Why Housing First Fails

Kevin Dahlgren on progressives' favorite cure-all.

On May 9th, Jessica Vega Peterson, newly elected Multnomah county chair, announced her $32-million dollar homeless plan, which involved developing partnerships with local and state efforts, starting with the city of Portland.

This was ironic: it’s something that up until now the county has been unwilling to do. Portland leaders has been asking to partner with the county for over six years and have been ignored.

While I appreciate she has made homelessness her number one priority, forming a partnership requires just one question: “How will you end this humanitarian crisis?”

Ms. Vega-Pederson had an answer: she announced that the county would spend $87-million on “alternative housing.” It would buy more old, decrepit motels, an increasingly popular way to house the homeless which boomed during the Covid pandemic when multiple motels were leased/purchased by the county and major non-profits. Hundreds of homeless people were moved to the motels. It was impossible not to notice there were fewer people languishing on the streets. People cheered and believed that finally something was getting done and this humanitarian crisis might actually end.

It hasn’t, as we all know.

Why?

What nobody talked about is that the county purchase of run-down motels is part of a larger philosophy dear to bureaucrats’ hearts: the Housing First model—one that has been adopted by virtually every progressive city in the U.S.

I have toured multiple Housing First apartments and motels in my career. The first noticeable thing is just how chaotic they are. They are mixed with four groups of people. Active drug users with no intent to get clean; active drug dealers selling to the drug users; men and women in recovery desperately trying to stay clean in that environment; and those who have never used doing their best to thrive in such a place.

Fights, fires, assaults, and theft are commonplace. I have interviewed dozens of homeless this year who chose to return to the streets rather than live in such an environment. Housing First will never be a success as long as there are no rules related to drug use, mandating participating in programs, and strict behavioral expectations. 

That’s because Housing First is more of a philosophy than a real solution. In my work in the field with the homeless, I’ve seen that Housing First leads to two common outcomes: the homeless return to the streets, or the government pays their rent for life.

Housing First’s philosophy prizes flexibility, client choice, and autonomy. “wrap around” supportive services are a part of this model, such as addiction or mental health treatment. Housing First advocates believe that “People have the agency to select the supportive services they need and want.” This is also known as voluntary personalized services.

Translation: Nobody placed into a Housing First model is required to work on the problems that led them to the streets or kept them on the streets.

Their rent is paid by the county or state—often for years and up to life.  There is virtually no real supervision of the homeless in these motels. Staff makes minimal, if any, effort in getting a person to accept services since that goes against their belief in body autonomy— another social justice philosophy that a person has an absolute right to govern what happens to their body without external influence or coercion.

To make matters worse, most major non-profits that supervise the motels have signed grants that restrict oversight and measurable results.

This is the biggest flaw in Housing First—but not for progressives. They successfully created a $-multi-billion industry paid for by taxes that house formally homeless individuals for life with virtually zero expectations that they’ll become self-sufficient. This is why homeless budgets always increase. New homeless are entering the system while the old homeless never leave.  This is the most profitable piece of the Homeless Industrial Complex: a constant stream of new customers while holding onto the old ones till they die of old age or overdoses. 

An unintended consequence of this lack of oversight (meant to protect a person’s identity and any of their chosen behaviors) is a side hustle commonly employed by the people living in these places since most Housing First programs do not require a person’s real name.  Since many homeless have street names, they often use them to get free rent.

One homeless woman I met two years ago managed to secure seven apartments using Disney character names. She then sublet six of those apartments to other homeless people for about $20 a day, which paid for her drug habit. She got away with this until she forgot which apartment she was supposed to be living in.

Last week I met a homeless man who has been living behind a Housing First apartment building on and off for over a decade. He said it is mostly filled with drug dealers. They are formally homeless men and women who were using their apartments as drug distribution sites. One apartment had about 40 fentanyl shoppers a day. He said staff rarely shows up and when they do it is usually for about 20 minutes.

 Imagine any other industry that is well funded, rewarded the more they fail, and do not share what they are doing, how they are doing it, and how long it will take to see measurable results. This is the result of a progressive government that has written a blank check to a highly profitable yet largely unsuccessful model. 

In 2013, the Obama administration inaugurated Housing First as a one-size-fits-all solution to homelessness, with no evidence it would work for Americans experiencing homelessness.  They promised it would end homelessness in a decade. This is the year that is supposed to happen. How is that going? 

Progressives are now saying they need more time and more money. They’ve been saying this for decades. If money was the solution they would have solved homelessness by now.

It’s time to try a different approach. This won’t be easy since, in my estimate, a good 90-percent of non-profits in social services benefit from the Homeless Industrial Complex and have no motivation to try anything different. If they did they might work themselves out of a job—which, after all, should be the goal of anyone working in homeless services.

I think of what I do as a cause, not a job. I wake up every day with the belief I can make a difference and we can get one step closer to ending homelessness. I am still outnumbered by those employed by Homelessness Inc., but my sense is that the orthodoxy is slowly changing. Questioning the status quo is becoming accepted in my field and common sense is returning.

I am hopeful.

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Kevin Dahlgren recently resigned from the City of Gresham after running their homeless program for four years. He helped reduce homelessness by over 90-percent, the largest drop among cities on the west coast. He will be doing consulting, has launched a website, www.truthonthestreets.org, and has a Substack site… 

 An article, “Fentanyl is being laced to become even more deadly,” appears currently in the British publication The Spectator.