Bramson: Shifting the narrative doesn’t solve homelessness

In his 2019 State of the State address, Gov. Gavin Newsom forcefully proclaimed that “housing ends homelessness.”

With a history working on this issue, Newsom was making a bold statement that the crisis on our streets would be a focus of his administration. And that attention would be directed toward a regional response with the state leading the way to help cities and counties build out prevention, supportive services and permanent housing resources that might actually help us begin to reverse the damage of decades of underinvestment and neglect.

What a difference a few years can make.

This month, Newsom — emboldened by a recent ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court — decided that we have spent enough time trying to end homelessness. He issued an executive order to clear encampments on state-owned property, effectively arguing that progress now is defined by pushing people out, even if they have nowhere else to go. He then doubled down this month, telling local governments if they don’t do the same, the meager state money available now might not even be there for them next year to help aging seniors, disabled adults and hardworking families who are already out of options.

The problem is that homelessness isn’t what’s driving the narrative here. It’s a political problem, with voters demanding a response. And absent the deep, sustained investment that’s truly required to make a difference, officials over the years have turned time and time again to a “law and order” agenda that almost always causes more harm than good for the poorest people.

In the early 1980s, homelessness surged in California as a result of a massive recession, a dramatic loss of naturally occurring affordable housing and the dismantling of our mental health system. But instead of responding to that disaster by reinvesting in people and giving them the housing and support needed to end their homelessness, elected leaders passed legislation that increased criminalization and bolstered temporary, Band-Aid measures like mass shelter, while taking funding away from the solutions that might have actually helped folks get off the streets.

So maybe it’s not that surprising we’ve quickly moved back to enforcement in this latest turning of the screw. What makes it hard is that when we’ve actually put the money into what works, those interventions have helped to end veterans homelessness, prevent people from losing homes and keep the most vulnerable people permanently housed. But despite the empirically sound evidence of effectiveness, none of this work is ever taken to scale.

Many voters, having dealt with visible homelessness for most of their lives, just don’t believe even the most promising data. For others, the wait for true change is just too long to bear.

In this environment, it’s hard for anyone to stay the course, even when all the evidence points one way. Instead, we end up in the rinse and repeat cycle and somehow think this time it will be different. Emergency actions and edicts of reform excite the base, but nothing is ever really different in the end.

That’s why we need to pause now and question whether or not we want to waste another round on reactive and ineffective half measures that in the end won’t get us to where we want to be.

The only way to break this trend is to put our tax dollars to the best and highest use. Approving Regional Measure 4 and Proposition 5 on the November ballot are great places to start, with “yes” votes opening the door to significantly more resources for affordable housing development, preservation and interim shelter. These are the types of investments we need if we ever want to avoid repeating old mistakes.

And, for once and all, we need to summon the collective courage to oppose the policies that we know definitively won’t work, even if it means accepting that real change may take some time.

San José Spotlight columnist Ray Bramson is the Chief Operating Officer at Destination: Home, a nonprofit that works to end homelessness in Silicon Valley. His columns appear every second Monday of the month. Contact Ray at [email protected] or follow @rbramson on X, formerly known as Twitter.