Leading voice demanding rights for the unhoused discusses the history of homelessness and where the US can go from here
Women were sleeping on the cafeteria floors of St Anthony’s food kitchen. While men, with their sleeping bags and clothes in tow, were crashing in the chairs and on the rug at nearby Hospitality House.He served as the director of San Francisco’s Coalition on Homelessness, a non-profit organization fighting to empower those without homes, for 16 years, and now serves as the executive director of the, which works to eliminate the root causes of homelessness and demand protection of human rights.
Let’s start at the beginning. You’ve argued that the homelessness emergency the US is facing today is rooted in actions that began in the 1980s. How did it all begin? But in 1998, the legislation was changed to say the federal government cannot be held accountable to ensure that even a majority of its citizens have a place to live. The federal government said: “Oh, no, no, we’re not responsible. We’ve relieved ourselves of this responsibility.”
Then, in the late 90s came welfare reform, imposing all kinds of caps and limits [on aid to poor families]. Three hundred thousand people were cut off from social security benefits in a single day because they were labeled as “dual diagnosed” . And you could no longer get social security if part of your disability was a drug addiction.
Political leaders would say: we have to do something right away. Well, now it’s 40 years later, and the San Francisco board of supervisors just passed a resolution to open up 2,000 more shelter beds. People seem to be saying: “if I don’t see poor people, then I don’t have to worry that there’s too much poverty in America. If I don’t see homeless people, I don’t have to worry that we have a homeless problem. Because if I don’t see it, it’s not a problem.”The number of people who are homeless has gone up, yes. But the real change is that the longevity of homelessness and the difficulty of getting through the system is off the hook.
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