In response to the homelessness crisis, more states are diverting funds away from the preferred policies of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Citing the failures of California, which devotes more money than any other state to efforts based on HUD’s Housing First model, legislators in Florida, Georgia, and Utah took steps this year to put millions of dollars behind policies built on rehabilitation and behavioral health treatment, with the ultimate goal of independence from government support.
These changes come in the wake of battles across state capitals and at the Supreme Court over whether homeless people should be allowed to camp on sidewalks. At the core of these arguments is a pervasive discomfort with how to respond to an unprecedented increase in unsheltered homelessness over the last decade. Nationally, unsheltered homelessness is up 30 percent since 2013. In some states, such as Nebraska and Utah, both the absolute number of unsheltered homeless individuals and the proportion of homeless people living on the streets rather than in shelters or temporary housing has more than doubled since then.
For homeless individuals with behavioral health issues, substance-use disorder, and severe mental illness, the situation is particularly grim. Nationally, 60 percent of homeless people who use drugs lack shelter; the same is true for just under half of those with severe mental illness. More intensely than most states, Florida and Utah have witnessed a shift toward this higher-need, more complex homeless population. In Florida, the figures have climbed 27 percent and 13 percent, respectively, over the last five years; in Utah, they have each roughly doubled. Georgia has fared better by some metrics, but with 47 percent of its homeless population lacking shelter, the state has taken the lead in pioneering a different approach.
As its name implies, Housing First argues that homeless people need housing without strings attached—in other words, without making housing contingent on behavioral or treatment requirements. Housing First de-emphasizes temporary, treatment-oriented programs like transitional housing and prioritizes permanent, subsidized-housing programs, which prohibit evicting homeless individuals, even those who refuse to participate in treatment or maintain sobriety.
While HUD’s Housing First policies have added more than 100,000 units of permanent supportive housing—its hallmark subsidized housing program—and another 144,000 subsidized beds of other types, the unsheltered population in the U.S. has climbed from 197,000 in 2013 to more than 250,000 today. Over that time, HUD’s policies have gutted more than half of the 200,000 treatment-oriented transitional housing beds in communities across the country.
Most states have suffered from HUD’s policy decisions, with all but nine reducing their transitional housing supply and 18 states cutting that supply by more than 25 percent since 2018 alone. HUD policies, particularly its federally funded Continuum of Care program, with its implementing agencies in every state and metropolitan area, drove these changes in the transitional housing supply. Through nongovernmental organizations, HUD can enact policies in parallel with states but without the approval of state officials.
Florida, Georgia, and Utah have had enough. Florida now forbids its state homelessness funding from being used for Housing First; instead, the state will redirect more than $30 million annually to transitional housing and other treatment-oriented programs. Georgia has created a Housing Accountability Trust Fund that will provide millions in funding for programs that do not subscribe to Housing First. And Utah has devoted more than $50 million to short-term shelter and behavioral-health programs. Earlier this month, Governor Spencer Cox put homeless service providers on notice, warning that they could lose funding if they don’t produce results.
Other states are getting restless, too. An ambitious bill in Arizona that would have transformed how that state approaches homelessness narrowly stalled in the legislature. But with 35 states seeing a more than 30 percent rise in unsheltered homelessness in just the last five years, more states are likely to follow Florida, Georgia, and Utah’s lead.
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