Getting to the root of homelessness

I’m with the Chico Housing Action Team (CHAT) and endeavoring to ensure every member of our community has access to fair and adequate shelter and sanitation.

We believe the only option within current economic constraints is through the innovative tiny house village approach. It would be preferable to provide shelter consistent with local standards of housing, but according to the current Chico Housing Element, it costs $200,000 per unit for affordable housing, meaning it would cost $200 million to provide homes to the nearly 1,000 homeless people who live in Chico.

Incidentally, 1,000 is about 1 percent of Chico’s urban population. Redding’s homeless population is about 2 percent and Oroville is at 3 percent, so we’re doing pretty well in comparison.

The issue of homelessness has become more heated recently with the sit/lie law and with citizens so alarmed that armed guards patrolling downtown were enlisted to protect gentle shoppers from risking a sullied moment in a waft of unwashed men. The armed patrols and stepped-up enforcement of anti-homeless measures scattered unsheltered people into the neighborhoods and edges of town, reducing the concentration of street people downtown while ignoring the underlying problem.

CHAT members plan to begin addressing those underlying problem by providing minimal standards of adequate shelter and we predict that our efforts will save money for the larger community.

The condition of homelessness carries with it considerable external costs, including emergency rooms, shelters, jails, courts, rehabilitation, behavioral health and police hours. It is widely recognized that giving people homes is cheaper than leaving them without shelter. Researchers examining the Housing First model have found that it costs $40,000 on average annually to have a person living on the streets while it costs only $13,000 to give them an apartment.

Hopefully, before long, the $13,000 in annual funding will become available for a full-blown Housing First approach to homelessness, but in the meantime, simple, small campgrounds/tiny house villages would be a step in the right direction.

Large percentages of homeless people are veterans, have been in foster care, or have behavioral health issues that sometimes include extremely challenging psychiatric disorders. It’s a sobering realization that we’re spending extra money to make life harder for such vulnerable populations. Let’s do the right thing by embracing compassion and at the same time save some money.