Recently a letter to the editor, written by House the Homeless president Richard R. Troxell, was published by the Austin American-Statesman. In it, Richard praised the forward-looking aspirations of mayor Steve Adler, who holds the totally reasonable belief that people who work in a city ought to be able to afford to live in that city.
Richard notes that when Ronald Reagan was president, funding for America’s housing programs was cut by 75 percent. Also, between 1997 and 2007, the federal minimum wage stagnated for an entire decade, and has only crept up a slightly since then.
In Austin and Travis County, the annual homeless count increased again this year. Mayor Adler’s State of the City speech in February enumerated previous successes:
From the time we took office until now, this City has incentivized or co-invested in the construction of more than 2,000 completed income-restricted affordable units — and more than 6,300 are in progress… We are on track to meet our goal of 400 new Permanent Supportive Housing Units by the end of this year… We are among the cities that have achieved effective zero in homeless veterans.
On the downside, the January point-in-time count, according to Nancy Flores …
[…] found a total of 2,147 people experiencing homelessness. During the same period in 2017, the count tallied 2,036 people. The count shows a 23 percent spike in the number of people sleeping on the streets compared with last year while the number of people living in shelters went down by 6 percent. Mayor Steve Adler attributed the decrease to issues such as lack of emergency shelter beds and temporary dips at shelters due to construction.
Austin has done an amazing amount, but the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition (ECHO) says that housing programs are already running at capacity, and there are not enough beds, caseworkers, mental health specialists, or a lot of other things. Obviously, society is still creating the need for services. More than ever, attention needs to be paid to the root causes of homelessness, which too often are rapacious greed and insensitivity to the needs and rights of all humans.
Going back to the Mayor’s February speech, Mayor Adler gave a shoutout to the City Council for its “special willingness to try new things and to put new resources behind the mission of housing the homeless.” Among other innovations, it created an Anti-Displacement Task Force to address long-standing abusive practices that have contributed to homelessness. Now it is working on the Downtown Puzzle, which could combine expansion of the city’s convention center with job creation and help for the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless.
The conversation about how to tackle homelessness must include the business community. House the Homeless and Mayor Adler are on the same page about that. Even people who are employed full-time, or more than full-time, often cannot afford housing. The way things are now, working taxpayers subsidize the benefits that help people experiencing homelessness to live.
It seems like businesses should pitch in to cover the safety-net costs for the people whose work they profit from. It also seems like businesses could and should do more to prevent homelessness from occurring in the first place.
To find the root causes of homelessness, start with the land itself. Another project underway is the massive revamping of the land development code, in which many civic entities are involved. Mayor Adler says:
Austin has a rare opportunity to lead the way out of this mess. Austin is emerging as a voice offering reason and progress in a world that isn’t getting enough of either these days.
Reactions?
Source: “Letters to the editor: May 4, 2018,” MyStatesman.com, 05/03/18
Source: “Read the text of Mayor Steve Adler’s State of the City address,” Statesman.com, 02/20/18
Source: “City Council approves action plan to end homelessness,” MyStatesman.com, 04/26/18
Photo credit: Arman Jones on Visualhunt/CC BY