Half a century ago, America invented modern homelessness. Either way, you join the wider population of people battling demons behind closed doors. You can address your issues once you’re on land. But housing first involves a different logic: When you’re drowning, it doesn’t help if your rescuer insists you learn to swim before returning you to shore. There are addiction recovery and religious conversion programs that succeed in getting people off the street. Together, they’ve gone all in on “housing first,” a practice, supported by decades of research, that moves the most vulnerable people straight from the streets into apartments, not into shelters, and without first requiring them to wean themselves off drugs or complete a 12-step program or find God or a job. Houston has gotten this far by teaming with county agencies and persuading scores of local service providers, corporations and charitable nonprofits - organizations that often bicker and compete with one another - to row in unison. Today, a streamlined process means the wait for housing is 32 days. Ten years ago, homeless veterans, one of the categories that the federal government tracks, waited 720 days and had to navigate 76 bureaucratic steps to get from the street into permanent housing with support from social service counselors. Even judging by the more modest metrics registered in a 2020 federal report, Houston did more than twice as well as the rest of the country at reducing homelessness over the previous decade. The number of people deemed homeless in the Houston region has been cut by 63 percent since 2011, according to the latest numbers from local officials. The overwhelming majority of them have remained housed after two years. Rausch’s team, and a few camp residents, pointed out the nearby fast food outlets, the Shell station with a convenience store, and the Planet Fitness, where a $10 monthly membership meant access to showers and outlets for charging phones.ĭuring the last decade, Houston, the nation’s fourth most populous city, has moved more than 25,000 homeless people directly into apartments and houses.
The sound of trucks revving their engines ricocheted against the concrete walls like rifle shots and most of Houston’s homeless services were miles away. At first, I couldn’t figure out why this particular underpass had been colonized. I had come to watch the process and, more broadly, to see Houston’s approach to homelessness, which has won a lot of praise. As a vice president of Houston’s Coalition for the Homeless, Ms. Her attention was fixed on a highway underpass nearby, where a handful of people were living in tents and cardboard lean-tos. Downing a jumbo iced coffee, she issued brisk orders to a dozen outreach workers toting iPads. One steamy morning last July, Ana Rausch commandeered a shady corner of a parking lot on the northwest side of Houston.
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