proposed Fiscal Year 2014 budget proclaimed “Money for Everyone!” Not altogether so.

There will be money for most, but not quite everyone. There will be more money for some — both businesses and individuals, including some of the District’s lowest-income residents.

But their needs still get shorted, even now that the District is looking forward to $79.7 million more in revenues than the windfall expected for this fiscal year.

So here’s a selective look at who will get more, focused mainly, as you might expect, on spending that will — or at least, could — help low-income residents. Next post will deal with help they won’t get, but could have.

There will certainly be more money for construction companies. The proposed budget bulges with projects for them — public school buildings (new and modernized), infrastructure, recreational facilities, libraries.

If the companies comply with the District’s First Source law, there could be more jobs — hence money — for unemployed and underemployed D.C. residents too.

There will be more money for affordable housing developers, since the Mayor decided to invest the bulk of his promised $100 million in the Housing Production Trust Fund.

This should ultimately mean more money for food, clothing and other necessities for some of the nearly two-thirds of extremely low-income District households who are now paying more than half their income for rent because 40% of Trust Fund dollars are supposed to help finance housing for them.

An additional $5 million will go for housing vouchers that help pay for the operating costs of units designated for the District’s lowest-income residents — an essential complement to the Trust Fund money.

Another $3.1 million will provide more housing for victims of domestic violence.

And there will be a total of $2 million more for one-time and limited-term assistance to families for whom the rent has been so unaffordable that they’ve been evicted — or are about to be.

But — getting ahead of myself here, I know — not a penny more for regular vouchers that homeless and other very low-income residents could use to help pay market-rate rents.

There will be more money for all District employees, who’ll get their first pay increases in at least four years — not only fair, but perhaps job-creating if the employees spend some of their extra cash locally.

There will be more money for some nonprofits because the Mayor’s budget would create a $15 million competitive grant fund for them.

And there will be more money for lots of District residents who’ve got municipal bonds in their investment portfolios.

Current law would impose a tax on the interest these bonds earn, unless issued by the District.

But the Mayor wants to repeal it, giving us bondholders a total of nearly $13 million over the next five years — and the unique privilege of investing tax-free in bonds of no benefit to our community.

The tax giveaway and the values it reflects are among the reasons that there’s no more money for some of the urgent needs of the District’s low-income residents, though there will be more money for other “quality of life” investments like bike lanes.

Nothing against bike lanes, mind you. But I would have put a higher priority on improving the quality of life of homeless families, some of whom will probably again be spending their nights in Metro stations, hospital waiting rooms and the like.

And a higher priority on other programs and services that can advance not only the Mayor’s quality of life improvement goal, but his other goals too.

What’s in the New DC Comprehensive Housing Strategy … and Not?

The Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development devoted its latest monthly meeting to the comprehensive housing strategy produced by the task force Mayor Gray appointed in 2012.

I’ve waited to write about it until I could hear from some of the lead task force members because the report is hard to digest. And much of it isn’t written for the likes of thee and me.

It’s clearly of, by and for housing developers, though the interests of some of constituencies represented on the task force are wedged in as well. Not, however, the interests of the District’s lowest-income residents.

The strategy establishes three big goals for the next eight years:

• Preserve the 8,000 or so affordable units with subsidies that are due to expire.
• Produce and preserve 10,000 net affordable housing units, i.e., increase the stock by this number.
• Support the development of 3,000 market-rate units a year.

The market-rate units — 24,000 in all, if I’ve got the timeframe right — are in the plan because the task force fears that the District could wind up with housing affordable only for the wealthy and the poor who’ve got subsidies.

But whom the preserved and/or produced affordable housing units would be for isn’t specified.

The task force recommends that “the lions share of new funds” (emphasis added) be used to finance housing for households at or below 60% of AMI (the median income for the D.C. area).

Based on the 2012 figures the task force used, that would mean housing for those with incomes no higher than $64,500.

Yet more than one in five D.C. households had incomes at or below half of that, putting them in the category housing experts call extremely low-income.

The task force dutifully notes the more than 67,000 of these households on the housing assistance waiting list and the nearly 7,000 people who were literally homeless in January 2012.

Also a recent estimate that the District would need about 2,700 permanent supportive housing units to end homelessness for chronically homeless residents. (Sorry folks, no online document.)*

Yet I looked in vain for a target for extremely-low income residents as a whole — a specific number of affordable units, for example, or some portion of whatever the total dollar investments will be.

These are residents who, if not homeless now, are at high risk. Nearly two-thirds of them paid more than half their income for rent in 2010 — a far greater portion than households in any of the higher income tiers.

On a positive note, the task force recommends:

• A new, more reliable revenue stream for the Housing Production Trust Fund, which now suffers whenever the local real estate market does.
• That the Trust Fund no longer be tapped to cover the costs of locally-funded housing vouchers, as it has been for the last two years.
• A new fund to finance “shovel ready” affordable housing projects. What it could do that existing programs couldn’t, if adequately funded, isn’t explained.
• An increase in rent and operating subsidies — and use of all the subsidies. No more administrative directives that the DC Housing Authority hold on to fully-funded vouchers.
• That DCHA develop additional public housing, exercising the authority it has under its contract with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Some of these initiatives would clearly benefit the District’s poor and near-poor residents. How much would depend on what the District is prepared to spend — and how the total would be divvied up.

We’ve got more than enough experience to know that a developer can promise affordable housing without doing much, if anything, for extremely low-income households — and get financial help from the District.

And more than enough experience to know that goals and action plans don’t drive budget and other policy decisions unless elected officials view the potential results as priorities.

So the task force wisely recommends a standing Housing Investment Council to implement the strategy and report on results every two years.

The Council will have a lot of work to do. Many recommendations in the report aren’t “shovel ready” — partly because data the task force needed weren’t available and partly because “it was hard enough to get agreement on concepts,” according to CNHED Executive Director Bob Pohlman.

I’d hoped for a report that provided clearer benchmarks for what the many proposed benefits to developers would achieve.

But it does represent a serious effort — and a serious commitment to get those responsible to follow through. We see this in the detailed action items and timeframes that constitute nearly half.

Finally, however, it’s the Mayor and the DC Council who’ll have to commit ongoing resources to translating the recommendations into realities.

And clearly, we who care about affordable housing will have to commit to ongoing advocacy — especially, I think, for the most vulnerable District residents.

* The report references the five-year strategic plan issued by the Interagency Council on Homelessness. This plan, however, reiterates the District’s earlier commitment to at least 2,500 PSH units. So I assume the task force had access to some other document.