Does Madison's Plan Help or Exploit the Homeless?

When Madison's Homeless Services Consortium knowingly excluded the homeless by shutting down the only committee that included them, they lost access to the inside view. Little coincidence that the Consortium's draft report (update: now apparently missing from website at link) is nearly devoid of rigor and empirical data--it could hardly even pass for undergraduate sociological research. It's mostly guess-work that uses only "perceived" problems and data. Anything passing for "analysis" only includes data drawn from those who applied for assistance. Those estimates don't include car-campers ranging anywhere from dozens to hundreds at any given time; nor does it include those who are doubled-up, a figure which would probably include hundreds if not thousands more; nor does it include people who simply don't apply for assistance because they think that assistance is only for people who fall into institutionalized categories, such as people with mental or physical disabilities, with substance issues, with children, or with criminal records; nor does it include the sane and sober who cannot deal with being isolated in an housing arrangement that's concentrated with their (would-be-recovering) counterparts. Best I can tell after a first read, the consortium's report doesn't even include economic forecasts of deflating wages and inflating of prices (ie, projected changes in buying-power), which will better predict increases in homelessness than just continuing to chart recent trends.

Although housing first(HF) has an empirically demonstrated success rate 5 times greater than other programs, the consortium has proposed an HF pilot program that will serve only a few dozen people in a city where thousands end up homeless every year. Perhaps because the flawed right-wing logic of completely unprofessional organizations like the Salvation Army still holds sway, the consortium continues to focus on "rehabilitating" the homeless first and housing them later. The conservative movement of the 1890s came to realize the problem resided not in reforming the needy, but in reforming those who exploited them--the wealthy robber barons. Hence, we ended up with antitrust laws and the legendary republican, Fighting Bob. Out of that conservative movement arose what came to be called progressivism, a movement rooted in social equity and justice. Here may be a real case where forgetting history dooms people to repeat it.

Nothing in this consortium's report even hints at confronting the dominant cause of homelessness--an unjust economic structure. Any rigor would have concluded that the consortium would do better to put a large part of its energy into advocacy for sweeping economic reforms. As with becoming impoverished, most people end up homeless because they aren't paid enough and because of unnecessarily inflated prices, not because they don't know how to manage their finances, not because they are dumb or addicted to a substance. How can this consortium think $450 per month is "affordable housing" for someone making minimum wage? And that's the low end of what they think is affordable! Fair wages and affordable prices would provide most people with a large enough savings to endure a crisis should they end up sick or laid-off. As is, most Americans are just a paycheck or two away from homelessness.

If Madison can't house a few thousand homeless people, what the hell are they going to do when an economic tsunami hits? Figure out how to provide housing in the event of an economic crisis, and not only will all current housing problems quickly disappear, but that economic crisis itself may be averted. There is no qualitative difference between this hypothetical crisis and the current problem: It's human-created disaster. Solve the problem, or otherwise keep that cozy do-gooder feeling running, while the masses on the streets build-up into mobs with nothing left to loose by taking what they need. In the words of Flannery O'Connor, the life you save may be your own.

I'm pissed by the perpetual whitewash. Rather than housing the homeless, I'm really suspicious that this consortium, even if unintended, is more about retaining access to funding, reducing work-load and creating more case-worker jobs!