Former President Barack Obama’s approach to combat homelessness has been “a disaster on every level,” according to Texas Public Policy Foundation senior fellow Michele Steeb.
Steeb is an expert on homelessness and author of “Answers Behind the Red Door: Battling the Homeless Epidemic.” She said in an interview with Morning Wire that homelessness in the United States, and especially in California, has dramatically worsened since the federal government adopted “housing first” as its singular approach to homelessness.
The Bush administration first introduced the Housing First model to federal policy in 2008. The Obama administration massively expanded the policy in 2013, turning into the federal government’s “one-size-fits-all” approach to homelessness.
“Thankfully, the Trump administration has stepped in and said at the federal level, we need to reprioritize mental health treatment. Drug and alcohol counseling needs to be offered in conjunction with housing,” said Steeb, “and we need to clear these encampments because these encampments have become so dangerous. Not just for the individuals living in them, pets are now overdosing, women are being trafficked, and there’s spillover effects to the general public that have been devastating.”
The model, in theory, prioritizes stability. The Department of Housing and Urban Development under Obama’s housing first approach conditioned grant money to recipients on providing non-conditioned housing to the homeless. Providers cannot make requirements such as that a tenant stay sober or hold down a job in order to receive housing.
“Up until about 12 years ago, the federal government funded shelters, they funded transitional housing. They funded mental health and drug and alcohol treatment along with that housing,” said Steeb.
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It was under the Obama administration “that they said, you know what, we’re only gonna fund one thing now, and that one thing is housing subsidies, housing vouchers. We are not going to fund mental health treatment or drug and alcohol treatment or employment training. And we’re going to offer this housing to the homeless, subsidized housing for life with no conditions, none whatsoever,” she continued.
In practice, homelessness has drastically increased under the housing first approach. Those who are homeless have suffered even more as many of the conditions that contributed to their situation grow worse without proper treatment.
Housing first was designed for a very small segment of the homeless population, “but without any evidence, the Obama administration rolled it out,” said Steeb. “He literally promised it would end homelessness in 10 years. And 10 years later, 12 years later, exactly, we are at the highest point ever in our nation’s history, an almost 35% increase.”
A 2022 report by the Cicero Institute found that homelessness increased by nearly 25% in areas that exclusively rely on the housing first model. The results are most apparent in California, where the state followed the Obama administration’s example and its homeless population has exploded, especially in urban centers such as San Francisco.
“California is the only state in the nation that followed the feds and said, all of our money on top of all of your money, the federal government’s, is now going to go to housing first. California has experienced a 40% increase since [2017] when they adopted this,” said Steeb. “California now has almost 50% of the nation’s unsheltered population, almost 40% of the overall homeless population in its cities have been ravaged by this.”
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