Resource Center

Homelessness and housing news from the past week that you may have missed.

San Francisco was one of the first major cities to adopt a housing-first policy: give someone a permanent place to live, provide access to robust care and resources, and positive outcomes will follow. Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, said, “Solving the homelessness crisis will take resources and a commitment to house everyone—and then the ability to match services to the need.” While there will always be a need for emergency short-term shelter options, Dr. Kushel said, “a focus on shelter in lieu of housing is the worst of all options” because it “costs society a lot and doesn’t solve homelessness.”

Homelessness and housing news from the past week that you may have missed.

The Terner Center for Housing Innovation has issued a new report looking at the pressures that force extremely low-income households in the Bay Area to the edge of homelessness. Policy manager Ned Resnikoff looks at what the report has to say about how income disparities contribute to the region's crisis of housing affordability.

Policy manager Ned Resnikoff explains why housing people in "all those vacant apartments" is not a viable solution to homelessness. The homelessness rate is highest in the cities where rental vacancy rates are lowest. The homelessness crisis will not end without building more extremely low-income housing—and more housing in general.

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, spoke about Oakland’s new shallow subsidy program, which will help 200 low-income households pay rent for 18 months by sending money directly to their landlords. The UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative will evaluate the impact the program has on families to determine whether people who received subsidies were more likely to remain housed than those who did not.

Homelessness and housing news from the past week that you may have missed.

Homelessness and housing news from the past week that you may have missed.

This article reports on how state spending on homelessness in California will be allocated to creating more living spaces and how Caltrans plans to address encampments. “Spending state money on harassing people who are struggling under the impacts of local, state, and federal policy failures is counterproductive,” said Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, of clearing encampments.

The Atlantic published an article on a new strain of crystal meth said to be “worsening America’s homelessness problem.” Policy manager Ned Resnikoff examines how the piece showcases common misconceptions about homelessness.

A new shallow subsidy program in Oakland will cover a portion of rent for extremely low-income households. While giving 200 families monthly subsidies is a “drop in the bucket” compared to the need, it could encourage more programs like it, said Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, who will analyze whether the program prevented people from losing their housing. A night at a shelter, with no support services attached, could cost about $100 a night, or $3,000 a month, Dr. Kushel said, versus $700 a month spent in this pilot to keep them housed.

Homelessness and housing news from the past week that you may have missed.

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, was a guest on KQED Forum discussing the role health care, low wages, and lack of affordable housing play in Oakland’s growing homelessness crisis. Dr. Kushel said, "There is a myth that the homeless population comes from other communities. That simply isn't true. What we see is about 70%-85% of people experiencing homelessness are from that community." She added that shelters are often "large, warehouse-like environments" where risk of COVID-19 transmission can be very high. Although some emergency shelter (preferably non-congregate) is needed, the solution to homelessness is permanent housing.

Over the weekend, Ned Resnikoff had an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle considering California’s homelessness crisis in light of its similarities to the climate crisis. One theme in this piece is the need for federal intervention. California has long been a leader among U.S. states on climate policy, and in recent years it has started to make significant progress in developing effective programs to prevent and end homelessness.

Beginning this week, policy manager Ned Resnikoff will be posting a weekly list of some housing and homelessness news that you might have missed.

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, was quoted in this article about how California moved thousands of people experiencing homelessness into private hotel rooms during the COVID-19 pandemic—in an effort named “Project Roomkey”—which eventually provided temporary shelter to more than 48,000 people in hotel rooms leased by the state. Dr. Kushel said, “What you don’t see are that many, many of those folks who are out there are getting out of their tents and going to jobs.” 

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted economic systems, social networks, and individual behaviors, altering patterns in health care use. In this study, researchers compared homeless and unstably housed (HSH) women who did and did not use an emergency department during the first 10 months of the pandemic. The researchers found that the rate of emergency department use among HUH women during the pandemic was similar to prior research.