To say that some of our largest cities are experiencing a decline is an understatement.
San Francisco and the Bay Area are the prime examples. Long known for its beautiful climate, welcoming spirit, and one of the modern engineering wonders of the world, the city has attracted tourists, entrepreneurs, and some of the brightest tech minds. Yet, in June 2021, the city’s chamber of commerce conducted a poll and found more than 40% of residents said they planned to move out of the city. Seventy percent feel the quality of life in the city had declined. How did we get here?
The homelessness crisis that the area is experiencing is a large part of the decline. The same poll showed 88% believed homelessness has worsened in recent years and 80% saw addressing the homelessness crisis as a high priority. Homeless counts continue to increase in the Bay Area, and now officials seem to be grasping at straws, even going as far as asking local residents to take homeless individuals into their spare rooms. While there are plenty of charitable families who want to help address this crisis, this is not even close to a sensible solution for the nearly 30,000 unhoused individuals in the Bay Area.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed vowed to address “all the bulls*** that has destroyed our city” with a policing plan for the Tenderloin neighborhood, where homelessness, open-air drug use, drug dealing, and untreated mental illness is ever-present. Unfortunately, the mayor’s recognition that the once great city is destroyed doesn’t come with corresponding recognition of what has destroyed it.
The city is also operating the Linkage Center, a drug recovery center, in the middle of what has been described as an open-air drug market. The idea of the center is to link addicts to services, including housing, detox, and respite. Multiple accounts say drug use occurs in the center, leading to the question of whether the Linkage Center is stopping drug consumption or fueling it.
But what the Linkage Center does show is that city officials are failing to make the link between homelessness and the causes of homelessness, such as addiction and mental illness. Until officials rectify that, their inability to address drug use and mental illness, and the homelessness crisis, will continue to grow. Misdiagnosing homelessness as merely the lack of housing, and not just one of many problems facing the homeless, will mean that cities in crisis will continue to treat just one aspect of a multifaceted problem.
Instead, the idea of providing housing as quickly as possible (and providing support services only afterward) means that a significant number of homeless are unhoused until permanent supportive housing is obtained. And people are dying in the streets before they can be helped. The city’s chief medical examiner recently reported that over the past two years, the city has seen more than 1,360 accidental drug overdose fatalities, more than double the total COVID-19 death toll.
A Harvard team studying the long-term effectiveness of permanent supportive housing found that while housing retention in the first year was high, rates declined precipitously thereafter. After 10 years, just 12% of the previously homeless remained housed.
The continued overreliance on housing first policies will not solve our homelessness crisis, just as a doctor treating the symptoms will not cure the disease. Until we acknowledge the problem of substance abuse and mental illness, we cannot even begin to address the solution. Unfortunately, the progressive policymakers would prefer to support safe consumption sites, where people can use heroin, fentanyl, and other illegal drugs in an effort to avoid fatal overdoses. Some have argued that the Linkage Center is becoming just that. But ultimately, drug addiction is never overcome by “safe” consumption.
Many communities have tried to fight homelessness with a sole focus on housing and have failed. Now it seems that they are trying to fight drug addiction with more drug use. It’s exactly the wrong course.
Dr. Ben Carson is the founder and chairman of the American Cornerstone Institute and the former secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
