Landry move should reduce N.O. homelessness

Louisiana is a little late to the party, but it’s finally gotten on the right track when it comes to housing policy.

The state recently announced, through the Louisiana Housing Corporation which is a state agency that administers federal and state funds through programs designed to advance the development of energy efficient and affordable housing and run by appointees by various state officials but the majority by the governor, that it bid to oversee housing policy in New Orleans. As federal housing grants have a ceiling that go to an area, if money goes to the state to use, other entities won’t have it.

And almost certainly the state will grab control of the around $50 million the area will get because its plan, unlike the theory behind those of the present lead agency the nonprofit UNITY of Greater New Orleans, is congruent to best practices that the Republican Pres. Donald Trump Administration’s Department of Housing and Urban Development recently adopted. While state and local government and nonprofit representatives rank the applications, HUD has the final word.

Last year, Trump’s HUD reversed nearly two decades of policy that focused primarily on a “housing first” paradigm and gave the “treatment first” model short shrift. Housing first concentrates funding on provision of housing as quickly and as permanently as possible, while treatment first seeks to address potential health and behavioral issues prior to access to permanent housing.

 Data never supported housing first. Over three quarters of homeless adults suffer from mental health and/or substance abuse problems, which if unaddressed mostly wastes housing resources if given to them and doesn’t solve their problems, yet until recently HUD was apportioning seven-eighths of all dollars for homeless to have permanent shelter.

And UNITY continued to fund mainly that kind of housing, apparently enthralled to the misbegotten idea, as are a number of nonprofits in the field, that the vast majority of adult homeless people were somehow victimized into having no permanent shelter, such as by an economic and social system that was rigged against individuals with certain characteristics. This view promotes wealth redistribution and a welfare state that induces learned helplessness into some people, who become deemed incapable of managing their lives such as in building capacities to resist addiction, educate themselves, work productively, etc., skills which would lead to housing independence. In that instance, ideology triumphs over data.

Not so with the new HUD regulations. which now apportion only 30 percent of total funding to permanent housing with the remainder spooled out to programs to help them escape the need for provided shelter, appropriately enough in proportion as some clients genuinely will be disadvantaged because of disability and bad fortune. That is the kind of programmatic balance that is expected in the LHC application.

That also is a change in ethos in the LHC. Until as recently as the first year of GOP Gov. Jeff Landry’s administration, it continued to emphasize housing first. But he seems to have gotten a handle on things (the LHC 2025 report is more muted on enthusiasm for housing first) and the change in HUD rules certainly will push it much closer treatment first, which Landry endorses.

Homeless in New Orleans increasingly has become worse, with UNITY coming under fire from officials for its lackluster performance, which can be traced back to the failed housing first agenda it has pursued. Hopefully, LHC wins the right to shape policy in the area and follows through with the treatment first agenda to begin finally implementing evidence-based policy that has a realistic chance to succeed.