Local Section

What does it take to build a home? More than most people can imagine. Home is where people recover and dream, have conversations, make connections, and where they find themselves. For homeless people across the nation, the concept of “home” is cut short. The unhoused epidemic in the United States reveals a discrepancy between how people strategize recovery for homeless people versus how the homeless population is actually treated. Homelessness has become an impending crisis in the last few years. Since the Great Recession and the resulting housing bubble burst, the concept of shelter has found itself at the forefront of many American’s minds: affording it, attaining it, and desperately holding on to it. Shelter is a matter that is close to everyone in some shape or form. 

While housing and shelter have been expanded in recent years, it is not enough to give homeless populations the stability they need to recover. Housing insecurity is something that affects all Americans—whether one is part of the dwindling middle class or makes below the standard livable wage— and has been an ever-prominent topic in policy and community discussion. Yet homelessness policies mainly target “damage control” rather than preventative or, even more rarely, sustainable measures. A common theme among the solutions in the past year has been a focus on housing construction projects, but these so-called concrete fixes are only one part of the strategy for resolving homelessness. There needs to be more. There needs to be mental healthcare.  

In current polls, 54 percent of Americans support combating homelessness with government policies for shelter and housing [1]. 47 percent of Americans believe that funding should go toward mental health and substance abuse services [2]. While most people prefer to increase housing production, this is indicative of a capitalistic mindset that furthers a lack of awareness of how homeless people recover. To exist in America, people are constantly pushed by a drive to profit, monetize themselves, get a job, and get on with it. 

Unfortunately, others may already have a pre-existing foundation of stability through financial security, which provides the mental clarity to develop hobbies, a support network, and access to secure spaces, that much of the homeless population does not. One cannot expect those who are homeless or at risk of being homeless to monetize themselves out of a situation, nor can one expect them to sustainably exist purely on the hope of finding shelter. People rely on the support of many institutions every day to support themselves physically and mentally, from healthcare to welfare, but these resources are not by default available to the unhoused. 

Instead, housing production prioritizes literal “concrete” solutions. Governor Newsom signed into law $10.3 billion for affordable housing in 2021, sending a public statement about the state’s determination to solve the housing crisis. As a result, California has added 32,000 beds to both new units and existing shelters in the last three years [3]. Financial housing aid also provides some assistance, but it lacks the strategic ability to combat the ongoing mental and physical dangers unhoused individuals face. The social and mental effects of homelessness make chronic homelessness within the United States inevitable. 

Despite providing massive funding packages for housing and assistance programs at the state level, federal assistance to state and federal protections for the unhoused have decreased. The discrepancy between the efforts of state and federal governments leads to flawed distribution of funds. State funding packages come from reserves and tax measures. However, statewide packages are typically only enough for a one-time funding, meaning the aid runs out quickly, and the support programs that are funded through these packages struggle to operate efficiently [4].As waitlists persist due to inadequate aid, the mental health conditions of homeless individuals experiencing trauma are at risk.  

Policymakers and citizens alike fail to realize that solving homelessness is not solely a construction issue but an epidemic of human interaction or lack thereof that is needed for holistic recovery. Homeless people can go days without interacting with others. Even people’s tendencies when interacting with unhoused individuals—avoid eye contact and do not engage—show how imprinted stigmas are. A homeless person ceases to be seen as a human being in the eyes of current culture, contributing to their own isolation and loss of self. 

People’s belief systems are intertwined with policy and the law, meaning there is something fundamentally wrong with an overall societal message that pushes for rehabilitation of the unhoused while the Supreme Court’s decisions and their potential policy ramifications within the U.S. prevent avenues of doing so. In June 2024, the Supreme Court Decision on City of Grants Pass v. Johnson made it legal for cities to cite and ban people from sleeping in public spaces, making homelessness a criminal offense [5]. The Court’s decision made the homeless vulnerable to further dehumanization. Thus, the perception that the unhoused fall into criminal behavior by nature and their life status will inevitably persist as it has only been further reinforced. 

After Grants Pass v. Johnson, Governor Newsom ordered a statewide sweep of encampments, urging cities to clean up their streets [6]. Newsom’s orders promised affordable housing and brighter futures [7]. However, voters, leaders, and policymakers are generally stuck at a crossroads between helping house the homeless and making them “disappear”—the two options being permanent housing or potential jail time. Because more than 80 percent of the homeless population experiences trauma, they have significant levels of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) [8]. The effects of mental health deterioration can manifest in many ways, most poignantly as distrust in others and a sense of hopelessness [9]. For anyone who has ever gone through the inconsistent rollercoaster of homelessness in its various forms, the very act of survival means a loss of self and autonomy, something the sole contribution of housing cannot directly fix. 

My experience with homelessness has made me aware of the need for developing awareness surrounding mental healthcare, having seen and experienced firsthand how being unhoused without resources affects an individual. To be in the situation of homelessness is to fight for yourself constantly. The energy you spend trying to survive is the energy you cannot use to recover, making accessible mental healthcare for homeless individuals imperative. I am a survivor of youth homelessness. I spent the better part of the time I was supposed to be focused on high school more focused on what could fit into my mom’s old compact SUV. We moved from couch to couch across three different states. I spent that period of my life purely surviving from day to day. At 14 years old, I watched the people around me struggle to find ways to help. Research suggests that unhoused people need sustainable mental health resources, such as hobbies, to create outlets and restore a sense of individuality and autonomy. Ultimately, I helped myself through coping via journaling, art, hiking, and anything that made me feel whole. None of the activities I did were in an effort to monetize, but rather to encourage a sense of self and autonomy away from a distressing situation. 

I thought that once I had my own address to come home to, everything would be okay. Unfortunately, even when a “chapter” appears to be over, it is not. Homelessness follows you; it takes years to rebuild your sense of stability, showing that simply being housed does not resolve its lingering effects. Homelessness is a spectrum that all sorts of people experience in various forms, demonstrating the need for policy-driven recovery packages and infrastructure. After working and speaking with homeless and at-risk students for the past several years, I have observed a consensus: there needs to be a support-based community for those experiencing homelessness to find constructive success. 

Through social activity, interaction, and hobbies, mental healthcare has been shown to reduce stress and increase one’s sense of community [10]. Prioritizing involvement and skill development through activity assists with exiting the perpetual survival mode state that many homeless people experience [11]. Although policy may not yet boldly showcase funding for mental healthcare plans, some progress is being made through pioneering nonprofits and burgeoning city plans. Temporary housing programs such as Safe Place for Youth (SPY) in Santa Monica provide Arts Healing workshops in art, writing, and music, as well as fitness classes, to assist with rehabilitation [12]. The new housing development in Downtown Los Angeles, Weingart Tower, demonstrates a holistic, full-service approach to tackling the trauma of the unhoused [13]. Weingart’s developers intend to create a stabilized environment that promotes recovery through an interactive community [14]. Projects like SPY and Weingart Tower aim to do more than standard shelters through a rehabilitation-style approach.

National and state funding must be allocated toward community programs based on rehabilitating the homeless population in culmination with housing aid. Combining housing and mental healthcare as the default policy package would not only guide unhoused individuals toward constructive pathways but also provide leaders with a more specific template for handling large-scale issues like encampments. Additionally, encouraging the creation of more localized programs would provide more infrastructure and oversight of development and implementation. 

Programs such as the California Emergency Solutions and Housing Program (CESH) offer $53 million dollars in grant funding to local governments to build further infrastructure for housing assistance and placement programs [15]. Other programs within the Housing and Community Development Department of California are targeted toward job retention and housing, leaving the work of integral “community development” to nonprofits that cannot provide the infrastructure needed to address statewide homeless populations. Because models such as Weingart Tower set the stage for more encompassing homeless rehabilitation initiatives, policy and statewide programs should integrate the same system. 

More funding has to be shifted toward mental healthcare for unhoused individuals to reap the benefits of a better life. Otherwise, homelessness in this country will remain a never-ending loop. Yet a country cannot shift policy and spending on housing and homelessness if residents do not shift their own concept of homelessness and recovery to an “individual first” issue.  If people truly want to help the homeless population, they have to start evolving their perceptions of what recovery entails and how this can be included in programs and housing packages moving forward.  Recent actions from California show some progress in priorities, with Proposition 1 passing in May 2024, providing a $6.4 billion Behavioral Health Bond for mental health resources and supportive housing. [16]

However, after the 2024 election, California's results reflect conflicting ideas surrounding national solutions to the homeless epidemic. Proposition 5, which would have lowered the vote requirement to approve bonds for affordable housing and public infrastructure, failed. Proposition 33, which would have expanded rent control, also failed. Proposition 36, which promotes a tough-on-crime stance, increasing penalties for drug and theft, passed with a 69 percent majority [17]. While these measures seem like isolated proposals, they overlap when implemented, affecting the most vulnerable populations. When voters support these conflicting measures, they further the difficult positions homeless individuals are put in. The public has the power to choose otherwise and change these outcomes. 

If people truly want to assist in sustainable efforts to prevent homelessness, they need to be both interactive volunteers and catalysts—they need to be community members. Constructive participation is how a community changes perceptions and furthers awareness in society and policy on a larger scale. Go to a local shelter and provide services such as teaching or assisting with any programs local nonprofits offer. Giving unhoused people stability requires a more holistic, community-centric approach. Projects that focus on holistic development can have long-lasting effects on recovery, and you can be part of that. Together, people can do more than build up; they can help set a new foundation for home.