Public Policy Advocacy

Educating Your Elected Officials About Housing First

A best practice for making homelessness rare, brief, and one-time.

Talking Points

Even after prioritizing the most chronic cases, the Housing First model implemented across the state documented returns to homelessness of just 13%.

DATA DRIVES THE ARGUMENT^[1]…

The evidence-based Housing First principles were first embraced by the George W. Bush administration, leading to a 30 percent reduction in homelessness rates in the United States between 2005 and 2007. This best practice has enjoyed subsequent bipartisan support ever since.

Between 2007 and 2016, federal, state, and local decisions to prioritize evidence-based solutions–like Housing First–that combine rental assistance and voluntary supportive services contributed to a 15 percent decline in homelessness.

Temporary measures deployed early in the pandemic–including rental assistance–prevented growth in homelessness between 2020 and 2022.

Elected officials pulled back on these earlier investments, and homelessness rose 12 percent between 2022 and 2023–the highest level on record going back to 2007.

IT’S BASIC MATH

There is an alarming increase in those experiencing homelessness for the first time in the State of North Carolina. Sixty-nine percent of those experiencing homelessness last year were homeless for the first time (https://bit.ly/4f1lPtT).

Since 2001, the median rent has risen by nearly 19 percent adjusted for inflation, while the income of the median renter household has risen about 4 percent–making housing unaffordable for people with the lowest incomes.

The federal (and NC) full-time minimum wage is $7.25 per hour—just over $15,000 annually. Even if 2 people in a family were working at this wage (a combined $30,000), it takes over $52,000 in annual household income to afford a two-bedroom rental home at HUD’s Fair Market Rent in North Carolina.^[2]

The housing wage for North Carolina is just over $25 an hour–placing a two bedroom rental home out of reach for many. Go here to see your county’s housing wage.

PUBLIC OPINION IS TURNING

Three out of five people (60%) now believe homelessness is caused by economic factors, citing rents as too high, not enough housing people can afford, or jobs that don’t pay enough. Three years ago, when the Housing Narrative Lab conducted national research, less than half (49%) of respondents believed that economic factors caused homelessness. This is a significant shift in the public mindset about its root causes.

Criminalizing Homelessness For Profit

Joe Lonsdale is a partner at a multi-billion dollar venture capital firm. He has created the Cicero Institute to help policymakers and entrepreneurs work together on society’s challenges. One of these involves tying financial incentives to private prison contracts, as outlined on the Cicero website in a segment entitled, Private Prisons Can Work.

Cicero has developed and promoted a template for state legislation that would essentially criminalize homeless encampments in 7 states. State bills have usually included one or more of these five elements. All seek to retarget funding for ending homelessness away from data-proven, permanent housing solutions to legalized encampments, law enforcement, and involuntary commitments.

1. Criminalizes homelessness, punishable by fines ($5,000), jail time (1 month), or both, to force people into the state-sanctioned encampments.
2. Redirects investments away from long-term solutions, like permanent supportive housing, to fund state-sanctioned encampments.
3. Imposes punitive requirements under threat of arrest, including 6-month time limits for shelters, forced treatment, and sobriety.
4. Bars communities from receiving funding for public safety and homelessness if they do not enforce anti-camping laws and have a higher-than state-average of homelessness.
5. Requires police to serve in homeless outreach teams.

Cicero has contracted an in-state lobbying firm registered with the NC General Assembly; and in early 2024, it published a so-called poll of North Carolinians regarding public safety with 5 of the 15 questions concentrated on homelessness. It would appear that Cicero is preparing for a move on our NC General Assembly.

The Harm of Such Legislation for the State of North Carolina…

Ignores the structural issues that lead to homelessness, thereby potentially allowing for an increase in homelessness.

It’s a more costly approach. It takes $10,051 to provide supportive housing for one person experiencing homelessness for one year. It takes more than three times that much ($31,065) to enforce anti-panhandling laws and encampments for local governments.^[3] Displacement tactics demonstrate the mounting pressure to solve visible homelessness but do nothing to solve it.

Conflates crime and homelessness, when people experiencing homelessness are more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators.^[4]

Mischaracterizes Housing First as “Housing Only” and ignores decades of research, evidence, and learning. Housing First offers services to help those who are housed remain housed. NC’s own data shows just 13% of those helped through supportive housing return to homelessness.

Case in point: Veteran homelessness is the one sub population that has decreased by half over the last 15 years. This was accomplished by pairing VA case management with supportive services offered through HUD VASH with HUD housing choice vouchers for rental assistance.

Invite your Member to work

Site visits are the most effective way to educate your elected officials about publicly funded programs that effectively address the growing number of North Carolinians at risk of or experiencing homelessness. To make the most compelling arguments for these programs, engage multiple perspectives in the same room with the elected official, who should have a keen interest in how these public resources impact the entire community, i.e., from those with lived experience to municipal and county mayors and commissioners. It helps, too, to reframe the challenge of residents without homes as the broader issue that it is: a diminishing lack of affordable housing, wages that do not keep up with the increasing costs of housing, and need for services that will help stabilize residents in homes they can sustain.

Your group of organized, informed, community influencers can make the most comprehensive case when it is made together from different perspectives. This also generates a more compelling expectation of the visiting official to support this work through the generation and responsible management of public funding for the people of the state or district. A prime North Carolina model of this was a site visit hosted by Diakonos in Statesville (NC) for Congressman Patrick McHenry at their Fifth Street Ministries facility: https://bit.ly/3SdllXT.

Three things are needed to pull this off well:

Divide up specific talking points for each perspective; don’t waste time repeating the same points;
Engage media connections at the event; and
Provide data specific to the district represented by your elected official.

Below are one-page infographics NCCEH developed for this purpose and can be printed into color copies for your use.