Homes Instead of Handouts?

Homes Instead of Handouts

The Los Angeles Times published a story on September 28, 2004 about San Francisco’s plan to “end homelessness” through a program that they call, “Care Not Cash.” The bi-line states—San Francisco’s “Care Not Cash” program slashes welfare checks to the homeless but gives them their own rooms and other support.

The idea is that instead of a person who is homeless receiving $410 per month in a welfare check, they would receive only $62 per month, but get a SRO (single room occupancy) unit in a local SRO hotel. The unit would be a private room in a building staffed with case managers.

On the surface, this is a good idea. Instead of a person having to sleep on a public bed in a crowded homeless shelter, a homeless person could have his/her own private room. There are, however, concerning issues:

How do you pay for these SRO housing units? (In San Francisco and New York, they propose to use existing funds for shelter beds to fund these new private units.)
Is it appropriate to de-fund existing homeless services to fund “new and improved” homeless services?
In Los Angeles, we have 80,000 people who are homeless and only 20,000 shelter beds. Is it politically realistic to fund 60,000 new SRO units, especially given the cost of land and construction?
In the meantime, if we take funding from existing homeless services we are just increasing the number of people ending up on the streets.

There are so many questions and issues. I applaud the efforts of officials in San Francisco to try to do something—anything—to help those living on the streets. But please don’t throw the baby out with the bath water, by taking existing homeless service funding to try some new social re-engineering…