good uh it's a pleasure to have with us
today judge glock from the cicero
institute
and talking to us about his work on uh
homelessness policies
in particular in austin um so judge
thanks for joining us first of all
uh when let's start talking a little bit
about the sister institute so what is
what is the sister institute uh so yeah
cicero institute is a it's a relatively
new institute a think tank
in a way i was founded just about two
years ago in san francisco but we've
joined the great uh
california exodus and have relocated to
austin with the most of our
technological peers and funders and so
forth
um so cicero institute does what a lot
of other think tanks do
we publish pieces we write op ads
uh we do research into public policy
issues but
one of the things that we try to do at
cicero which is distinctive
is do the whole alpha to omega changing
of the laws which means
when we have a good idea that we want to
help uh
actually put in practice we go into the
uh the statutes in a certain state
right now we're working in eight states
and we have lobbyists in eight states to
help us out thankfully
uh and we go in there we write what the
the new law should look like we write
uh brief op-eds to help uh convince
people of the value of the law
we write little short uh pieces of
one-pagers that we can wave in state
legislators faces to show you know this
is what the law does
and this is how it benefits you and so
forth and then we we run the
the law across the gamut and get it
signed by the governor and the
this year as i said we're opening eight
states i think we're optimistically
going to have something 12 to 15
different laws passed uh and again
that's not just like well we
testified and we like a law that's fast
but we're actually wrote it and
uh got it across the finish line so
that's what's a little distinctive about
us
it's a fun project it takes away a
little more time from the abstract
research but it's uh
you get to have a more impact on people
in the field and that's one of the
reasons i
joined the group and uh left academia
for uh for it uh i've been having a lot
of fun doing it
so that's a rather pessimistic name
uh isn't it but
cicero institute yeah i mean given how
that turned out but uh
sorry yeah we wrote a little piece about
why
uh you know joe lonsdale was the
original founder and funder
called the cicero institute you know he
stood up for what he believed and he did
make uh
you know uh uh wait you bust you know
slowly down the process
he was good at the governor of sicily
well well i hope it ends better for you
exactly and
he prosecuted
well if he did pretty good you became an
international celebrity for the next
2000 years
he did good as governor sicily and he
prosecuted the catalan conspiracy so uh
you know not not just as well that ends
well he did a lot of good in the
right all right so let's start let's
turn to the the issue of the day then
and and um so what was your
how do you guys get involved with with
with the project on homelessness was
something motivated by
an issue that's going on across the
country or was anything specific to the
issues in texas and in particular austin
leading up to what we have here and a
ballot in front of us in a couple weeks
yeah yeah so i mean it is obviously a
major issue
in many urban areas across the u.s i
mean the main reason we got involved in
it
is because it was a big issue in san
francisco when we were there
obviously it's a big just an equally
large issue since we've moved over here
to austin
uh one of the things that may surprise
people here in texas uh
in austin proper may not be as
surprising but in california before the
coronavirus uh the
a poll of the the voters said that was
the number one issue facing the state
which is kind of incredible when you
think about it
a very small percentage of the
population even in california is
homeless
but they were telling people this issue
struck to their hearts and their
concerns more than any others and um
if you've ever toured san francisco's
tenderloin or skid row on la you'd see
why
uh and obviously recently with prop b
happening here in
uh austin which uh is attempting to
restore the camping ban we see how
heated these
discussions become so we just saw the
issue as something that was very
important
i myself have worked previously in
housing policy mainly and so inevitably
at the movement into
homelessness policy is something that
was very near and dear to me
um and the other side of that is we
thought the contemporary policies that
have almost dominated the field
just aren't working uh we can get in
that more a little later but there's a
kind of
universal model called the housing first
model uh that people thought
about 10 15 years ago was going to quote
unquote end homelessness and it
certainly hasn't and so
we thought it was time to for cities and
states to start taking a different
direction
so just just to to also uh uh focus on
some data here on the on the problem
so has the problem grown nationally over
the past 15 years
or is is something that has been more
concentrated in certain localities in
the country
is that is that do we have a measure of
the overall because you know when you
think about
right before the pandemic we are perhaps
in one of the most prosperous times in
our history
uh right january 2020 is one of the
wealthiest point of our history right
and and so is it is it the case that
that particular segmented population
vulnerable to homelessness has
was growing steadily over time or was
something that we now have
that be more present in urban locales
like san francisco la then austin and so
on
yeah so one of the things that uh you
learn if you if you
research homelessness is that the
numbers on this are just atrocious uh
frankly we didn't have any national
numbers before about 2007.
uh since then the government the federal
government has required what they call a
point in time count which is that
most cities and states uh across the
country are required
usually in january when more people are
in shelter to go around and just sort of
count heads how many people are in the
beds
and then you go outside and people comb
the streets and see well how many people
are sleeping in cars and how many people
are
uh you know intense and outside and um
that's when we get these numbers from
now
overall we've seen reductions in
homelessness uh have you mentioned these
prosperous times we've seen 650 000
homeless people in america in about 2009
and that was down to about 550
000 uh in 2020 before the coronavirus
hit
uh so these overall reductions uh
are important but the the thing those
numbers don't tell if we've seen a
sudden increase especially in the last
seven or eight years in
unsheltered homelessness so the kind of
homelessness that you and i
think about when we think of homeless
which is this person sleeping on the
street has increased about 20 percent
and it's now about a third of all
homeless people and
by some measures that overall reduction
in homelessness uh
really just means a lot more people have
been put into these what are called
permanent supportive housing units
which some people can say kind of are
like an indefinite shelter so if you
include those
uh there's been a drastic increase in
overall homelessness
uh but just in a different kind kind of
a movement from one sort of homeless
shelter to another
uh so in some ways you know it always
depends on how you cut the numbers we've
seen reductions in overall but i think
and
i think most people would agree in the
area we care most about the people on
the streets the most desperate
uh we've seen increases in that and
that's uh what's driving a lot of this
concern in local areas
so all right so so um i think i see i
see
a picture in one of one of your one of
your pieces that
that uh on medium we can link in over
here after after the discussion
where you also focus on the change in
shelter versus shelter
after certain uh particular
interventions take place right in
particular the austin intervention of
2019.
so tell us a little bit about that
[Music]
yeah so um one of the things we we
talked about is
is camping bans and uh the effect on
homelessness
and obviously again there's an issue an
election here in austin that is going to
happen on uh may 1st but early voting
has already started
uh on proposition b to restart restore
this camping ban that was in place and
one of the things we've seen
is that uh the relaxation of camping
bans
lead to sudden increases in unsheltered
homelessness
so right after austin passed its law a
new
laws in june 29 19 you saw
almost 50 percent increase in people on
the on the streets in austin
now some people said well that's just
because you know they're more visible
they don't have to hide and i'm sure
there's some of that
uh but what you also saw was a 20
decrease in shelter
homelessness people were leaving the
shelter for the streets
um and that's not uncommon we've seen
other areas like san francisco
like l.a where
when they've relaxed these bands you've
seen people return to the streets
and we can debate about what the cost
and benefits of that are maybe some
people definitely say well you don't
want to criminalize it
um but the other side and you'll get
this a lot more if you talk to people in
the
substance abuse treatment realm or
mental health providers
is that these people on the street are
distinct from a lot of the homeless
population uh so
you will hear numbers uh people will be
correctly saying listen only
about 20 of homeless people have
an addiction issue or only about 20
percent have a mental health issue and
this is true
uh but if you look at the people uh on
the street themselves
that is entirely different population
the people going in and out of shelters
often for very short term have economic
problems they need help they need to
step up
they don't have these sort of pervasive
long-term issues
uh but the people that are on the street
tend to be overwhelmingly and the
numbers are sort of 75
uh report having a severe addiction
problem and 75
report having a severe mental health
problem the majority have both
so these are people with numerous
numerous barriers and one of the
concerns
is that people who uh are in these
conditions are usually not in the right
mind to seek treatment and there's some
concern
that uh allowing uh the people to get
out of these shelters is exactly
exacerbating the problem
uh with lack of access to treatment and
we've also seen that one of the numbers
i
cite shows that in la um after they
reduced uh
into the camping ban there and skid row
you saw overdose deaths uh
go up by uh 50 excuse me actually
doubled more than double in about uh
six or seven years and so these
bands again i understand that the
controversy around them uh and i
understand
the harm it does to some people who who
may be caught up in it
but the fact is on the whole they seem
to get more people
into treatment and they get more people
back into shelters why relaxing them
seems to get people
out of shelters so uh that's sort of the
balance that people have to weigh there
so can i jump in here uh so on the
austin camping
i think there are two things that we've
hit on so far one is the increase in
visibility after the ban
and the other is this movement from
shelters
to the street and my understanding is
that you know austin was kind of late to
this game
and they did like fact-finding missions
in uh
on the west coast to see how to go about
dealing with the homelessness so
would this have been something that
would have been apparent to them
at the time to say that this is kind of
an intentional effort
to move people from shelters onto the
street because some of the rhetoric
around the camping ban
relaxation was basically like exactly so
we want this to be more visible
so that you'll know you need to deal
with this so
yeah do you have a sense should that be
this was going to happen
yes basically if you look at and it is
always surprising when people
cite like well we took fact-finding
trips to la and san francisco
and the general assumption is that these
places are
almost unmitigated disasters in terms of
their homeless policy almost everyone
agrees that
whatever they're doing about
homelessness it's clearly not working
but
yeah you had some people in yeah
exactly you had some people in the
advocacy community said listen it's a
problem and until you get it in people's
faces they won't recognize it
and they won't uh sort of give up the
money to create the extra housing that
we need to shelter these people
uh that was some of the you know kind of
undisputed language
going into it uh the problem in that is
what you've seen is
one you know i talked before about the
housing first model
and the sad fact is there's never going
to be enough money to give
a free house to every single person who
wants one and we've seen that in places
frankly like san francisco san francisco
built these permanent supportive housing
units these
uh units where you give someone on the
street an indefinite housing unit for as
long as they want to live there
and hopefully that will quote unquote in
homelessness they built enough
to shelter every single person that was
homeless chronically homeless in san
francisco
15 years ago the homelessness doubled
nonetheless similar sort of things in la
um so that sort of story that well if
you make it more visible people are
going to fund the right housing and
that's going to help
people get into the the housing units
didn't seem to play out
uh but the other side of that is is
exactly the one the problem i mentioned
earlier that
where you saw the relaxation of these
camping bans you saw sudden surges in
violence and overdose deaths
so um la i
mentioned there was a study done in 2006
they had what they called a
safer cities initiative they began
cleaning up skid row and they saw a
reduction homelessness about half a
reduction in unsheltered
homelessness most of all and a reduction
of violence
and overdose deaths by about half as i
said before when they ended that
they saw a sudden doubling of overdose
deaths and they saw a double of
a 50 increase in violence mainly among
with homeless both perpetrators and
victims
uh so the the story that you got from
some relaxation of the camping ban that
this would make it more visible this
would allow people to get treatment
this would allow the service providers
to have more access to them if they
weren't hiding
that didn't seem to play out it hasn't
played on other areas i've mentioned in
in my piece
uh places like colorado springs where
colorado springs instituted a ban in
2010
um and immediately they got two-thirds
people uh of the unsheltered homeless
either to
return their family
employment or to return to shelters uh
so
that seems to be the general result of a
lot of these vans and these really help
people get into the treatment well the
alternative
because again most of these people are
unfortunately suffering from severe
mental illness or addiction problems
is without that extra push they're not
going to get into treatment and that
seems to be the general case
so that suggests that the actual
outcomes that we look at in austin
that we think of as possibly unintended
negative outcomes
it almost seems like we knew that was
going to happen and therefore this is
that must be their objective that which
seems like an interesting objective
council to have yeah right one one would
almost think
i don't want to say it's something like
um the old marxist line that the worse
the better
therefore you rub raw the wounds of
oppression uh but there was some
rhetoric like that around the end of the
ban
and um you know i mentioned the
incredible death rates in in la
which as i often mentioned were higher
death rates for unsheltered homeless
than
uh our soldiers serving in iraq and
afghanistan just you know one out of
every 200 homeless people dying
every single year on the streets and
we're getting closer to that in
austin we had 250 homeless deaths last
year and 190
uh deaths on the street in 2019 the
first year they revealed the camping ban
when uh they lasted a survey of homeless
deaths
about seven or eight years ago it was
about 70 less than 70.
um and so we've seen tripling of
homeless deaths most especially around
the repeal of the camping ban
so that seems to have had an incredibly
negative consequence
in terms of the life and could have been
predicted
one would think like we've seen these
results happen elsewhere this is not
uh sort of un uh unheralded one would
think it is
they went to la they've seen what
happened when they allow these things uh
the
encampments proliferate and um you know
so far the results have not been great
it's interesting so let me let me find
my perspective
that this is what we can let me ask you
a question on
on your point yeah go ahead sorry
i was going to say just a question oh no
you you mentioned you mentioned uh
issues of of the point services to
people
the idea that some people would use as
as as well by
by making the them coming out somehow
right would allow them to be serviced to
the social services to be more closely
get to them and and and help
in the ways that they can help what
strikes me as surprising about the the
measures in place is that well if that
was the objective
why not have that done in zilker park
there'll be a much more humanitarian way
to have people camp to have people you
know in a more pleasant space than
under the overpasses of their town right
and also concentrated in an area
is that something that other places have
done successfully i believe you
mentioned some of that in
in san antonio perhaps and some other
places where you designated a designated
area where
it's a nice well sort of serviced area
where people can camp
and the services can be actually get to
them in a much more effective way is
that
something in the cards here moving
forward
yeah so it's actually when i discuss
some of the the laws we're trying to
pass in other states and that we look
like we're going to get past
and perhaps georgia arizona and we're
trying to assist some
lawmakers here in texas is exactly that
um
you can always have an alternative to
street camping uh
and one of those alternatives not ideal
but clearly superior to the one where
they're right now scattered under
highway overpasses and parks and all the
rest of it
is to designate some area uh where
people can camp they can bring their
camping equipment in
and they can get access to services and
the service providers can
uh provide that to them uh so yeah there
are a few areas that tried this uh
uh phoenix has tried a small version
outside of their main homeless shelter
and i
recently toured it you can see the areas
with this what's called structured
camping facility
not ideal but relatively clean
relatively well maintained with people
who have access to water and sanitation
and you can see directly outside the
fence you can see
chaos garbage and you know human waste
because they don't have bathrooms in the
rest of it
um austin has done a small bit about of
this the the state government
has created what's now known as the
esperanza community on the uh
under i-35 or near i-35 on east side of
austin
and uh again people have critiqued this
as well it's not a
you know individual home for everyone
who lives there it's not the great but
you compare those camps and you compare
frankly the um
the mortality rates and the survival
rates of people in these camps and
they're clearly superior to the people
who are camping just
without supervision on the streets and
on the sidewalks and on the rest of it
uh so you as i often remind people
there's
always an alternative to street camping
those who say we can't do anything like
you mentioned
uh there are many places um again even
early austin
georgia has tried small one in these
camping facilities which like
look if we want them to get access to
treatment here we can provide this
centralized and we can be have access to
these people and know where they are and
help them get what they need
um the problem with that is is in
uh people uh claim that one it's not
doing enough and that two local
governments have to take hard decisions
they have to say well here i want this
camping structure and point a and not
point b
and someone might be mad at that um but
right now you're allowing people to take
over a public place but you're just kind
of
delegating that decision to any
individual who wants to camp
and uh clearly for yeah exactly i'll
jump in on there like
we there was some details on where you
could and could not camp
in uh you know the original ordinance
and the most striking thing to me was
like
you can camp pretty much any public
property except
parks and particularly except city hall
so they
they were conscious of preventing
camping at city hall
i would think like could the state like
reverse that and just say
no camping on public property accept
city hall and provide the services there
that would seem like they could
yeah and it's there's certainly debates
about exactly that where they can do
uh yeah i mean and so forth to the
extent that they were aware of the
outcomes
that would happen as a result of the
relaxation of the ban
having the people who are most
responsible for those outcomes
you know face it would seem like a more
equitable
solution to that one one yeah but this
is not uncommon the san francisco even
when they've relaxed bands they used to
have an encampment right outside
on city hall park and they removed that
one they weren't too happy about that
encampment
even if they were more okay with
encampments sort of outside of that area
and elsewhere
uh so yeah that's the that's the pretty
typical
that's the pretty typical uh local
response they know it's a problem
and they know people aren't happy with
it so they're restricted in some areas
but
often areas that have less political
pull uh they don't get the same sort of
uh
uh the clearing we certainly don't have
camping on this is what you see in san
francisco
yeah like we i i never see anyone care
well well exactly
even though this is probably the
concentration where people most support
uh or are most against the repeal of the
ban
yet it's pretty clearly not happening
here so yeah
yeah the politic again the political
economy
who lives near interstates people who
and i power at all so
um yeah it does tend to be in poor areas
and areas with less political pull and
uh you know i'm almost reluctant to to
mention it but uh directly
behind my house about 15 feet from my uh
back fence is a is a homeless encampment
on a park
uh that i live next this is this
happened after i moved here and
long after i've been working on homeless
policy i know everyone in the in the
camp right there
uh uh kaylee linda richard and adam are
are good people
they are in a crisis as i tell people it
is neither good for them
nor for the city to have them in a camp
right now with open fires with no waste
to disposal all the rest of it
uh i bear them no it will at all but you
know these are the areas the slightly
poorer neighborhoods that get
those sort of encampments and as you
mentioned the city hall and the rest of
them uh don't abide by it
w hotel doesn't have camping inside the
lobby i don't think which is where our
mayor lives of course
made your point richard uh
judge one question about a question
about
about about uh the mobility of of the
so i'm thinking about just as an
economist for a second and think about
the incentives people face
and how they decide on those incentives
is there any sense in which
the places that make the availability of
the camps
or or they're more lenient towers
homeless population is there any
indication any data that suggests that
people then choose to move to those
localities
i would think that the growth in austin
the past few years can that be explained
to some extent by a decrease in folks
coming from san antonio or
houston and dallas because well it turns
out that it's easier to hang out in
austin
might be easier to have access to what
they're looking for especially the ones
that are
preferring to be outside of homeless
shelters um does that do we have
information on that or or that's not
really clear
yeah so this is obviously a big debate
you will hear many people saying
people are moving here because of the
relaxation the camping ban and others
who say
this is uh totally focused there's no
evidence for it but we do have some
numbers on this uh i often mention the
point in time count which i said before
all the cities
are required to to count and austin
actually surveys people as part of that
to say
where did you become homeless where uh
uh did you become homeless and did you
move here and um in austin 37
so you know not quite but uh you know
more than one in three
homeless people have come from outside
the city uh while they were homeless
and as i often remind people too that is
uh of overall homeless numbers as i said
before there's a very distinct
uh population between the sheltered and
the unsheltered population
uh they don't distinguish the where
those people are coming from but
unsheltered
uh but i think most people agree at this
point majority of the unsheltered
uh and the minority of the sheltered
population is coming from outside the
city so
there does seem to be uh clearly we know
that some people are leaving shelters
for the streets as i mentioned those
numbers before but we also know
uh that people are coming from outside
of the city and uh you know i talked to
um
a parks department official about the
the park and the encampment behind here
and no nobody will disagree that people
come here from outside for a number of
reasons uh more social services
more lenient uh policies and so forth um
you know
homeless people i one of the one of the
individuals in my encampment
david who i actually didn't mention
before said he moved here from outside
of austin because he liked the the area
and the restaurant again
very nice guy but clearly in a mental
crisis right now
um and so yeah the numbers are pretty
strong that there's a large percentage
and maybe at least a majority of the
unsheltered are coming from outside the
city
so it to that end is there any
coordination across cities in for
example that
at least an attempt to coordinate across
cities to to given that this is a
problem that you know it's a short
blanket situation right so you move
policies over here and i encourage
people to move over there and
and there's you know austin might be
helping out right now
uh uh but is this any kind of attempt of
mayors of these different cities to to
work together and trying to to solve
this holistically as opposed to
you know uh pumped uh in individual
points
not much unfortunately so it is kind of
um
a lot of city cities treat it as a devil
take behind most sort of problem where
i hope it's your problem and not mine
let's wish it away and all the rest of
it
um the one of the things you have seen
uh is uh family reunification policies
now this
gets derided often is what's called
greyhound therapy you give someone a
greyhound bus ticket to go to x y and z
and this happens in all sorts of ways
big cities do this the little cities
little cities do this to big cities
um now on its own there's some problems
with it but i often tell people
uh
community first village directly outside
of austin which is a beautiful
um campus to help people that are
long-term homeless
um you know say homelessness is really
more of a family and friendlessness
problem than a homelessness problem per
se
and even big cities like san francisco
have seen some success with these family
reunification policies you tell a
homeless individual
listen you want to get back to your
brother or your uncle or your mother
we're going to pay to get you there and
ideally you know we follow up
with you to do that um and you know
we've seen some positive results from
that uh
you know this is not quite the same
thing as every city working on its own
but this doesn't mean it's not the right
it's the wrong idea to help people get
back with their families when
uh like you see in austin you see people
coming from outside and losing those
family connections
so more broadly i think you could
interpret some of
uh to an economist it seems like taking
away choices from people is usually
a negative thing but here you know
you're in some of what you're writing
you're kind of making an argument that
well
we need to change the choice set take
away some choices
and uh give different choices
you know do do you have a sense that
overall it seems like you have a sense
that these people aren't necessarily
making the best choices for them
themselves yeah i mean i'm a big
believer as an
economist that people uh uh allowing
more individual choices a good thing and
in general that is a good thing now
there's two
issues on that of course one is the
effect your choices impose on other
people
uh and so they're issues that we live in
a dense urban space and of course we
cannot allow everybody to make their own
choices willy-nilly of their effects on
others and so
everyone agrees you can't just you know
set up a camp in the middle of the tent
or
uh or sorry in the middle of the street
or the sidewalk or something
um so there's that side of it but the
other side of that is the one i
mentioned before
when you look at the numbers and then
recently ucla came out with a study on
this
of the unsheltered population uh and you
see the
overwhelming numbers of addiction and
people with serious mental illness i
think everybody would agree with someone
who is
schizophrenic is not in a situation to
make their own best choices and if we
have 75
of the unsheltered homeless that are
severely mentally ill according to their
own lights according to their own
background
um obviously you don't want someone in
that situation to just make whatever
decision they see best
now that's why we have things like
inpatient outpatient commitment laws and
one of the things that we've been
fighting for
especially is to get more of this
outpatient commitment you will hear
mental health providers pulling their
hair out
especially in places like um phoenix
about the end of these camping bans and
the proliferation of people on the
street
is because they can't get anybody into
treatment before they had a stick that
said
listen you have to go somewhere you have
to go to shelter you have to go in a
place
and now they're just dried up and the
well that's leading people to get into
that treatment
is gone and the same thing with drug
courts so a lot of cities like san
francisco la have these drug courts
which are set up for people with severe
uh addiction problems who get caught up
in the criminal justice system
and one of the things that you saw after
the relaxation the camping ban and the
relaxation of
petty theft laws and prop 47 is you saw
a lot more people
those drug courts dry up so you had
people that used to be going and sent
into these court supervised programs
that helped them get
unaddicted and now they don't have those
anymore so yeah the combination of
the externalities as the economists call
them and the problem
uh with people and addiction and mental
health crisis means like no these
often aren't in a situation where they
need encouragement to get that next step
and
most of them after the fact will agree
you know we've talked to many people
that
you know if you had given me a free
house and no consequences
five years ago i would have killed
myself because i would have and we've
seen that actually in some of these
housing programs that people are sending
to a house without supervision
and they they overdose very quickly and
it's a very it's it's a real tragedy
but that does seem to be a big part of
the rhetorical issue as people
see your plans as taking away choices it
almost feels like they need you know
you have to kind of create some sort of
rawsian idea of like what would these
people
what choices would these people make you
know
five years down the road once yeah
but it's tricky because the language of
coercion is always sort of
uh yeah it's always hard but it is you
know the one of the things i remind
people this is a is a public space issue
ultimately too and we all agree just
like i can't swing my arms around wildly
on a sidewalk and i couldn't set up a
tent in the middle of the
uh the street like where can uh people
set up a tent
i couldn't set up a tent uh just in a
park obviously
and uh you know there's certain concerns
about that one of the things i mentioned
it seems like a small thing
and i admit it's certainly not the
majority but in colorado springs about
20
of the people uh that were uh contacted
by the police after the camping ban
weren't homeless they set up a tent um
they had another home
and uh they set up a tent in the yard
the problem was that um
other people had to to go through those
streets and parks and the rest of it so
that at issue alarms and yes i mean
again you can talk to people in the
midst who've recovered from addiction
and who've recovered from mental health
crisis and they will absolutely tell
that sort of
roles in the original perspective
helping me further down the path of
addiction or helping me further down the
path of mental illness is not the path i
wanted to take
i wanted to get out of that and i didn't
know it at the time so many of these
uh recovered people will say the exact
same thing and yeah helping them get to
that next step is crucial
so so you meant so there's just two
populations right and the ones that are
economically fragile to some degree that
become homeless
more like from uh from that needs maybe
some help getting out of that in
from a financial standpoint and then
there's the other two groups mental
healthness and drug addiction that
they're very different so clearly they
require very different solutions
the house first initiative is something
that absolutely might help the first
group but the first group is the
minority
of the total of the total population
right so so
and that seems to be the focus that we
have right now is like buying hotels or
san francisco building houses and so on
so um
so talk about the solutions you're
advocating here i guess that's the
the next step right so so yes housing is
an important step of this yes making
sure that and by the way
the same people who is trying to solve
this issue are the people that don't
necessarily provide us with an enormous
supply of housing right they they they
stand in the way
of of supply of housing so we need more
housing that's obviously
the point that will help the first group
and uh
but tell us more about the proposals on
the on the other side on the on the on
the on the other two groups
yeah so well one of the the problems
that have
uh have emerged in the past uh seven or
eight years since the federal government
emphasized the housing first model is
we've cut back on short-term shelter
uh because people have said we want to
provide these permanent housing beds for
someone who's chronically illness we
have less and less beds that are just
there for someone who is on
uh hard on their luck who needs a spot
for a short period and needs to move on
to the next step of their lives and one
of the things we're trying to do
is let's maximize the homeless dollars
and allow more of these short-term
shelter bed solutions some of that is
through structured camps such as the
esperanza community in austin or phoenix
or in georgia
or these other places some of them are
through
these community cabins places like
oakland and others have found very cheap
unit shelters where you can set up a
small one or two person bed shelter for
less than thirty thousand dollars
and get more people back into those safe
environments often in
hot places like texas into air
conditioning as well um
and so we want to try we're trying to
emphasize dollars to that and sort of
away from the
permanent supportive housing model for
the the chronically ill
homeless which it doesn't seem to help
on the whole um
and the other part of that is to
emphasize what we talk about is um
pay for performance funding which is
there have been examples in other
uh areas of social policy where instead
of just say warehousing someone we will
wear how to keep you in a house for x
number of days
you pay a non-profit service provider or
anyone basically
to improve the situation uh of that
client as they often
call them um make sure they spend less
days in hospitals
next year they spend less days in jail
make sure they spend less days in the
street and if you can do that
the state rewards you to do that there
aren't many of those contracts out there
now but they can and should be expanded
and one of the things that we think will
be most likely to fund that is these
treatment models
the housing first model despite some
claims from the advocates has shown
very bad results in terms of getting
people off of substance abuse
into with more mental health care and so
on the
models that have really shown results
are mandatory residential treatment
models where you keep someone either
outpatient or impatient for six months
or for one year you make sure they get
off their addiction you follow them very
closely
or you make sure they take their meds
then you make sure they stabilize and
move along with their lives
those models seem to have a lot more
heft in them places like birmingham the
doe fund in
new york city these donald seems to like
get people to the next step and so if we
can reorder funding to those sort of
treatment-heavy models and pay for
performance
we can get a lot more people those
chronically homeless person on the
street
and if we get more of that short-term
shelter we can help those people who
just need a hand up and a short economic
lifeline and all the rest of it instead
of cutting that back
and of course you know we are also going
to go ahead
well of course the the other thing we
are advocates of
of the camping fans because like a lot
of the the mental health
providers will tell you that that is
often a first step to help the homeless
get into those treatment programs and
the rest of it and um
you know i understand the the heated
feelings on each side of that but
on the net it seems to be uh help the
the homeless a lot
so one more question on that is uh do
you have a sense of the the amount of
money
that we currently spend per person and
in in terms of the budget allocated by
the city
is that enough to try to address the
issue the way
through the models that you're proposing
here or that would need extra
appropriation from the city well
it it it is enough if we redirect the
model so the problem
one of the biggest problem with the
permit support of housing or the housing
first model
is that it's incredibly expensive you
often get numbers of anywhere from 200
000 to 500
000 to places like la and san francisco
750
000 per unit and so if you have a single
homeless person
uh occupying one of those homes then you
have something equivalent if you think
the average american
um working uh getting about fifty
thousand dollars a year
you're going to take uh you're gonna
take you know 15 of those people working
full-time to
support uh one homeless person in one of
those homes that's not sustainable over
the long run
uh one of the things but if you do these
these cheaper versions if you have
the the structured camping facilities if
you have the 30 000
per unit uh you can do that you can do
that pretty good the residential
treatment for the long-term things
i think that's more typical we've had
about uh you know
unfortunately about 50 years of
defunding mental health
and into
defining the mental health institutions
uh
about in the 1950s we had 550 000 people
that were in a mental institution now we
have about 50 thousand
now i'm not saying we should go back to
the one flew over the cuckoo's nest days
and kind of
put people back in these institutions
but i think most people agree that
at this point there are too many people
with mental illness and we
all know them who don't have access to
that treatment um
that may require a little more funding
but right and we could get that if we
moved away from the contemporary housing
first model which is just
you know we've we've tried this on a
national level too we built 200 000 of
these units and it's done nothing to
decrease unsheltered homelessness
uh and so if we can redirect that
funding there would certainly be enough
so you seem kind of down on the housing
first model but do you see a role for
you know more reducing restrictions on
private sector building because in
austin you know if you wanted to build
a whole bunch of new units you're going
to have all sorts of permanent like
if somebody just wants to make money
running cheap units to people
there's a lot of impediments to that do
you think relaxing those
maybe requiring less you know
political capital to get building done
which i understand is really important
here
uh would that be something that you
would you guys would see as helpful or
is it going to absolutely so one of the
things that we've seen and people say
like
both for the short term the economically
disadvantaged and for that chronic
homeless population
is that bringing down market rents do
seem to reduce homelessness
uh what you see in places like san
francisco la and elsewhere when you have
restrictions on private sector building
you drive up rents everywhere
and frankly you even drive up the cost
of making that permanent supportive
housing so like
it hurts both ways you can't even create
the homelessness shelters and the other
services you want because the housing
itself is so
difficult for both nonprofit and
for-profit buyers uh the council of
economic advisors
put out a report from the white house
about two years ago which showed that
there was a pretty strong correlation
yet between rents
and homelessness that affected more of
the short-term population than the
long-term
unsheltered uh but it affected both and
so yeah
getting more people uh involved in
breaking down those barriers is going to
be a big part of fighting homelessness
uh
and uh we one of the problems in
california is definitely that they just
haven't allowed uh any private sector
market rate housing to go up and that's
hurting everybody
all right so um let's uh let's see if
you want to make some concluding remarks
i want to move on here to ask some
questions from the audience there's a
lot of
interest in the audience uh richard any
anything else
in any last question before we move on
okay so
uh if you're in the audience if you want
you can either type in a q a if you want
to raise your hand i can
invite you to speak as well so please go
ahead and raise your hand and i'll start
here by looking at the q a um
so one of the questions that appears a
couple places in the q a here
is is a concern about the criminal
justice implication
associated with prop b so a lot of folks
are concerned with that and i think one
of the emotional reactions that we're
seeing is that well you know
criminalizing the issue is not going to
solve anything so
what's your what's your take on that and
and and you know your assessment of the
consequences in that direction
yeah so i mean it is a concern and
people write right to be concerned about
it
one of the things we've seen in places
where camping bans are in place and
i actually remind people that um you
know 90
of cities according to recent city have
this this is not an
atypical thing uh the atypical thing is
actually to allow
sort of blanket camping and it's not by
part it is a bipartisan thing uh
denver and san francisco two of the
louis cities of america voted
very strongly denver by 85 85
uh for camping bans and so um
this is is the standard the the reverse
of allowing sort of blanket street
campaign is is the exception but
how are those cities with camping bans
uh implement
now what we've seen places like uh
colorado springs is
in denver is that overwhelming numbers
of them
involve the the stick of sorts of there
you need that promise or that guarantee
of
there has to be some push into it but
what happens
is that the response to once you that
you know
places and there you don't just handcuff
a homeless person just for sleeping on
the street
you usually refer them to shelter or
services and actually 93
of the um contacts with police and
requirements to move along before 2019
were carried out voluntarily so the
police didn't even need to refer
someone to shelter or services they just
can you move somewhere else
to this and most people said well yeah
of course i'll move the xy or z or
police would say can i get you the next
spot so the vast majority
of what happens is not um is not
a sort of criminalization of it uh you
can also make when you've seen places
like denver and colorado and others you
make it
uh basically a minor misdemeanor and
usually the sentence
such as it is is a reference to
treatment um you know so you don't have
to make this and what you've seen in all
these places is you don't have someone
being thrown in jail
uh usually for sleeping on the streets
that almost never happens uh it is
worthwhile and it seems to be in these
places to have that extra encouragement
because again
someone in the mental health crisis is
not going to listen if you just say can
you please move along all the time
uh but if you can tell them can you
please move along this is required they
generally do it and they get to that
next step
so uh you know it is a legitimate
concern it can be done poorly i won't
admit
i'll admit that some cities have done it
poorly but austin before 2019 like most
cities
did it pretty well they got people to
treatment they did move along uh
orders as they're called and they get
voluntary compliance
the other question here is about the
role of private sector charities in
particular uh
one person a brand here talks about his
experience building up
essentially a non-profit that would
employ homeless folks
and help them you know providing housing
and work and and you know help
move along um and he was told me his
comment here he mentions that he was
told that
by the austin community first that this
will never work here because there's not
a big desire for work so what's the rule
of work uh or other experiences i think
you mentioned the dole fund in new york
city
don't they is a similar strategy right
they do work in that and that
is that a big component of the recovery
process here is to really provide a
first step in getting back into the
workforce yeah i mean
it's it's always distinct to every
person uh but like the doe fund is one
of the premier examples they have a work
first policy which is that
uh we're trying to do whatever we can to
get you back into work and their
population is generally people who've
been recently released from prison
uh so the people that are released from
prison uh sometimes they have mental
health disorders and
more often they have substance abuse
disorders uh but they can help them with
them with the goal of saying we're gonna
get you into a job within a year and six
years and once you start on the job
that will be the motivation for you to
help clean up clean up
uh take your medication not take the bad
medication and so forth
uh so that's a very very noticeable goal
but some of the people some of the
unsheltered
it's tougher to even get to that first
step and that's the ones where you need
just like
the mandatory treatment or you need
someone that's surrounding community
that's going to help them so
i mentioned community first a non-profit
that accepts no government funding
that's southwest of austin
if any of you have a chance to volunteer
there or help i recommend it um
they require people there to pay rent to
work support the uh
the institution and they've seen
incredible drops
in drug use and uh increases in sobriety
and so forth and so
you know those models can work and
there's a lot of great private sector
work going out there
one of the things you'll hear though and
i i should mention this is that the
housing first model has been so
pervasive
uh that a lot of non-profits are
reluctant to speed up
speak up against this and they'll say
this privately because the housing first
model is explicitly and maybe i didn't
emphasize this enough
is a no required treatment model so i
talked to a nonprofit provider in
georgia or sorry in arizona who said uh
i'm constantly in trouble with the
government because in my residential
treatment center i try to get people off
drugs and the government will tell me
year in year out stop doing that we're
doing a housing first model which means
no requirements
which means you have to stop telling
people to be off drugs and she
her hands are tied because she receives
government funding and you know she's
literally tearing her hair out saying
my all my clients are desperate to do
this and i can't even get them to the
next step
um so that's why people like alan graham
and elsewhere who are separated from the
government have more authority and
leniency
to sort of do these innovative things
because right now the house and first
model is telling a lot of people
do not give your people treatment offer
it to them but you can't mandate any of
it and that's been a real
that's been a real real problem uh but
yeah the nonprofit step is absolutely
huge and we've seen
good places and people across the
country take up that step and really
help reduce it
so you mentioned nonprofit here in
austin which one was it and somebody
asked me you to repeat the name here the
one that you said yes
i can yeah happiest in the link so it's
a group is called mobile loaves and
fishes they give food to homeless and
help
service homeless across the austin but
they have a place called community first
village down
uh actually sorry i said southwest it's
really uh east a little east of austin
and um they take the very very
chronically homeless the people
generally 59 years old i think it's
their average age people have been on
the street for 10 20 years
um and they give them a little home and
then encourage them to work and get
treatment all the rest
of it uh and uh they've had pretty great
results and so
that's one of those non-profits that's
really just doing an amazing job
uh you know sort of moving the needle on
on the homeless problem
mobile loaves and fishes and community
first with an exclamation point
all right so the another question here
it talks about the experience in utah
the housing first experience in utah do
you know anything about that apparently
they have been
somewhat successful in salt lake city in
particular um any any lessons from there
yeah i mean one of the utah experiment
uh
was sort of touted by many about five
years ago as this solution this was the
one that showed that housing first
works um one of the surprising things
and i encourage people to do it is just
look at the
utah homelessness numbers they have gone
down
no different really from the national
level in the past 10 years some
states like georgia and florida have
seen 50 plus decreases in homelessness
um utah is not one of those outliers
utah
tends to have about the same level of
homelessness as the rest of the country
and now some recent studies have shown
not didn't take much studying
uh but they claimed that very one
particular homeless population namely
chronically homeless people was
basically reduced to zero
uh we now know that's untrue and the
unsheltered uh it was dependent on how
they defined it they changed the
definition
and uh we found that uh the unsheltered
population there
has been remarkably stable over the past
uh 15 years so
utah once generated a lot of buzz and
now people have kind of had to pair back
some of those hopes that that was the
example that was going to solve all
homelessness because
we know right now it doesn't at the same
to you know there's good non-profits
there and people
have done a lot of good work but uh it
doesn't seem like uh
by any measure they've solved
homelessness it's been about the same as
the rest of the country
so another question here that is more a
little deeper and difficult
but a lot of the discussion today is to
solve uh the problem of okay now we have
the homeless here they might be in the
street they might be
camping or not but what are we doing
with them now right but any any
understanding or knowledge about the
problem of like trying to avoid people
getting
first in the first place uh homeless
what is the are there any
sort of like i guess what i'm trying to
say is that is that well sure from the
economic perspective
yes i mean i guess we think about ideas
like a permanent basic income or
something that
could be we have lots of ways in the
safety net
that can be improved in in in helping on
that direction but on the drug
addiction and and and mental health side
of things
uh is there anything that is preemptive
that that's preventive of getting those
people on the street that we could be
doing
better yeah
and so it is so often it is
less one problem than two main problems
the um
as you mentioned you and richard
mentioned before that getting more
market raised housing out there it makes
it much harder for people to take that
first step down into homelessness
if someone is short on rent for a little
bit uh because the rents in austin are
about twice the level of where they are
in houston and dallas
they take that step into a shelter it's
easier to send down that rung and get
into the rest of the trouble
uh that that does happen right there so
getting that more market raised housing
is essential now for the mental health
thing i think like the overwhelming
problem is we need to get more what is
called the assisted outpatient treatment
aot
um this is not like again the the sort
of
uh previous uh one flew over the
cuckoo's nest
nightmarish institutions this is a
court-ordered mandate for someone in a
mental health crisis
and a lot of legal restrictions have
made that very difficult to put
someone in that another loved one
who is dangerously mentally ill or
violent you will know
how hard it is to get that person to
receive mandated treatment i have
an odd to dealt with this problem and
they were pleading with the courts
please put you know my son in treatment
please do this
and they just couldn't do it uh so we
need to open that up we need to allow
more of these people that
are in crisis to get that assertive
outpatient treatment they can still be
with their friends they're not going in
institution all the rest of it
uh but they're going to get that step
one of those simple things is changing
the law
uh to prevent what what's called a
psychological deterioration
right now you can often only put someone
in this treatment if they're quote an
imminent threat to themselves or others
that means they're literally often
holding a knife
over someone's head which means it's
really hard uh but if you have this this
law that some place like minnesota do
which says well no if the court and the
psychiatrist can clearly say listen your
mental state is deteriorating
it's getting worse and worse we can put
you in treatment now to prevent you from
going down that next step
and that's shown a lot of increased
results substance use it's
it's hard that's it's just one of the
hardest things like that's probably the
hardest issue of all
and what we've seen is you know a
tripling an overdose test in america
over the past 10 15 years
and we have no easy solution to that we
know some residential treatment programs
help people
but how to prevent them from getting to
that first step that's just
really really hard and like whatever we
can do to
you know stop people from going down
that addiction path
that's something we have to do and
clearly
just allowing the overdose deaths to
keep spiraling out of control
as they have is not something that we
can continue to allow
all right so to wrap up we're getting
close to five o'clock here
what happens next here in texas and in
austin i think we have a bill in the
state
that that then the legislature going
through that my instill
uh camping ban across the state i'm not
sure i don't know
the odds of that bill passing you might
have some insight on that and
and we have an election here in austin
that might restate the campaign ban in
may first
say what what do you think happens here
in either the state or the city and how
this gets
rolled out if this you know goes one way
or the other
yeah so um i i was at the texas capitol
testifying for um the bills there's two
bills actually going uh
through this texas legislature right now
uh it's tough to know if bills are
passed but
there is clearly a lot of outrage at the
current situation
uh what you saw is a lot of
representatives in the texas
state house uh that were from other
major cities
really concerned about the austin
situation because both houston and san
antonio
who've done much better in homelessness
have camping bans um and you had
representatives from these cities
saying austin what are you doing so you
had it wasn't just a
republican democrat thing you had a
pretty broad-based support for
kind of changing the policy in austin
right now so it's a possibility that
passed
prop b here in austin uh it's it's tough
to say for sure
uh the i've seen actually some
preliminary poll results exit results
seem to show that uh
it's it's going ahead by pretty
substantial margins uh what we've seen
in other states again even
the bluest of cities san francisco
denver and so on have passed these
camping bans
um so more likely than not it will pass
um the real issue is enforcement places
like denver passed it and the city
enforced it
san francisco they passed the voters
overwhelmingly passed it and the city
said we're not doing anything
unless as we mentioned before you're a
powerful group or you're a homeowner's
association that has political pull and
then they enforce it in your
neighborhood
uh so whatever happens the real issue is
going to be like
one how are we going to enforce it make
sure we enforce it humanely
if it does go in place so we mentioned
those things before you're not
handcuffing people which is not the
right way to do this
and two make sure that it is actually in
place that people are
um actually enforcing these rules one of
the things i i remind people there is
the camp behind directly behind my house
um it's on parkland the according to the
even the current laws that's illegal
they say you can't camp on partland
uh but the city is not enforcing that
part of the law either so
in the end there's always a slip between
the cup and the lip there's a lot of
trouble and even a law in the books and
what were people going to do about it
and um i think the marine issue is at
some point do people get fed up enough
with the situation that they have to
take a different path and that's uh what
i think people are at right now
can the state play a role in the
enforcement because i don't trust the
city to
take a role in it clearly they're
showing that but like in the state take
a role here
it's tough like it's it's that state
probably doesn't want their
you know department of public safety or
whatever to be like walking the beat
with the swing in the baton and actually
getting people off but
uh could they absolutely uh it's it's
going to
be tough but at some point there are
other ways you can kind of pull the
lever
uh to encourage the city to to enforce
it but it's really tough to know
how uh to mandate something you don't so
that's why
even if the state passes something uh it
would be very important
if the local city uh voters said we want
this enforced
because in the end i i tell people
there's no
such you've seen no divergence on almost
any other issue between elected
officials
and the voters the voters again every
place are pretty much unified on this
uh the elected officials are all over
the map and so if voters though can make
their sort of voice over on this you're
going to
probably see more results enforcement
and that's why kind of like you know
making a statement one way or the other
is so important
richard any final question good
judge thanks so much for first for your
work on this super delicate hard
you know heartbreaking issue in a lot of
ways and also thanks for joining us it's
a pleasure to meet you and have you
have you teach us a little bit about the
issue
thank you so much it's a real pleasure
and if anyone wants to reach out uh i
hope you can reach me through the cicero
webpage or anything else always happy to
talk to people and uh
uh help talking about this issue because
it is delicate and everyone i think
involved means well
um but uh i think people also understand
and uh what what's happening right now
in a lot of cities is just not
sustainable and people looking at
different paths so i think
uh we're all it's about time everyone
starts doing that so thank you again so
much for the time and again really
appreciate everyone
a thoughtful question