As I have immersed myself in our homeless services system over these past many years, one thing has become increasingly clear to me – homelessness is a systemic issue. The only real means for ending homelessness is for civic, economic and social systems to recognize that ensuring the basic needs of housing, food, clothing, education, employment and health care are met for all is the surest path to ending homelessness, as well as crimes rooted in the desperation of poverty.
We must also recognize, despite rhetoric that suggests people living in poverty have done something to deserve it, any of us could be in similar straits simply by the happenstance of our birth.
Being born into a family living in an area with underfunded and sub-par schools increases the likelihood of lifetime poverty. Being born in a home with leaking lead pipes or lead paint is more likely to result in learning deficiencies that also impact future economic well-being, and people with limited resources for housing are more likely to live in these unsafe conditions.
More critical, getting out of such circumstance is incredibly difficult, especially when it tends to involve asking a working parent who does not make enough to keep a roof over the family’s heads and put food on the table, has little time to help a struggling child with homework and is unable to save for health or other emergencies to also navigate multiple agencies for assistance.
Because our systems favor wealth, entities not actively engaged in homeless services tend to propose responses to these complexities that exacerbate the issues. So called “solutions” such as take away the poor person’s freedom by jailing someone experiencing homelessness, fail to address core problems while also adding to the barriers a person in poverty faces. Court fees and fines pile up, adding to the financial struggles for someone without living wages, and a criminal record is a well-known barrier to housing and employment.
Jailing the poor is not a solution. Billing it as more humane than leaving someone on the streets is a more palatable way to say we have given up on trying to house people in favor of shorter-term options that make our streets cleaner but leave the humans living in poverty with no more means to navigate our complex economic systems then they had while experiencing homelessness.
The solutions to poverty start with addressing the interactions between multiple systems that pile on obstacles for people seeking a way out of poverty. Forcing a person living in abject poverty to address their substance-use disorder behind bars and expecting long-term success is not good public policy. Rather, we need to prioritize the long-term health and wellness of people and accept that moving someone out of poverty, into sustained sobriety and productive citizenship will require housing people in safe and stable environments where they can work one on one with someone who understands the individual’s needs and where they are at in their ability to address their mental and physical health, without denying the person their basic freedoms.
Individuals may fail and succeed repeatedly. They may strenuously resist being forced into even the best program for their own good. Ultimately, some might even require assistance for years to come. But we recalibrate our systems to address basic needs not because it is best for our statewide economic outlook, though it is, or because the individuals we help have somehow proven they deserve it, but because we value each and every human being as a human being with all of the potential for good that every human is born with, regardless of race, creed, gender, sexual orientation or socio-economic status.
Jean Hill
Jean Welch Hill is government liaison and director of the Office of Life, Justice & Peace of the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City.
