Solving Texas’s Street Homelessness Problem
By: Judge Glock
Tags: Austin, Housing, Texas, Mental Health, Homelessness

In the ten years after 2007, Texas actually made strides in reducing homelessness. The total homeless population plummeted from 40,000 to just under 24,000 persons, a 40% drop. Yet after 2017, Texas homelessness started rising again, most especially among the “unsheltered” homeless, or those living on the streets. The unsheltered population increased from 7,000 to 10,500 people.[1] Some cities like Austin saw almost a 50% increase in unsheltered homeless in 2019 alone. Austin now has almost half of its homeless population outside of shelters, the highest rate in the state.[2] The recent coronavirus pandemic will only exacerbate these trends and the problems that emerge from them.

There are several reasons for this statewide reversal on homelessness despite a strong economy in the several years going into the pandemic. One important issue is that housing prices in some Texas metro areas, especially Austin, have increased rapidly. Austin rent prices have increased by 50% since the end of the last recession in 2010, which has driven many marginal renters into the streets.[3] A report from the White House Council of Economic Advisors has shown that a doubling in rents can almost double the homeless population, and it seems that that effect is at work.[4]

More generally, cities like Austin have removed bans on camping or lying in the streets, and in the process have both attracted more homeless individuals and lost a tool to help encourage homeless people into needed treatment. These cities have understandable concerns that removing people from the streets would be uncompassionate. But we will show leaving homeless people on the streets and in crowded encampments is bad for the homeless and bad for the cities in which they live. Cities can prevent street-camping while providing superior alternative treatment and shelter options at reasonable cost, and many cities have done so.

We offer several viable reforms to help solve Texas’s unsheltered homeless problem. The first reform will be to redirect Texas’s two main homeless grants into providing cheap available shelter and pay-for-performance services. The second will be to redirect Texas’s public safety grants into the creation of homeless outreach teams in those cities with above average homelessness. The third will be reforming the state’s Assisted Outpatient Treatment and Inpatient admittance criteria for individuals undergoing a mental health crisis. The fourth will be simply using state power on state land to clean up encampments and provide superior alternatives.

This paper will show a few simple things that the state of Texas and its cities can do to reduce open camping and street homeless, and provide better and more efficient treatments for the state’s homeless residents.

The Problem of Encampments

Until about 20 years ago, there were few homeless encampments and few cities allowed camping on their streets.[5] Recently, many cities began to worry that removing such camps would be cruel and have allowed them to expand. In reality, however, these encampments are dangerous and destructive for the homeless, and the more compassionate route is encouraging their residents into safer and sheltered situations.

The biggest problem with the encampments is that they are bad for the health of the homeless. The Arizona Center for Problem-Oriented Policing simply notes that “homeless encampments can be dangerous to health.” Garbage in these camps attracts rats; food cannot be stored or dishes washed, leading to more food-borne disease; toilets are often not available so waste is scattered about living areas; diseases spread easily in close and unsupervised quarters; unprotected cooking and heating fires can get out of control, and so forth.

Violence in these camps can also be endemic. One small Florida homeless encampment had 3 homicides in 10 months. One California encampment had 5 shooting deaths in one month. Although general statistics on the health of unsheltered and camping homeless is hard to come by, In Los Angeles, with some of the largest open camps in the developed world, 3 homeless people die in street encampments every day, or 1,000 a year, a rate of death higher than those of combat soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.[6]

Nearby neighborhoods also suffer from the encampments. Human waste and garbage from them have found to pollute watersheds and occasionally be carried onto other property. Studies have shown that areas next to homeless encampments have higher levels of petty and serious crime, especially theft, armed robbery, rape, and aggravated assault.[7] The encampments also frighten nearby homeowners, drive away businesses, and prevent the use of public space and public parks.

Despite claims that insufficient shelter is the problem, most studies show that many of the chronically homeless on the streets or in encampments do not want to go into existing shelter programs. Surveys of those in encampments find that many, from 25 to 41%, say they would not go into shelters if the camp was closed. Larger numbers say that if forced to leave, they would just move.[8] In practice, when options are provided, even larger proportions refuse to accept them. Burien, Washington, a majority minority city near Seattle, recently had around 100 homeless people on the streets and encampments. After they instituted a camping ban, and gave ample warning and options for treatment, all except 6 left rather than accept shelter, and there was only one arrest in clearing the public space.[9] Similarly, in the recent legal case of Martin v. City of Boise, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals mandated that Boise, Idaho, and other such cities, could not remove homeless people from public spaces without “sufficient” shelter, but the court ignored the fact that despite hundreds of homeless people on Boise’s streets, there had never been a night in which the city’s three main shelters had been full.[10]

The reality is that existing encampments are dangerous, but city and state governments refuse to close them because they fear that the current alternatives are insufficient. Cities can actually end these encampments while providing better alternatives that actually help the homeless get back on their feet

The Types of Shelter the Homeless Need

There are several ways to help those in homeless camps return to better environments. I will describe them below in order of how costly they are and how much structured services they require.

For many, homelessness is less the result of the absence of a home than the absence of a friend and family network. That is why most cities, even very progressive coastal cities, run “family reunification” or “Return Home” programs that offer to connect homeless people to their often distant families again, and pay for transportation. Although derided as mere “greyhound therapy” by some, there are few things more helpful than returning a person to the support structure that knows them best. As an option and not a mandate, it is appropriate and helpful.[11]

Another simple solution is to open up “safe parking” spaces for those who still own a car but don’t have a residence, and who are most likely to be able to get back on their feet and return to work. These can be set up with minimal cost on public lots with some basic utility attachments and bathrooms. The City of San Diego provided safe parking lots at the cost of $165,000 a year each, and each of these lots of which hosted about 350 homeless individuals over the course of the year, or about $500 per person. [12] Sometimes, temporary assistance to landlords to accept the temporarily homeless, or “rapid re-housing,” is a solution that prevents a further spiral into despair.[13]

Another solution for those caught in encampments who still value some of their freedom is “structured camping facilities,” or encampments that are overseen by the government. These involve minimal expense, are accompanied by regular cleaning, police patrols, and medical and other services, but allow the homeless to bring their property and tents inside. The main complaints of the homeless about these camps are usually their distance from services, food, and public transportation. There are ways to ensure these in the camps at minimal expense. For instance, the government may open up of “day resource centers,” where the homeless can stay during the daytime, and where they are provided with basic social services.[14]

At a slightly more structured level, Oakland has created “community cabins” (more colloquially known as “tuff sheds”) that cost $30,000 to build and $18,000 a year to maintain with services, and which are provided in a safe environment. The Utah Housing First Program built similar shelters for as little as $10,000 per unit, with lower operating costs as well.[15] By contrast, Austin spends $28,000 a year per homeless individual for its direct homeless and shelter services, without taking into account other expenditures such as hospitalizations and jail time.[16]

Finally, for those homeless individuals who have been on the streets for at least a year, known as the “chronically homeless,” and who show little indication that they can return to support on their own, the state can assist in the creation of competitively-provided Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH). Today, most PSH contracts with states and cities just reward providers for keeping open beds or warehousing residents. Even the few PSH Pay-for-Performance programs mainly try to reward providers for keeping them inside the housing program, as opposed to improving the homeless’s overall well-being.[17]

All of these types of shelter and services have benefits for different groups. But one issue in providing such homeless services is that neighbors can be opposed to them. There are many reasons, from crime to property values, to be legitimately worried about nearby homeless services and shelters. The solution is to enforce even higher levels of public safety and cleaning around them than before. Mayor Kevin Faulconer of San Diego made a promise that any homeless shelter would be accompanied by public attention that ensured that the area around it would be both safer and cleaner than it was before the site came, and since then his city council has voted to expand the services programs to more areas, with minimal neighborhood opposition.[18]

As this section has made clear, there are a myriad of different shelter arrangements for the homeless, all of which are superior to current encampments and all of which can provide for different homeless populations at reasonable costs. There is no reason for mayors or local officials to claim that they have to allow current encampments to continue in lieu of better alternatives.

Reforming Mental Health Treatment

Simply getting the unsheltered homeless into safe environments is important, but for many it is not enough. Nationally, 28% of the homeless report having a severe mental illness. Local numbers are hard to come by, but in large cities such as Dallas, that number can go up to 43%.[19] Although homelessness surveys don’t separate the chronically homeless and unsheltered population and provide specific mental health statistics for them, it is doubtless that these constitute the vast majority of the homeless mentally ill. Unfortunately, concerns about civil liberties have caused both the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill from hospitals and created a reluctance to push them into outpatient treatment, leading to tens of thousands of unsupervised mentally ill homeless on our streets. Yet the mentally ill homeless need such help more than anyone.

Right now, for the severely mentally ill who need inpatient treatment, one problem is that Texas has two standards for those who can potentially be ordered for inpatient treatment: there is one for emergency evaluation and one for actual admittance. This can lead to the inappropriate scenario where someone is evaluated to be a danger to himself or others in first evaluation, but will not meet the separate criteria for actual admission.[20] Texas law also only allows only 48 hours of treatment, which is too short for most patients to stabilize. Finally, the language on inpatient commitment is ambiguous and vague. Besides other criteria, an individual can only be committed if they present a “a danger to self or others,” but the law does not clarify that the danger can involve inability to take care of oneself, allowing long-term deterioration and self-destruction without any state intervention.

There are other problems for what Is known as “Assisted Outpatient Treatment” (AOT) for those severlly mentally ill who do not warrant inpatient treatment. For one, Texas does not have a “psychiatric deterioration standard” for either inpatient or outpatient mandatory admission, which means courts cannot examine the likelihood that the individual will continue to deteriorate without assistance as a reason for admitting someone to treatment. It also allows an initial order of assisted outpatient treatment for only 90 days, which is often not enough to stabilize a mentally ill individual, especially when they remain on the streets.[21]

A few basic reforms to mandated mental health treatment, which would clarify the standards of admittance, and extend times for supervision, when combined with reforms to the mental health and drug treatment courts described below, can help a significant portion of the unsheltered homeless population.

What the State Can Do

First, the state should do all it can to end encampments and move people to safer environments. The state can and should ensure clean-ups of encampments on state land, including land under or around state highways, and provide alternatives.[22] Governor Greg Abbot recently cleared some of the state Transportation Department land and opened up nearby structured camping facilities. The state can and should expand these to provide alternatives to any camps on state public land.[23]

The state also can use its fiscal clout to encourage cities to do better. Texas provides about $5 million a year in Emergency Solution Grants (ESG) as part of a federal program to local “Continuums of Care” (CoCs) which run local homeless services. These grants focus on immediate shelter for those in dire need.[24] The state should allocate its ESG grants only to those cities and CoCs that show consistent declines in unsheltered homelessness. If a city or CoC region shows any significant increase in unsheltered homeless, say, at least 5% in a year, it should lose its ESG grant. The ESG grant allocation should also be redirected to focus on only two possible programs, structured camping facilities and community cabins, as the two most efficient shelter services. It should also mandate that all CoC create “By Name Lists” so they know everyone that comes into the shelter system and can track them over time.[25]

The state also offers, out of its own funds, Homeless Housing and Service Program (HHSP) grants, also at about $5 million a year, which focus on more long-term homeless services.[26] These too should be allocated to cities which can show consistent declines in unsheltered homelessness, and should be cut off if cities fail to meet these goals. More importantly, every dollar of these grants should also go to Pay-For-Performance housing and service contractors.

The Pay-For-Performance PSH Model should be based on a few overall metrics. Those service providers should receive about $20,000 a year the city currently spends directly on shelter services, and they should support their homeless clients in any way they see fit in improving two key metrics: reducing number and costs of hospitalizations and number costs of arrests relative to the mean expectation of that client. If we set the expected baseline of homeless costs around the US Department of Housing and Urban Development level, of about $35,000 of hospitalization costs and $10,000 of incarceration and crime costs a year, the state would assume about $45,000 in costs per homeless client per year. Any reduction in costs relative to the baseline would be shared 75% by the homeless service provider with 25% going to the state. If the homeless provider moves a homeless individual to independence, and that individual stays out of the shelter and homeless service system for 3 years, the provider will keep 80% of the savings relative to the full payment.[27]

The state also offers public safety grants to cities, and there are two ways these can be repurposed to focus on the needs of the homeless population. First, the state can ensure that grants to cities with above-average unsheltered homeless populations goes to Community Outreach police teams, which are trained to deal with homeless individuals and get them into treatment.[28] Houston created a Homeless Outreach Team (HOT) in 2011, and it is now composed of 9 police officers and 4 case managers that have helped Houston reduce its homelessness by half since that date. Its success should be replicated across the state. The State Criminal Justice Planning Fund and the Victims of Crime Act fund, both state grants to local police departments, can be repurposed to focus on the needs of homeless offenders and victims, using required HOTs, and to get them into safer treatments.[29] Second, the state can ensure that its community courts grant dollars are focused on mental health and drug treatment courts, which have shown success in pushing individuals into treatment. Right now, many of the states’ community or specialty courts are reluctant to push individuals into treatment, but the state’s “Specialty Courts” grants can be conditioned on moving a larger proportion of all drug and mental health cases through the system, as opposed to the normal jail system, and of processing cases faster.[30] Any city that reduced the proportion of all arrests in the system going to specialty courts for two years in row would lose their specialty court funding, as would any city that did not process the majority of drug and mental health court cases in 45 days (otherwise the referrals from the specialty courts would take place long after the possibility of helping the individual in a crisis had passed).[31]

The state can also reform its inpatient and AOT mental health treatment laws to ensure that those with severe mental illnesses get immediate treatment and can stabilize. Inpatient treatment should be at least 3 days and outpatient treatment should be supervised for at least 6 months. At the same time, the state should clarify that “psychological deterioration” is a justifiable reason for the state to intervene before someone’s mental illness causes long-term consequences, and the state should include inability to take care of oneself as part of an evaluation of self-harm.[32] All of these will make sure mentally ill individuals receive the treatment they needed.

Finally, the state can shame cities into doing better. By creating viable alternatives and showing that they are safer, more affordable, and better for the homeless than large encampments, they can help end cities’ quiet acquiescence in this tragedy.

Conclusion

In the early 2000s, Los Angeles’s Skid Row was an international scandal of misery and decay. In 2006, LAPD Commissioner William Bratton began a program called “Safer City,” which cleaned up homeless camps in Skid Row and pushed people into shelter and treatment. It reduced homelessness and crime on Skid Row by half. When it was reversed years later all the old problems returned, and the number of deaths on Skid Row doubled.[33]

Similarly, In Austin, after the city ended its anti-camping ordinance, unsheltered homeless went up by 50% in a year, while the number of people in shelters dropped by 20%. Violent and property crime among homeless themselves increased by over 15% as people returned to dangerous streets.[34] Despite any claims of compassion, continuing to allow ubiquitous street camping is not helping the homeless.

The state of Texas can help end the dangerous encampments and help the homeless people get their lives back together. It’s something we know how to do; it’s something we can do; it’s something we should do.

[1] https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness-report/texas/https://www.usich.gov/homelessness-statistics/tx/

[2] https://www.statesman.com/news/20200519/austin-sees-11-increase-in-homeless-count-45-increase-in-unsheltered-population#:~:text=The%20latest%20tally%20of%20homeless,1%2C500%20people%20who%20were%20unsheltered.&text=In%20total%2C%20volunteers%20counted%202%2C506%20people%20experiencing%20homelessness.https://www.texastribune.org/2019/12/09/how-many-people-are-homeless-texas-least-25000/

[3] https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-austin-rent-trends/R Rental trends famously vary depending on the statistical source, but more easily measured Housing prices have increased even faster than rents, almost doubling in the ten years to 2020. https://www.zillow.com/austin-tx/home-values/. Most Texas cities are famously open to new building, which keeps rental and housing prices down, but Austin has some notable restrictions on building causing increased housing costs. http://soa.utexas.edu/sites/default/disk/SHANNON-MASTERSREPORT-2015.pdf

[4]

[5] https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Understanding-Encampments.pdf https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/WelcomeHome_TentCities_final_report.pdf

[6] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/30/homeless-deaths-los-angeles-county

[7] https://popcenter.asu.edu/content/homeless-encampments-0

[8] https://popcenter.asu.edu/content/homeless-encampments-page-3

[9] https://www.city-journal.org/reducing-street-homelessness-burien-washington

[10] https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/eide-amicus-Boise-09252019.pdf

[11] https://downtownsandiego.org/family-reunification-program/

[12] https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/government/the-spike-in-city-spending-on-homelessness-aid-is-clear-but-the-results-are-murkier/ https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/politics/mayor-faulconer-to-expand-safe-parking-program-for-homeless-in-san-diego/509-e9df27a4-59e4-49d4-9f22-30de445f37ed

[13] https://endhomelessness.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Performance-Benchmarks-and-Program-Standards.pdf

[14] https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/eide-amicus-Boise-09252019.pdf

[15] https://www.oaklandca.gov/news/2018/oakland-unveils-newest-rapid-rehousing-facility-and-city-council-passes-8-6-million-emergency-funds-for-homeless-services

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szEZfKJ2pSY https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/housing-first-solution-to-homelessness-utah/

[16] Echo Austin & Politifact.

[17] https://www.governing.com/topics/health-human-services/gov-money-for-homeless.html

[18] https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/mayor-announces-three-tent-shelters-around-san-diego-for-homeless/509-cdc0d945-5900-46ea-940a-4be5454d1b8a ; https://www.hoover.org/research/how-san-diego-cleaned-its-act-and-got-real-homelessness At the same time he ensured that people could not camp without consequence on city streets, https://inewsource.org/2020/05/25/san-diego-police-ticket-homeless-pandemic/ . Austin has made a similar pledge, of sorts. After it ended its laws against camping last year, it made an exception for the area around the main homelessness service center, the ARCH, to ensure that it didn’t attract excessive community attention.

[19] https://www.usmayors.org/2016/12/08/mayors-examine-issues-of-homelessness-and-hunger-in-america/ https://www.ourcalling.org/mental-healthcare-crisis-dallas/#:~:text=The%20homeless%20community%20of%20Dallas,homeless%20are%20severely%20mentally%20ill.

[20] https://www.dfps.state.tx.us/handbooks/aps/files/APS_pg_4800.asp

[21] /https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/storage/documents/grading-the-states.pdf

[22] Texas Transportation Code §472.012;

In Austin, the state TxDOT began cleaning up encampments after bridge inspectors had trouble accessing overpasses, but the city had technically agreed to take over the duty in 1986. https://communityimpact.com/austin/central-austin/city-county/2019/07/11/clearing-of-homeless-camps-under-state-highway-overpasses-will-continue-despite-austins-loosened-public-camping-laws/. If an encampment outside of state land becomes a public health risk due to an outbreak of disease, the governor can potentially order a quarantine and clear the site, but this should only be used in true emergency situations. Texas Health and Safety Code §§81.084: Application of Control Measures to Property

[23] https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/05/politics/austin-homelessness/index.html

[24] https://www.tdhca.state.tx.us/home-division/ https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2018-title24-vol3/xml/CFR-2018-title24-vol3-part576.xml#seqnum576.409 HUD still has to approve each state and local government’s “consolidated plan.” The overall allocation to states, cities, and other entities is the same as for the CDBG program, for some reason, but the state’s portion still has significant discretionary capability, and almost no restrictions in the state code about how to allocate these funds: https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/GV/htm/GV.2306.htm

[25] This surprisingly simple and obvious reform is very recent and is still not required by many cities. https://community.solutions/the-by-name-list-revolution/

[26] https://reports.nlihc.org/rental-programs/catalog/homeless-housing-and-services-program The legislative direction for this is fairly open and most reforms can be done by administrative code: https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/GV/htm/GV.2306.htm Administrative Code Here: https://texreg.sos.state.tx.us/public/readtac$ext.ViewTAC?tac_view=5&ti=10&pt=1&ch=7&sch=D&rl=Y

[27] The budgetary implications for this would be unclear if it was an addition to current HHSP funds, since most of the $10,000 criminal justice savings are not on budget, and around $15,000 of the state hospitalization expenses are Medicaid, of which are 60% paid for by the federal government, but since the funds for this will come entirely out of existing HHPD, it will at worst be revenue neutral.

[28] Almost all of the costs are hospital related. In New York, hospitalization costs are $35,000 a year for the chronically homeless, and prison and jail costs are only about $1,000 a year. If we estimate the social cost of crime as a multiple of this, considering that some crimes are not detected and the costs of crime are also borne by the public, we can estimate $10,000 a year in criminal costs. costs.http://cceh.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/supportive_housing_brief.pdf HUD sets expected cots per hospitalization event and jail time, and these can be used to compute the total. https://www.huduser.gov/publications/pdf/costs_homeless.pdf

[29] https://www.houstoncit.org/hot/ https://gov.texas.gov/organization/financial-services/grants

[30] For instance, the Travis County Adult Drug Diversion Court has continuously reduced those referred to the court, even while requesting increased funding from the state specialty court grants. https://www.statesman.com/news/20160904/transparency-accountability-needed-at-travis-county-drug-court

[31] See current demands in Title 2, Subtitle K, Specialty Courts section: t-code/title-2/subtitle-k/

[32] https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/texas

[33] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/30/homeless-deaths-los-angeles-county)

[34] . https://www.statesman.com/news/20200519/austin-sees-11-increase-in-homeless-count-45-increase-in-unsheltered-population#:~:text=The%20latest%20tally%20of%20homeless,population%20took%20place%20on%20Jan.

In the ten years after 2007, Texas actually made strides in reducing homelessness. The total homeless population plummeted from 40,000 to just under 24,000 persons, a 40% drop. Yet after 2017, Texas homelessness started rising again, most especially among the “unsheltered” homeless, or those living on the streets. The unsheltered population increased from 7,000 to 10,500 people.[1] Some cities like Austin saw almost a 50% increase in unsheltered homeless in 2019 alone. Austin now has almost half of its homeless population outside of shelters, the highest rate in the state.[2] The recent coronavirus pandemic will only exacerbate these trends and the problems that emerge from them.

There are several reasons for this statewide reversal on homelessness despite a strong economy in the several years going into the pandemic. One important issue is that housing prices in some Texas metro areas, especially Austin, have increased rapidly. Austin rent prices have increased by 50% since the end of the last recession in 2010, which has driven many marginal renters into the streets.[3] A report from the White House Council of Economic Advisors has shown that a doubling in rents can almost double the homeless population, and it seems that that effect is at work.[4]

More generally, cities like Austin have removed bans on camping or lying in the streets, and in the process have both attracted more homeless individuals and lost a tool to help encourage homeless people into needed treatment. These cities have understandable concerns that removing people from the streets would be uncompassionate. But we will show leaving homeless people on the streets and in crowded encampments is bad for the homeless and bad for the cities in which they live. Cities can prevent street-camping while providing superior alternative treatment and shelter options at reasonable cost, and many cities have done so.

We offer several viable reforms to help solve Texas’s unsheltered homeless problem. The first reform will be to redirect Texas’s two main homeless grants into providing cheap available shelter and pay-for-performance services. The second will be to redirect Texas’s public safety grants into the creation of homeless outreach teams in those cities with above average homelessness. The third will be reforming the state’s Assisted Outpatient Treatment and Inpatient admittance criteria for individuals undergoing a mental health crisis. The fourth will be simply using state power on state land to clean up encampments and provide superior alternatives.

This paper will show a few simple things that the state of Texas and its cities can do to reduce open camping and street homeless, and provide better and more efficient treatments for the state’s homeless residents.

The Problem of Encampments

Until about 20 years ago, there were few homeless encampments and few cities allowed camping on their streets.[5] Recently, many cities began to worry that removing such camps would be cruel and have allowed them to expand. In reality, however, these encampments are dangerous and destructive for the homeless, and the more compassionate route is encouraging their residents into safer and sheltered situations.

The biggest problem with the encampments is that they are bad for the health of the homeless. The Arizona Center for Problem-Oriented Policing simply notes that “homeless encampments can be dangerous to health.” Garbage in these camps attracts rats; food cannot be stored or dishes washed, leading to more food-borne disease; toilets are often not available so waste is scattered about living areas; diseases spread easily in close and unsupervised quarters; unprotected cooking and heating fires can get out of control, and so forth.

Violence in these camps can also be endemic. One small Florida homeless encampment had 3 homicides in 10 months. One California encampment had 5 shooting deaths in one month. Although general statistics on the health of unsheltered and camping homeless is hard to come by, In Los Angeles, with some of the largest open camps in the developed world, 3 homeless people die in street encampments every day, or 1,000 a year, a rate of death higher than those of combat soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.[6]

Nearby neighborhoods also suffer from the encampments. Human waste and garbage from them have found to pollute watersheds and occasionally be carried onto other property. Studies have shown that areas next to homeless encampments have higher levels of petty and serious crime, especially theft, armed robbery, rape, and aggravated assault.[7] The encampments also frighten nearby homeowners, drive away businesses, and prevent the use of public space and public parks.

Despite claims that insufficient shelter is the problem, most studies show that many of the chronically homeless on the streets or in encampments do not want to go into existing shelter programs. Surveys of those in encampments find that many, from 25 to 41%, say they would not go into shelters if the camp was closed. Larger numbers say that if forced to leave, they would just move.[8] In practice, when options are provided, even larger proportions refuse to accept them. Burien, Washington, a majority minority city near Seattle, recently had around 100 homeless people on the streets and encampments. After they instituted a camping ban, and gave ample warning and options for treatment, all except 6 left rather than accept shelter, and there was only one arrest in clearing the public space.[9] Similarly, in the recent legal case of Martin v. City of Boise, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals mandated that Boise, Idaho, and other such cities, could not remove homeless people from public spaces without “sufficient” shelter, but the court ignored the fact that despite hundreds of homeless people on Boise’s streets, there had never been a night in which the city’s three main shelters had been full.[10]

The reality is that existing encampments are dangerous, but city and state governments refuse to close them because they fear that the current alternatives are insufficient. Cities can actually end these encampments while providing better alternatives that actually help the homeless get back on their feet

The Types of Shelter the Homeless Need

There are several ways to help those in homeless camps return to better environments. I will describe them below in order of how costly they are and how much structured services they require.

For many, homelessness is less the result of the absence of a home than the absence of a friend and family network. That is why most cities, even very progressive coastal cities, run “family reunification” or “Return Home” programs that offer to connect homeless people to their often distant families again, and pay for transportation. Although derided as mere “greyhound therapy” by some, there are few things more helpful than returning a person to the support structure that knows them best. As an option and not a mandate, it is appropriate and helpful.[11]

Another simple solution is to open up “safe parking” spaces for those who still own a car but don’t have a residence, and who are most likely to be able to get back on their feet and return to work. These can be set up with minimal cost on public lots with some basic utility attachments and bathrooms. The City of San Diego provided safe parking lots at the cost of $165,000 a year each, and each of these lots of which hosted about 350 homeless individuals over the course of the year, or about $500 per person. [12] Sometimes, temporary assistance to landlords to accept the temporarily homeless, or “rapid re-housing,” is a solution that prevents a further spiral into despair.[13]

Another solution for those caught in encampments who still value some of their freedom is “structured camping facilities,” or encampments that are overseen by the government. These involve minimal expense, are accompanied by regular cleaning, police patrols, and medical and other services, but allow the homeless to bring their property and tents inside. The main complaints of the homeless about these camps are usually their distance from services, food, and public transportation. There are ways to ensure these in the camps at minimal expense. For instance, the government may open up of “day resource centers,” where the homeless can stay during the daytime, and where they are provided with basic social services.[14]

At a slightly more structured level, Oakland has created “community cabins” (more colloquially known as “tuff sheds”) that cost $30,000 to build and $18,000 a year to maintain with services, and which are provided in a safe environment. The Utah Housing First Program built similar shelters for as little as $10,000 per unit, with lower operating costs as well.[15] By contrast, Austin spends $28,000 a year per homeless individual for its direct homeless and shelter services, without taking into account other expenditures such as hospitalizations and jail time.[16]

Finally, for those homeless individuals who have been on the streets for at least a year, known as the “chronically homeless,” and who show little indication that they can return to support on their own, the state can assist in the creation of competitively-provided Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH). Today, most PSH contracts with states and cities just reward providers for keeping open beds or warehousing residents. Even the few PSH Pay-for-Performance programs mainly try to reward providers for keeping them inside the housing program, as opposed to improving the homeless’s overall well-being.[17]

All of these types of shelter and services have benefits for different groups. But one issue in providing such homeless services is that neighbors can be opposed to them. There are many reasons, from crime to property values, to be legitimately worried about nearby homeless services and shelters. The solution is to enforce even higher levels of public safety and cleaning around them than before. Mayor Kevin Faulconer of San Diego made a promise that any homeless shelter would be accompanied by public attention that ensured that the area around it would be both safer and cleaner than it was before the site came, and since then his city council has voted to expand the services programs to more areas, with minimal neighborhood opposition.[18]

As this section has made clear, there are a myriad of different shelter arrangements for the homeless, all of which are superior to current encampments and all of which can provide for different homeless populations at reasonable costs. There is no reason for mayors or local officials to claim that they have to allow current encampments to continue in lieu of better alternatives.

Reforming Mental Health Treatment

Simply getting the unsheltered homeless into safe environments is important, but for many it is not enough. Nationally, 28% of the homeless report having a severe mental illness. Local numbers are hard to come by, but in large cities such as Dallas, that number can go up to 43%.[19] Although homelessness surveys don’t separate the chronically homeless and unsheltered population and provide specific mental health statistics for them, it is doubtless that these constitute the vast majority of the homeless mentally ill. Unfortunately, concerns about civil liberties have caused both the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill from hospitals and created a reluctance to push them into outpatient treatment, leading to tens of thousands of unsupervised mentally ill homeless on our streets. Yet the mentally ill homeless need such help more than anyone.

Right now, for the severely mentally ill who need inpatient treatment, one problem is that Texas has two standards for those who can potentially be ordered for inpatient treatment: there is one for emergency evaluation and one for actual admittance. This can lead to the inappropriate scenario where someone is evaluated to be a danger to himself or others in first evaluation, but will not meet the separate criteria for actual admission.[20] Texas law also only allows only 48 hours of treatment, which is too short for most patients to stabilize. Finally, the language on inpatient commitment is ambiguous and vague. Besides other criteria, an individual can only be committed if they present a “a danger to self or others,” but the law does not clarify that the danger can involve inability to take care of oneself, allowing long-term deterioration and self-destruction without any state intervention.

There are other problems for what Is known as “Assisted Outpatient Treatment” (AOT) for those severlly mentally ill who do not warrant inpatient treatment. For one, Texas does not have a “psychiatric deterioration standard” for either inpatient or outpatient mandatory admission, which means courts cannot examine the likelihood that the individual will continue to deteriorate without assistance as a reason for admitting someone to treatment. It also allows an initial order of assisted outpatient treatment for only 90 days, which is often not enough to stabilize a mentally ill individual, especially when they remain on the streets.[21]

A few basic reforms to mandated mental health treatment, which would clarify the standards of admittance, and extend times for supervision, when combined with reforms to the mental health and drug treatment courts described below, can help a significant portion of the unsheltered homeless population.

What the State Can Do

First, the state should do all it can to end encampments and move people to safer environments. The state can and should ensure clean-ups of encampments on state land, including land under or around state highways, and provide alternatives.[22] Governor Greg Abbot recently cleared some of the state Transportation Department land and opened up nearby structured camping facilities. The state can and should expand these to provide alternatives to any camps on state public land.[23]

The state also can use its fiscal clout to encourage cities to do better. Texas provides about $5 million a year in Emergency Solution Grants (ESG) as part of a federal program to local “Continuums of Care” (CoCs) which run local homeless services. These grants focus on immediate shelter for those in dire need.[24] The state should allocate its ESG grants only to those cities and CoCs that show consistent declines in unsheltered homelessness. If a city or CoC region shows any significant increase in unsheltered homeless, say, at least 5% in a year, it should lose its ESG grant. The ESG grant allocation should also be redirected to focus on only two possible programs, structured camping facilities and community cabins, as the two most efficient shelter services. It should also mandate that all CoC create “By Name Lists” so they know everyone that comes into the shelter system and can track them over time.[25]

The state also offers, out of its own funds, Homeless Housing and Service Program (HHSP) grants, also at about $5 million a year, which focus on more long-term homeless services.[26] These too should be allocated to cities which can show consistent declines in unsheltered homelessness, and should be cut off if cities fail to meet these goals. More importantly, every dollar of these grants should also go to Pay-For-Performance housing and service contractors.

The Pay-For-Performance PSH Model should be based on a few overall metrics. Those service providers should receive about $20,000 a year the city currently spends directly on shelter services, and they should support their homeless clients in any way they see fit in improving two key metrics: reducing number and costs of hospitalizations and number costs of arrests relative to the mean expectation of that client. If we set the expected baseline of homeless costs around the US Department of Housing and Urban Development level, of about $35,000 of hospitalization costs and $10,000 of incarceration and crime costs a year, the state would assume about $45,000 in costs per homeless client per year. Any reduction in costs relative to the baseline would be shared 75% by the homeless service provider with 25% going to the state. If the homeless provider moves a homeless individual to independence, and that individual stays out of the shelter and homeless service system for 3 years, the provider will keep 80% of the savings relative to the full payment.[27]

The state also offers public safety grants to cities, and there are two ways these can be repurposed to focus on the needs of the homeless population. First, the state can ensure that grants to cities with above-average unsheltered homeless populations goes to Community Outreach police teams, which are trained to deal with homeless individuals and get them into treatment.[28] Houston created a Homeless Outreach Team (HOT) in 2011, and it is now composed of 9 police officers and 4 case managers that have helped Houston reduce its homelessness by half since that date. Its success should be replicated across the state. The State Criminal Justice Planning Fund and the Victims of Crime Act fund, both state grants to local police departments, can be repurposed to focus on the needs of homeless offenders and victims, using required HOTs, and to get them into safer treatments.[29] Second, the state can ensure that its community courts grant dollars are focused on mental health and drug treatment courts, which have shown success in pushing individuals into treatment. Right now, many of the states’ community or specialty courts are reluctant to push individuals into treatment, but the state’s “Specialty Courts” grants can be conditioned on moving a larger proportion of all drug and mental health cases through the system, as opposed to the normal jail system, and of processing cases faster.[30] Any city that reduced the proportion of all arrests in the system going to specialty courts for two years in row would lose their specialty court funding, as would any city that did not process the majority of drug and mental health court cases in 45 days (otherwise the referrals from the specialty courts would take place long after the possibility of helping the individual in a crisis had passed).[31]

The state can also reform its inpatient and AOT mental health treatment laws to ensure that those with severe mental illnesses get immediate treatment and can stabilize. Inpatient treatment should be at least 3 days and outpatient treatment should be supervised for at least 6 months. At the same time, the state should clarify that “psychological deterioration” is a justifiable reason for the state to intervene before someone’s mental illness causes long-term consequences, and the state should include inability to take care of oneself as part of an evaluation of self-harm.[32] All of these will make sure mentally ill individuals receive the treatment they needed.

Finally, the state can shame cities into doing better. By creating viable alternatives and showing that they are safer, more affordable, and better for the homeless than large encampments, they can help end cities’ quiet acquiescence in this tragedy.

Conclusion

In the early 2000s, Los Angeles’s Skid Row was an international scandal of misery and decay. In 2006, LAPD Commissioner William Bratton began a program called “Safer City,” which cleaned up homeless camps in Skid Row and pushed people into shelter and treatment. It reduced homelessness and crime on Skid Row by half. When it was reversed years later all the old problems returned, and the number of deaths on Skid Row doubled.[33]

Similarly, In Austin, after the city ended its anti-camping ordinance, unsheltered homeless went up by 50% in a year, while the number of people in shelters dropped by 20%. Violent and property crime among homeless themselves increased by over 15% as people returned to dangerous streets.[34] Despite any claims of compassion, continuing to allow ubiquitous street camping is not helping the homeless.

The state of Texas can help end the dangerous encampments and help the homeless people get their lives back together. It’s something we know how to do; it’s something we can do; it’s something we should do.

[1] https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness-report/texas/https://www.usich.gov/homelessness-statistics/tx/

[2] https://www.statesman.com/news/20200519/austin-sees-11-increase-in-homeless-count-45-increase-in-unsheltered-population#:~:text=The%20latest%20tally%20of%20homeless,1%2C500%20people%20who%20were%20unsheltered.&text=In%20total%2C%20volunteers%20counted%202%2C506%20people%20experiencing%20homelessness.https://www.texastribune.org/2019/12/09/how-many-people-are-homeless-texas-least-25000/

[3] https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-austin-rent-trends/R Rental trends famously vary depending on the statistical source, but more easily measured Housing prices have increased even faster than rents, almost doubling in the ten years to 2020. https://www.zillow.com/austin-tx/home-values/. Most Texas cities are famously open to new building, which keeps rental and housing prices down, but Austin has some notable restrictions on building causing increased housing costs. http://soa.utexas.edu/sites/default/disk/SHANNON-MASTERSREPORT-2015.pdf

[4]

[5] https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Understanding-Encampments.pdf https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/WelcomeHome_TentCities_final_report.pdf

[6] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/30/homeless-deaths-los-angeles-county

[7] https://popcenter.asu.edu/content/homeless-encampments-0

[8] https://popcenter.asu.edu/content/homeless-encampments-page-3

[9] https://www.city-journal.org/reducing-street-homelessness-burien-washington

[10] https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/eide-amicus-Boise-09252019.pdf

[11] https://downtownsandiego.org/family-reunification-program/

[12] https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/government/the-spike-in-city-spending-on-homelessness-aid-is-clear-but-the-results-are-murkier/ https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/politics/mayor-faulconer-to-expand-safe-parking-program-for-homeless-in-san-diego/509-e9df27a4-59e4-49d4-9f22-30de445f37ed

[13] https://endhomelessness.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Performance-Benchmarks-and-Program-Standards.pdf

[14] https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/eide-amicus-Boise-09252019.pdf

[15] https://www.oaklandca.gov/news/2018/oakland-unveils-newest-rapid-rehousing-facility-and-city-council-passes-8-6-million-emergency-funds-for-homeless-services

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szEZfKJ2pSY https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/housing-first-solution-to-homelessness-utah/

[16] Echo Austin & Politifact.

[17] https://www.governing.com/topics/health-human-services/gov-money-for-homeless.html

[18] https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/mayor-announces-three-tent-shelters-around-san-diego-for-homeless/509-cdc0d945-5900-46ea-940a-4be5454d1b8a ; https://www.hoover.org/research/how-san-diego-cleaned-its-act-and-got-real-homelessness At the same time he ensured that people could not camp without consequence on city streets, https://inewsource.org/2020/05/25/san-diego-police-ticket-homeless-pandemic/ . Austin has made a similar pledge, of sorts. After it ended its laws against camping last year, it made an exception for the area around the main homelessness service center, the ARCH, to ensure that it didn’t attract excessive community attention.

[19] https://www.usmayors.org/2016/12/08/mayors-examine-issues-of-homelessness-and-hunger-in-america/ https://www.ourcalling.org/mental-healthcare-crisis-dallas/#:~:text=The%20homeless%20community%20of%20Dallas,homeless%20are%20severely%20mentally%20ill.

[20] https://www.dfps.state.tx.us/handbooks/aps/files/APS_pg_4800.asp

[21] /https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/storage/documents/grading-the-states.pdf

[22] Texas Transportation Code §472.012;

In Austin, the state TxDOT began cleaning up encampments after bridge inspectors had trouble accessing overpasses, but the city had technically agreed to take over the duty in 1986. https://communityimpact.com/austin/central-austin/city-county/2019/07/11/clearing-of-homeless-camps-under-state-highway-overpasses-will-continue-despite-austins-loosened-public-camping-laws/. If an encampment outside of state land becomes a public health risk due to an outbreak of disease, the governor can potentially order a quarantine and clear the site, but this should only be used in true emergency situations. Texas Health and Safety Code §§81.084: Application of Control Measures to Property

[23] https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/05/politics/austin-homelessness/index.html

[24] https://www.tdhca.state.tx.us/home-division/ https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2018-title24-vol3/xml/CFR-2018-title24-vol3-part576.xml#seqnum576.409 HUD still has to approve each state and local government’s “consolidated plan.” The overall allocation to states, cities, and other entities is the same as for the CDBG program, for some reason, but the state’s portion still has significant discretionary capability, and almost no restrictions in the state code about how to allocate these funds: https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/GV/htm/GV.2306.htm

[25] This surprisingly simple and obvious reform is very recent and is still not required by many cities. https://community.solutions/the-by-name-list-revolution/

[26] https://reports.nlihc.org/rental-programs/catalog/homeless-housing-and-services-program The legislative direction for this is fairly open and most reforms can be done by administrative code: https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/GV/htm/GV.2306.htm Administrative Code Here: https://texreg.sos.state.tx.us/public/readtac$ext.ViewTAC?tac_view=5&ti=10&pt=1&ch=7&sch=D&rl=Y

[27] The budgetary implications for this would be unclear if it was an addition to current HHSP funds, since most of the $10,000 criminal justice savings are not on budget, and around $15,000 of the state hospitalization expenses are Medicaid, of which are 60% paid for by the federal government, but since the funds for this will come entirely out of existing HHPD, it will at worst be revenue neutral.

[28] Almost all of the costs are hospital related. In New York, hospitalization costs are $35,000 a year for the chronically homeless, and prison and jail costs are only about $1,000 a year. If we estimate the social cost of crime as a multiple of this, considering that some crimes are not detected and the costs of crime are also borne by the public, we can estimate $10,000 a year in criminal costs. costs.http://cceh.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/supportive_housing_brief.pdf HUD sets expected cots per hospitalization event and jail time, and these can be used to compute the total. https://www.huduser.gov/publications/pdf/costs_homeless.pdf

[29] https://www.houstoncit.org/hot/ https://gov.texas.gov/organization/financial-services/grants

[30] For instance, the Travis County Adult Drug Diversion Court has continuously reduced those referred to the court, even while requesting increased funding from the state specialty court grants. https://www.statesman.com/news/20160904/transparency-accountability-needed-at-travis-county-drug-court

[31] See current demands in Title 2, Subtitle K, Specialty Courts section: t-code/title-2/subtitle-k/

[32] https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/texas

[33] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/30/homeless-deaths-los-angeles-county)

[34] . https://www.statesman.com/news/20200519/austin-sees-11-increase-in-homeless-count-45-increase-in-unsheltered-population#:~:text=The%20latest%20tally%20of%20homeless,population%20took%20place%20on%20Jan.