Louisiana needs to pick up the pace in transforming its housing provision strategy, which spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually, due to a major programmatic shift at the national level.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently announced a retreat from allowing a near-purist “housing first” methodology by introducing more elements of a “treatment first” model. 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.
Ideally, dosages of both approaches would be applied, with the housing model focused mainly on temporary rental and other assistance with government-financed residence construction as a last resort, but subordinate to the treatment model because the central cause of homelessness, for the nondisabled population, is from behavioral problems often stemming from mental health issues. Indeed, just over three-quarters of the adult homeless population has such issues, the large majority stemming from alcohol and drug abuse.
Unfortunately, this century an ideology that people in the main somehow were “victims” of some kind, such as through structural economic deficiencies, overtook housing policy-making and tilted federal government spending, through grants to states and local governments, far in the direction of housing first. Most recently, 87 percent of all federal awards went to permanent housing.
The new HUD rules instead will limit that to 30 percent. The remainder will be put towards building and operating transitional housing and allied services designed to deliver services and treatments that create conditions for self-sufficiency. No longer would provision of non-disaster-related or immediate emergency-necessary housing and other programs subsidizing that, such as heating and water subsidies, be open-ended, with work or service requirements attached to shelter for eligibility.
All of this was telegraphed months ago when Republican Pres. Donald Trump issued an executive order addressing criminal activity in public stemming from vagrancy that faulted past efforts for failing to resolve issues of behavioral and mental health. As the predominant housing first model not accidentally became more entrenched in past HUD policy – adding nearly a quarter of a million permanent units or beds directly or by subsidy in just over a decade while subtracting 100,000 transitional beds – this coincided with a 30 percent increase in homelessness.
Further, research has demonstrated that permanent housing keeps a reasonable proportion of the homeless population off the streets, but actually encourages more substance abuse, and actually costs more than a treatment first option. Of course, for those nondisabled individuals without a history of mental or behavioral difficulties who may be subject to bad fortune and for people with disabilities, permanent supportive housing programs work well, but this describes a distinct minority of the homeless population.
If there’s a Louisiana poster child for this failure, it’s New Orleans, which continues to throw in its own public tax dollars to build or entice permanent housing. Homelessness (including Jefferson Parish) has risen since 2017 as the city has stepped up spending on this since 2018, and voters failed to rein in the stupidity with recent charter amendments to bake into the budget that spending and creating a debt-laden source to fund that.
Unfortunately, Louisiana’s recent history shows more emphasis placed on housing first than treatment first. The Louisiana Housing Corporation’s 2023 updated plan almost exclusively mentions tactics congruent with the former, and most of its fiscal year 2024 spending went towards supply of permanent housing (if provided, landlords can’t evict tenants without agency approval) in one form or another, including underwriting billions of dollars in loans. Celebration of permanent housing provision resonates throughout its 2024 annual report, with brief mention of transitional activities.
The new rules demand a quick turnaround in grant applications, so the state and any local agencies need to be ready. It’s too bad that Louisiana couldn’t have followed a few other states who made a quicker paradigm shift, but at least now it’s being pushed onto the right path.
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