Keeping It Simple

Shelter Services in the Age of Trump

One of the more frustrating characteristics of the MAGA movement is its insistence that our problems all have simple solutions. In over 30 years of government work, I’ve rarely found the answers to our complex societal problems to be easy or obvious. However, on the political left we often underestimate the value of simplicity. When the government can’t or won’t provide adequate resources to support a comprehensive solution, it can still contribute to building a stable foundation for the coordinated efforts of other agencies. We are starting to come to grips with this issue in the context of unsheltered homelessness.

The Trump approach to the problem of homelessness is simple and brutal: pen our unsheltered neighbors in camping areas to keep them from causing problems in our streets. This approach certainly won’t work, neither does the opposite approach of defining “effectiveness” as providing only full service supports and permanent housing. We continue to fail to make significant inroads in the problem of unsheltered homelessness, and this leads to an increase in negative interactions, especially in the downtown areas we share. Portland Mayor Keith Wilson’s shelter plan is a good example of how simplifying the approach has the potential to address the worst aspects of the problem.

Portland’s shelters currently cost and average $55 per guest per night and provide a fairly large spectrum of activities and access to all comers. To succeed in his plan, he’ll need to drive that down to $35 per guest per night. At that price, the shelters may not include food, secure storage, blankets, or even perhaps mattresses. They will, however, likely qualify for federal funds, as camping areas do not. They’ll also have to triage at most sites - refusing access to people with high needs in favor of those who can be served with more modest resources. While this seems harsh, building stable shelters that can be run for a reasonable cost means diverting some people to facilities able to meet more challenging needs. Indeed, my experience volunteering with the unsheltered is that 95% of them are cooperative and helpful, but the 5% with significantly greater needs disrupt the environment for the remainder and drive much of the need for more staff.

Mayor Wilson tours a shelter in Portland. Photo by Anna Lueck for OPB.

This approach also means giving up on using overnight shelters to help people move into more permanent housing, at least for the short term. As Marisa Zapata, the director of Portland State University’s Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative, described Mayor Wilson’s proposal, “This is not a plan for ending unsheltered homelessness.” But overnight shelter has value, even without permanent housing. It keeps people alive better than camping. If done correctly, shelters can create informal communities at longer term sites. For instance, the Nightingale Shelter in South Eugene is self-governing and successful in moving people into longer-term solutions. Also, while shelters likely won’t provide all the services we would like to offer, the establishment of long term sites does allow other service providers to provide the supports the local, state, and federal governments do. For instance, if food isn’t provided by the shelter, non-profits can work out routes to provide it more regularly. Finally, shelters reduce conflicts in business areas.

Adequate permanent housing for the unsheltered does not currently exist and likely won’t for some time to come. The Trump Administration certainly won’t provide the kind of funding necessary for large-scale low-income housing construction. That will wait on slower, less well-funded state initiatives and another federal administration.

The election disappointed many of us in many ways. While there certainly are a great many topics we should fight the Trump Administration on, shelter could be one where we accept a simpler, less comprehensive approach, building on what is offered. It won’t give us the full solutions we prefer, but it could keep people alive and off the streets at night.

“Good Initiative, Poor Judgment”

My drill sergeants used to say this when we did something assertive, but wrong. Most civilian federal employees got an e-mail from hr@opm.gov testing the ability to communicate directly across the whole of government. It’s not a terrible idea, to be honest, except the e-mail itself violated almost every anti-phishing policy in the federal government.

Graphic from Reddit.

Despite the failure of the initial e-mail to comply with the requirements of government communications, the Administration sent out a similarly non-compliant one three days later. As someone once told me, it’s good to know the rules before you try to change them.

Recommendation

Alexander at the End of the World by Rachel Kousser. Alexander III of Macedon (“The Great”) is considered one of the great conquerors in world history. Historians generally focus on his victory against the Persian Empire and often omit much of what followed. Prof. Kousser’s book shines a light on his more mixed record after that point and how he came to adopt many of the customs and practices of the peoples he conquered, even to the point where his Greek soldiers repeatedly mutinied.

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