Florida shifts homelessness strategy

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Thursday the 12th of December.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next: combatting homelessness.

Some states are taking a new approach to fight it. And the incoming Trump administration may support that shift.

Here to help set-up our next story is WORLD’s Effective Compassion reporter Addie Offereins.

REICHARD: Addie, good morning.

ADDIE OFFEREINS: Good morning, Mary.

REICHARD: Yesterday WORLD Digital posted a story you’ve been following for some time now. And it’s this policy called Housing First. It’s the official policy of the federal government and also of many states. Describe it for us?

OFFEREINS: Yeah, so that policy prioritizes moving individuals into permanent housing as quickly as possible. And that’s supposed to be followed up by offering services like mental health care or drug and alcohol rehab. But those services aren’t always pushed, and if ministries or housing providers accept government money they can’t require things like sober living and class participation.

REICHARD: Some state lawmakers say that model isn’t solving the problem. What’s their biggest concern?

OFFEREINS: So their concern is that there really is a lack of accountability with this model and people who are moved into permanent housing often lose that housing because their deeper underlying issues just aren’t addressed.

REICHARD: Thanks for your excellent reporting, Addie.

OFFEREINS: Thanks for having me.

BROWN: We’ll post a link to Addie’s digital story in today’s transcript. WORLD’s Anna Johnasen Brown is here now with more from Addie’s story:

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN: In March, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that bans homeless people from camping on public property throughout his state.

RON DESANTIS: HB 1365 will help maintain and ensure that Florida streets are clean and that Florida streets are safe for our residents…And there are needs that need to be met, but doing the San Francisco and New York model is not a way to get the job done.

The law took effect on October 1st. It allows individuals or businesses to take cities to court if they fail to enforce the public camping ban. It also authorizes local governments to create sanctioned areas where homeless people can set up their tents…provided they follow basic safety measures. The measure prohibits alcohol and drug use in those areas and requires local governments to provide access to treatment for substance abuse and mental health.

GARRISON: As I was traveling the state and traveling the nation…

Republican Rep. Sam Garrison represents Florida’s 11th district. He sponsored the legislation in the Florida House of Representatives.

GARRISON: And seeing a number of Great American Cities across the country that had found themselves in a really bad situation as it relates to chronic homelessness.

At the federal level, the Department of Housing and Urban Development takes a “Housing First” approach to homelessness. That means it prioritizes moving individuals into permanent housing as quickly as possible.

But Garrison believes that approach misidentifies housing as the root problem.

GARRISON: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result, and it seemed like that's what we were doing as it relates to the millions upon millions of dollars in federal money, particularly that was being pumped into the Housing First model, not just in Florida, but nationwide.

Homelessness rose 12% nationally last year. And in California, where lawmakers enshrined Housing First into state law in 2016, unsheltered homelessness skyrocketed 53% over the last decade. The state has spent nearly $24 billion on the approach since 2018.

KURTZ: we need a greater array of tools to solve homelessness than what housing first provides.

Devon Kurtz is the policy director for public safety at the Cicero Institute. That’s a Texas-based think tank that helped craft Florida’s legislation. Kurtz says the Housing First model isn’t the right approach for the chronically homeless, who suffer disproportionately from mental illnesses and addiction.

Kurtz believes transitional housing with stricter requirements should be the first step.

KURTZ: Where you have housing that has more intensive requirements and expectations, and for high need individuals, sort of guides them into a more independent living situation, but sort of meets them where they're at, as opposed to sort of assuming that they can just live on their own.

Florida Rep. Sam Garrison says that’s why the goal of the new legislation isn’t to give everyone a key to a subsidized apartment.

GARRISON: We pivoted to focusing on temporary shelter space. Let's give them a place, give them some shelter, give them some referrals to help and provide them that hand up

Lawmakers set aside $30 million for municipalities to prepare for the law. They also want local organizations to prioritize temporary shelter and treatment programs over permanent housing.

Here’s Kurtz:

KURTZ: So for those who don't do well under housing first model, there's now a pool of significant funds in Florida to build out what we might call, sort of the transitional housing model

And Florida isn’t the only state moving away from Housing First. Lawmakers in Georgia set aside money for temporary housing programs with mandatory mental health treatment and substance abuse rehab. Oklahoma passed a law similar to Florida’s. And Utah lawmakers allocated more than $50 million to short-term shelter and behavioral health programs in that state.

Michele Steeb is a consultant on homeless policy. She says moving away from the Housing First model is difficult for many states who rely on federal funding to address the issue.

STEEB: There's a lot of states that don't agree with housing first, but they have so little funding that provides a leverage to move away from it.

But she believes we may see a national shift to a more treatment-oriented model once Donald Trump takes office.

TRUMP: We will ban urban camping wherever possible. Violators of these bans will be arrested but they will be given the option to accept treatment and services

In a campaign video, Trump laid out a vision similar to Florida’s law. It includes setting aside sanctioned encampments where homeless people can receive services and treatment.

TRUMP: This strategy will be far better and far less expensive than spending millions to house the homeless in luxury hotels without addressing their underlying issues and needs.

Back in Florida, Sam Garrison said he feels divinely called to lift up the vulnerable. That’s one reason why he’s committed to moving away from the old approach.

GARRISON: To me, it's a moral issue. It's motivated by my faith, and it seems unconscionable to me to be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on housing first models where we have people literally camping out on the side of the road in tents, without a place to go to get a roof over their head for the night.

He acknowledges not every individual in a state-sanctioned encampment or temporary shelter will accept treatment. But he still believes the bill is an essential first step.

GARRISON: All we can do is make it available, to really focus on that, as opposed to, let's spend hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars in in this kind of fantasy land that we can somehow put every homeless person is chronically homeless into long term stable housing without addressing the underlying behavioral health issues that have sadly brought them to that point.

For WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

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