A bipartisan group of California Senate legislators have proposed a 2 billion revenue bond, the No Place Like Home Initiative, to create permanent housing with supportive services for homeless people with mental disorders. LGBT people, veterans and other vulnerable populations with high rates of homelessness will directly benefit from the creation of thousands of units of permanent housing with wraparound services.
According to FUSE Initiative, NYC, stable housing with comprehensive medical and behavioral services has been shown to significantly improve the lives of all homeless people, and can drastically reduce the cost of crisis care services, e.g. hospital emergency care, substance abuse treatment facilities, and inpatient mental health programs. This new Senate proposal is a bold response to the homelessness crisis. It is a comprehensive program that provides local governments and communities with the resources to create permanent stable housing and the services to help people integrate themselves back into their communities.
During the recession, the state reduced affordable housing resources. For those who lose their jobs, or are unable to meet rent or mortgage payments, there isn’t much of a safety net to catch them from falling into homelessness. The No Place Like Home proposal, if it passes, will build permanent housing with services. It also includes a safety net of 200 million dollars in rent subsidies to help people stay in their homes; smartly directs resources to local governments to extend existing programs for working families; supports an increase in Supplemental Security Income/State Supplementary Payment (SSI/SSP) program grants for seniors, the blind and disabled poor who cannot work; and includes a one-time investment to local government to leverage federal dollars by increasing outreach efforts to enroll more eligible poor people in the SSI/SSP program.
I asked Brian Basinger, Executive Director of AIDS Housing Alliance, what he thought of the No Place Like Home Initiative. He said, “I think it is a good start. It is an important opportunity to ensure equitable and fair access to these resources. The initiative also reverses a trend of our government’s disinterest in meeting the housing needs of the residents of our state. It reverses a long-term trend of reducing the benefits of seniors and disabled persons. Since 2008, Social Security benefits have been cut four times and never restored.”
According to the San Francisco Homeless Point-In-Time Count and Survey (2015), there are 7539 homeless people in San Francisco. LGBT people report higher rates of homelessness than heterosexuals—an estimated 15% of the city’s homeless population is LGBTQ. More than two thirds of survey participants report living in San Francisco at the time they became homeless. Forty-three percent (43%) report one or more of the following factors as the primary cause of homelessness: job loss, eviction, rent increase or foreclosure. Forty-eight percent (48%) identify lack of work and inability to afford rent as major obstacles to obtaining permanent housing. High rates of chronic health conditions are also reported, such as drug abuse, emotional conditions and PTSD.
Tommi Avicolli Mecca, housing rights advocate and former member of the LGBT Aging Policy Task Force, told me, “I think it will take more than legislation to turn around the homeless situation. The LGBT community and community organizations need to prioritize homelessness and respond to LGBT homelessness as the crisis it is. If San Francisco and the LGBT community are to receive significant dollars from the No Place Like Home Initiative, we will need an organization or coalition of organizations to make that happen.”
Marcy Adelman, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in private practice, is co-founder of the non-profit organization Openhouse and was a leading member of the San Francisco LGBT Aging Policy Task Force.
For More Information
The No Place Like Home Initiative
http://sd24.senate.ca.gov/news/2016-01-04-senate-announces-%E2%80%9Cno-place-home%E2%80%9D-initiative-tackle-homelessness-california
FUSE Initiative NYC
http://www.csh.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/FUSE-Eval-Report-Final_Linked.pdf
San Francisco Homeless Point-In-Time Count and Survey, 2015.
http://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/sfgov.org.lhcb/files/2015%20San%20Francisco%20Homeless%20Count%20%20Report_0.pdf
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