Opinion: Temporary Housing for the Homeless Is Just a Band-Aid on a Gaping Wound

We ask ourselves: Why, after spending tens of billions of dollars, are California’s twin problems of homelessness and housing affordability decidedly worse?

The answer is simple. We are employing short-term solutions to a long-term problem.

The vast majority of the $20 billion that California has spent over the last five years is for temporary housing. “Project Room Key” and the “Inside Safe” program in Los Angeles are for temporary housing that does not alleviate the housing affordability crisis, and at a human level, does not relieve the misery and anxiety that being without a permanent home casts over a person’s life.

By definition, a person in temporary housing still is recorded as homeless. But even worse, fewer than a quarter of people in these programs end up in permanent housing.

You might be tempted to think that the reason we rely on temporary housing is that it is cheaper. However, that is not even the case: Los Angeles is spending $4,500 a month to place homeless people in hotels on a temporary basis. If you gave them $4,500 a month, they could rent a luxury apartment for themselves.

The temporary housing model is a train to nowhere, and if we continue to rely on it, matters will only get worse. Matters are already worse now than five years ago.

If we start with the assumption that housing is a human right provided to people by any civilized society, then we need long-term solutions allowing people peace and stability. In absolute terms, there is not a housing shortage in places like Los Angeles. Our vacancy rate is currently 4.9 percent.

This means that there are more vacant units than homeless people here. But there is a mismatch: Luxury units remain empty, while the poorest of people — often the elderly and the disabled — compete with working-class residents for whatever passes for “affordable.”

There are solutions to such problems. We need to control rents so that people can remain stable in their existing homes. We need to stop tearing down affordable housing and replacing it with luxury. Most of all, we need to rehabilitate older buildings to accommodate people on limited incomes — it is called “adaptive reuse.” If we continue to treat this long-term problem like a short-term issue, we are simply putting a band-aid on a gaping wound.

It may seem attractive to politicians to employ street sweeps that put homeless people out of sight, but it doesn’t work. Moving people into motels with no promise of permanent housing is a cruel hoax. The current approach at all levels of government is not realistic or meaningful. The sooner we face up to the long-term problem, the sooner we can begin digging out of the hole that we have created. Redirecting the vast majority of funds into permanent housing will yield lasting results that endless temporary solutions will not.

People of means and power should try walking in the shoes of the millions of suffering California renters, who don’t know if they will have to leave the state or end up on the streets.

Putting all humanitarian issues aside, the affordable housing and homelessness crises are terrible for the California brand. We like to brag about being the fifth largest economy in the world, but we are the poorest state based on our cost of living.

We are also the homeless capital of America and arguably the world, as I travel extensively to developing countries. I have seen many shanty towns, informal settlements, and refugee camps, but nowhere I have been has as many people sleeping on the sidewalk as California. The status quo is both shameful and catastrophic for our future.

Michael Weinstein is the president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the largest global HIV/AIDS organization, and AHF’s Healthy Housing Foundation.