David Henderson

Recent Activity

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  David commented on the article | over 1 year ago

  Portland State University's Homeless Problem: Insensitive Students

   

  
  

  Hey Rev. Cynthia,

  
  

  Thanks for sharing your story. When I went to write this piece I asked myself the same question about the number of PSU students experiencing, or who have experienced, homelessness. As you point out, those statistics are elusive for understandable reasons.

  
  

  I can see how domiciled students can fall into a mentality of thinking of the unhoused as 'others', even when there are people in their own classes who find themselves in difficult situations. I would hope that college campuses would be a place to learn about social inequalities and some tact. Certainly the piece in the Vangaurd demonstrated no such sensitivity.

  
  

   

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  David signed the petition | over 1 year ago

  Tell Portland State University's Newspaper to Retract its Anti-Homeless Article
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  David started the petition | over 1 year ago

  Tell Portland State University's Newspaper to Retract its Anti-Homeless Article
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  David commented on the article | almost 2 years ago

  Why Housing Is Not the Answer to Homelessness

  Hey SLO Homeless,

  
  

  Thanks for the comment. I am not arguing on behalf of the shelter system by any means. I certainly agree that is an antiquated model that has run its course. However, I do not believe you can so flippantly say that Housing First is always a cheaper intervention, indeed, there is no such data that suggests this. 

  
  

  For chronically homeless persons, no doubt, Housing First is a cost effective solution. But those cost savings are wrapped up in the otherwise costly emergency services as well as other community resources spent on maintaining people on the streets. For a family that is facing a two month homeless spell due to momentary negative externalities, it is inconceivable that propping this family up in long-term supportive housing is cost effective.

  
  

  So yes, therefore I do argue that the best alternative is intervention, which you phrase as "not being on the tracks". I think there is more to the idea of intervention than you let on, it is more complicated to administer, and less universally implemented, as you suggest. For episodically homeless persons, I would argue that greater than Housing First, and superior to a shelter, would be a robust short term rental assistance program. Getting such an intervention right would be a tricky undertaking, but ultimately for people who are in and out of homelessness, instead of quickly bouncing them from one rental dwelling to another, it seems most reasonably to figure out a way to stabilize these households and address the underlying causes of why these people are at risk of homelessness. 

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  David commented on the article | almost 2 years ago

  Why Housing Is Not the Answer to Homelessness

  Hi SlumJack,

  
  

  Thanks for your multiple contributions to this discussion. You are correct that what I post is an ideology, my argument is not that people ought not have beliefs, perhaps dogma would have been a more accurate word.

  
  

  You are right that, in the moment that we would, hypothetically "house 'em all" that there would be no homelessness, but as you point out, the problem is when individuals become homeless again. You are right that there is no one unknown "cause" for people becoming homeless, there are a myriad of causes, some of which are macro economic, some of which are more micro or personal. I still maintain there is a lot we do not know about homelessness and poverty. I really do believe this belief that we know everything there is to know (i.e., homeless people are homeless) is problematic. Housing First, which we all rightly embrace, is borne from research about homelessness, let us not forget. In order to progress from where our interventions are now, we do need to accept there is more we can learn. There always is.

  
  

  I am not sure of the ratio of homeless research v.s. money spent on direct interventions, I would suspect it is more favorable than you suggest. However, I would say that without money spent on research, we would not have Housing First or Rapid Rehousing as significant interventions with national momentum.

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  David commented on the article | almost 2 years ago

  Why Housing Is Not the Answer to Homelessness

  Hey Mark,

  
  

  Thanks for the comment.  Indeed I agree that housing is the first step. You rightly identify that my argument is not about bashing housing based interventions, but rather to acknowledge there is more to homelessness than the lack of a home (as you have well chronicled with Invisible People). The shelter system is certainly a mess, 21 day plans simply cannot do anything about severe problems, I can barely get myself to reliably right a post on this blog every 21 days!

  
  

  Your friend's statement that "the system is not broken it was never meant to work" might very well be on point. My argument here is to not loose sight of the fact that housing is not the end of resolving a homeless state, but the beginning. Hypothetically, if we had the means, and political will, to place all unhoused persons into homes, and then failed to provide supportive services, that too would be a system that was designed to fail.

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  David signed the petition | almost 2 years ago

  Tell Big Oil to Pay Its Fair Share for California's Students
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  David commented on the article | about 2 years ago

  When It Comes to Evaluating Results, Homeless Services Are Apples and Oranges

  Thanks for the comment, and you do follow the argument correctly. The problem is that success needs to be contextualizedr. Hardline standards encourage "churning", that is idenitfying the "low hanging fruit", as you put it. The reason this is problmematic is that the if services are incentivized to idenitfy people who are "most helpable", perhaps people who would otherwise get housing or employment on their own regardless of an agency's efforts, then we are not helping people so much as we are taking credit for the success of those able to lift themselves up.

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  David commented on the article | about 2 years ago

  Faulty Definition Leaves Millions "Out of the Homeless Force"

  Hi Kathryn,

  
  

  Thanks for the policy clarification. I believe you are right that since HUD's definition is part of the HEARTH Act Congress would be required to make this change. Thanks for pointing this out!

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  David commented on the article | about 2 years ago

  The Need to Modernize Data Collection in Homeless Services

  The problems are matters of policy and politics rather than technical barriers. The HMIS mandate, by design, creates regional monopolies of closed off databases.