Amid Calls to Defund the Police, Many Mayors Are Still Relying on Cops to Address Homelessness

How a lot management does your mayor have over the problem of homelessness? From the angle of mayors, it seems, the reply is “not a lot.” That was a high discovering of a nationwide survey of mayors carried out by Boston College’s Initiative On Cities in addition to the nonprofit Neighborhood Options.

For the survey—the eighth annual Menino Survey of Mayors however the first to incorporate questions on homelessness—researchers spoke with 126 mayors in 39 states. Amongst their findings have been that 73% of mayors imagine that they’re held accountable by their constituents for his or her response to the homeless disaster, however 81% don’t imagine they’ve loads of management over the problem. The explanations for this, in accordance with mayors surveyed, needed to do with lack of funding and public opposition to new reasonably priced housing.

The findings additionally revealed that many mayors lack devoted homeless workers and lean on police departments for coverage recommendation. mong those that have workers, some place them inside their police departments. Over 60% p.c of mayors mentioned that restricted funding was their largest impediment, whereas over 25% p.c mentioned that public opposition to shelters and new housing have been their largest impediment.

In accordance with Jake Maguire, the co-director of Neighborhood Options’ Constructed For Zero program, the survey responses recommend that many cities’ strategy to homelessness is in disarray.

“The best way that we arrange homeless response on this nation is tremendously fragmented,” he says. “A number of companies personal one little piece of the puzzle, however they don’t report to one another.”

The interviews have been carried out largely over the cellphone between June and August 2021, and questions have been additionally requested in regards to the Covid-19 restoration and the racial wealth hole. Mayors have been granted anonymity, although the report shared anonymized knowledge on geographic unfold and political affiliation.

The report paints a well-recognized portrait to anybody who has witnessed mayors wrestle with the problem of homelessness: Many are under-resourced and, within the face of potential political backlash, select to take care of seen homelessness by enforcement whereas typically trying to sway affect over reasonably priced housing manufacturing.

Criminalizing Homelessness

Maybe essentially the most revealing knowledge within the report are solutions on policing. The survey discovered that 78% of mayors say that police have some affect over their metropolis’s homelessness coverage. And 22% of mayors mentioned they positioned their homelessness workers inside their police departments. The report appears as an example that mayors lean on policing in lieu of instruments and sources to handle homelessness by housing or providers.

In equity, the report discovered that cities have been relying extra on nonprofits and continuums of care, or coordinating companies that take care of homelessness. However after these two entities, none ranked increased with mayors than police.

“What you see there’s mayors defaulting to one thing they’re truly in control of, which is the police power,” Maguire says. “Most mayors aren’t in control of the manufacturing of reasonably priced housing, they’re not in control of the federal housing voucher provide that comes right down to their neighborhood.”

The potential penalties of this are the criminalization of homelessness, excessive profile clearings of homeless encampments and violent encounters with folks within the midst of a psychological well being disaster. “You’re utilizing the least outfitted power in your neighborhood to reply to extraordinarily advanced well being and social challenges that folks expertise,” Maguire says.

When requested by Subsequent Metropolis, advocates for folks experiencing homelessness expressed concern about this side of the report. “Criminalization and policing aren’t the solutions to homelessness; housing is,” says Jacqueline Simone, coverage director for NYC’s Coalition For The Homeless. Simone says the federal authorities may present mayors with extra instruments by offering sufficient Section 8 vouchers for everybody within the nation experiencing homelessness. The Biden administration planned to expand vouchers to 300,000 more households, however these plans are tied up within the social spending portion of the Build Back Better Act.

“Within the interim, cities should resist the tendencies to criminalize homelessness and make the most of police to push folks from one place to a different,” Simone says.

Others surmised that reliance on police is the results of neighborhood pushback. “Having police as influential because the mayors ranked them might be a chicken-and-egg state of affairs,” says Mary Rychlik Stahlke, director of engagement at Texas Steadiness of State Continuum of Care. “Neighborhood members name the police to complain about folks visibly experiencing homelessness then the police get entangled, then the police speak with metropolis authorities leaders.”

“How would possibly the state of affairs look completely different if communities had sufficient emergency housing, supportive providers, reasonably priced housing, speedy re-housing and everlasting supportive housing for the individuals who want these?” Stahlke requested.

It’s onerous not to attract a connection between the overwhelming sense that mayors really feel they’re politically on the hook for the homeless disaster of their cities, that few really feel empowered to supply satisfactory housing or providers, and that many lean on police practically as a lot as they do nonprofits or continuums of care. Final March, LAPD cleared a homeless encampment in Echo Park dwelling to tons of of residents whereas additionally arresting journalists and activists. A spokesperson for Mayor Eric Garcetti referred to as the sweep “a successful housing operation unprecedented in scale.” In September, Garcetti signed an ordinance banning folks from sitting, mendacity or sleeping in public.

In San Francisco, encampment sweeps coordinated by town’s Wholesome Streets Working Middle have been continuously clearing folks from public areas even when there weren’t satisfactory shelter beds for them to show to in violation of state regulation, in accordance with a report from the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness.

One West Coast mayor is quoted within the survey as saying, “We type of eyeball the factor. If there’s a homeless encampment this week, and it’s gone subsequent week, we contemplate {that a} success.”

Outcomes from last year’s report recommend that after these obligations have been assigned to the police, mayors are reluctant to place them within the arms of different companies, a serious ask of final 12 months’s racial justice protests. In accordance with the report, “solely 33% of mayors supported reallocating some or many obligations from the police to social service companies.” Final 12 months’s report additionally cited mayors’ lack of management over different metropolis providers, and quotes one mayor as saying, “It might be nice to place cash in the direction of psychological well being, dependancy restoration, and so on. however we don’t run these packages.”

The Knowledge Hole

Along with insufficient sources, the survey discovered that many mayors didn’t have a transparent metric for lowering homelessness and plenty of weren’t accumulating acceptable knowledge. The federal authorities requires an annual snapshot of town’s homeless inhabitants, referred to as a “cut-off date” rely, lots of that are occurring proper now, as they’re mandated to happen within the final two weeks of January. However this accountability is assigned to “continuums of care” homeless companies continuously positioned on the county degree. This brings cities into battle with counties when counts aren’t prioritized.

“We waited for the county to do their job, however they by no means did, so we needed to get direct funding from the state and do it ourselves. We didn’t need the job from the county,” one mayor instructed researchers.

In accordance with Constructed For Zero’s Maguire, the cut-off date rely is insufficient for many mayors as the information is just not particular sufficient and since there’s a lengthy delay earlier than HUD relays the outcomes to cities. “It doesn’t provide you with loads of usable data,” he says. “You ship these tallies off to the federal authorities, then 11 months later you get an estimate from HUD.”

Solely 40% of mayors outlined success by way of lowering homelessness, a quantity that will appear stunning however is consistent with how the problem is handled on the metropolis degree. Maguire says the shortage of an general technique for lowering homelessness is endemic. “A number of individuals are accountable for some component of homelessness, however nobody is basically in cost,” he says. “The best way that we arrange homeless response on this nation is tremendously fragmented, a number of companies personal one little piece of the puzzle, they don’t report to one another.”

One mayor’s definition of success is maybe an apt description of how the problem is handled on the metropolis degree. He instructed researchers town’s definition of success is “shifting them elsewhere. Not fairly, however that’s what it’s.”

Roshan Abraham is Subsequent Metropolis’s housing correspondent and a former Equitable Cities fellow. He’s primarily based in Queens. Observe him on Twitter at @roshantone.