To address homelessness in our communities, we have to stop blaming individuals and start solving the root causes.
All of us, no matter what we look like or where we come from, want a safe place to sleep and to know that a hardship, like losing a job or getting sick, won’t make us homeless. Across the U.S., research shows that cities with the highest rates of homelessness have one thing in common: not enough homes affordable to people of all income levels. In the recently published Homelessness is a Housing Problem, authors Gregg Colburn and Clayton Aldern found that this remains true regardless of rates of mental illness, poverty or whether states had Republican or Democratic-led governments. Housing is a bipartisan issue. While there may be additional factors that make some of us more vulnerable to housing instability than others, ultimately, rents rising faster than wages and not enough homes affordable to people of all income levels are issues that impact our entire community.
Imagine you are playing a game of musical chairs, and you have a broken leg. There are 10 chairs and 11 players. When the music stops, your injury slows you down, and you are left without a chair. If there were enough chairs for all the players, you might have been the last one to sit down, but you’d still have a chair. To see meaningful change toward ending homelessness, we have to focus our energy on the root causes and strategically use our resources on the most impactful solutions. Our entire community benefits when we all have access to a safe and stable place to sleep at night.
Homelessness continues to grow across the state. Recent data shows both Washoe and Clark counties saw more individuals sleeping outside compared to previous years. It’s no surprise then that the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s (NLIHC) GAP report has once again ranked Nevada as the state with the fewest homes affordable and available for the estimated 91,000 households making the lowest wages — 30 percent of the area median income, which is about $26,340 a year in Clark County. A second NLIHC report shows that the majority of Nevadans across income levels are paying more than 30 percent on housing. Using median rent prices, it’s estimated that a person has to make $66,000 a year (more than the area median income in Clark County) to afford a two-bedroom apartment for their family without being cost-burdened. The wages for some of Nevada’s most available jobs like retail, food service and warehouse workers all fall well short. When we pay too much for housing each month, many of us are only one emergency away from homelessness.
Now, think back on that game of musical chairs and imagine you are arrested for being the only one let without a chair. Last week, the U.S. Court ruled that individuals sleeping outside can be arrested for having nowhere else to go. Some Nevada cities already have laws allowing the ticketing or arresting of adults sleeping in public places. This kind of response will not address the root causes of homelessness.
Instead, it shifts the burden to law enforcement, a strategy that has not been successful in the past and wastes public resources while making the problem worse. In fact, arrests only make it harder for individuals to access stable housing, prolonging the problem community-wide. For our most vulnerable Nevadans, a robust network of support services and purpose-built supportive housing are interventions well-documented to reduce rates of chronic homelessness. This also reduces the public cost of homelessness by stabilizing folks who would otherwise have to cycle through emergency rooms, shelters and jails to survive. Giving people long-term stable housing that they can afford is far less expensive than keeping them homeless. If we are to make meaningful progress in addressing this issue, we have to stop blaming people for not having access to housing and instead shift our focus to solutions that work investing in building housing options for Nevadans at all income levels and providing robust support services to keep our more vulnerable neighbors in their own homes.
Despite recent attention to arrest our way out of homelessness, there has been exciting momentum in Nevada. Unprecedented state and local investments have increased financing tools supporting the development of more than 2,800 new homes that will be affordable for Nevadans at lower income levels. The new Supportive Housing Development Fund will increase funding and capacity for supportive housing across the state. We should celebrate these wins while continuing to work together to advocate for strategic long-term investments in sustainable solutions that work. As a community, we also need to welcome these developments and our neighbors who will live there. Living near good schools, grocery stores, and quality jobs help us thrive. Thriving families mean thriving communities. Housing is a fundamental necessity for all of us, and where we live has a tremendous impact on our ability to access opportunities that keep us healthy, drive our success and move our families forward in life. Let’s come together, stop perpetuating myths about who needs affordable housing and build a shared investment in the community-wide benefits of having enough homes all our neighbors can afford. Only when we rally together to build more homes affordable to Nevadans at all income levels will we see a decline in homelessness and the positive community change that comes with it.
Juawana Grant is the director of education and outreach at the Nevada Housing Coalition working on a statewide capacity building project to promote and advance affordable housing across Nevada, juawana.grant@nvhousingcoalition.org.
