Episode 18: We Can't Arrest Our Way Out of a Homelessness Crisis

Transcript (I’m experimenting with posting the video transcript rather than just giving the bullet points. Let me know if anyone has feedback or liked the other approach better):

Welcome back to Jail Psychologist. Today I want to talk about bans on homeless encampments and the impact these are likely to have on jails, municipal budgets, and people with mental illness. As is typically the case here, I’m not gonna to weigh in on whether banning homeless encampments is morally right or wrong – I’m just going to talk about whether they’re gonna work and the consequences of their implementation.

So there was a supreme court case in 2024 – Grants Pass v. Johnson in which the Supreme Court ruled that municipal and state governments can, if they so choose, make it illegal to camp, in other words, to live, on public property. This decision is a bit problematic because if you can’t afford a house or an apartment, and you can’t setup camp on public property, this effectively makes it illegal to be poor.

But – set that aside for the moment. The reason all of this has become a hot button issue in the past few years is that 1) homelessness has been rising, and 2) businesses and people who are a little more affluent do not like having to see or walk around homeless people in the ordinary course of their days. According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, homelessness has increased by 40% in the past 10 years. There are lots of hypotheses about why this is happening – but my experience tells me that the most likely explanation is that the cost of living has been outpacing wages since the 1970s. If I am correct, we are going to see homeless continue to worsen until our government makes some of the changes I mentioned in Episode 5 of this channel.

So – at least 48 states now have some sort of law on the books banning homeless encampments. And this is another one of those situations in which I don’t really have to speculate on what will happen when local governments start enforcing these bans. One of the reasons that I’m perennially frustrated by some of the policy issues we talk about on this channel is that it’s sort of obvious that these policies don’t work. All you have to do is search the internet for how these strategies have worked in the past, and then read the policy analysis.

From the plethora of research in this area, I want to highlight the Herring, Yarbrough, and Alatorre article from 2020, which I will link in the description. This is a paid article but fun fact – if you email one of the authors of the article, and you ask nicely, they are allowed to send you a pdf of the article for free, which is how I was able to read it. The authors of this article found that attempts to arrest or remove people from homeless encampments did not actually reduce homelessness, but basically just moved the homeless people from one place to another, usually somewhere less visible. I also recommend the 2019 paper from the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, which I will also link in the description. The authors of that paper essentially came to the same conclusion.

And for some people – this is probably fine. They aren’t so much concerned about homeless people as they are about visible homeless people. But even if this was your goal, we need to be honest about how expensive this is.

When you criminalize homelessness, you’re putting increased pressure on the entire criminal justice system. First, your police officers now have to spend their time enforcing encampment bans. This means either more police, more overtime, or less time policing things that are actually dangerous. All of these outcomes have a pricetag.

Second, the courts are now gonna have to take on more cases related to petty crimes of public order like Trespassing and Disorderly Conduct. I don’t know about your court system but where I live, courts are already saddled with very high caseloads. This costs money in all sorts of ways. You need more judges, more public defenders, and more prosecuting attorneys. These are all paid for on the public dime.

Third, the people who are arrested in these situations have to be housed in local and county jails, which are often overcrowded and under-staffed as it is. Not only that, but people who are homeless have higher rates of serious mental illnesses like Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder, which often require expensive psychotropic medications to treat – and don’t forget that we learned in previous episodes that the jail has a constitutional obligation to provide treatment and that jails have to buy medications at full retail prices.

So homeless encampment bans don’t reduce homelessness, but they do increase costs for the police, courts, and jails. In other words, these policies don’t eliminate homelessness — they just transfer the responsibility for managing it from housing systems to the criminal justice system.

And on top of all of this, think about the circular logic of arresting someone because they’re poor. A person who gets arrested often loses his job if he had one. It’s impossible to make any money while you’re in jail. So what happens when the person who was arrested for being homeless gets released from jail? Well, he still has no money and no job. He’s still going to be homeless. Only this time he no longer has his tent or whatever limited possessions he had. If he had any food saved up, that’s gone now. You’re basically putting him in a position in which he is incentivized to get rearrested, because at least if he gets arrested he’ll have food, medical care, and a warm place to sleep.

So if homeless encampment bans don’t work – why do politicians keep pushing them? I think that the reason is this: Businesses and residents in close proximity to homeless encampments put a lot pressure on elected officials to “do something” about the problem. Actually doing something about the problem, such as the steps taken in Houston, involves a lot of organization and subsidizing public housing. Building coalitions and organizing a systemic solution takes a long time, and subsidizing housing is politically unpopular. Simply doing a “sweep” and moving homeless people to another location appears to solve the problem immediately. If the homeless encampment in front of Starbucks disappears, the policy looks like it worked. In short, politicians know that these bans don’t reduce homelessness and silently increase the cost of the criminal justice system, but they have a political incentive to take action, and this is the quickest and easiest action for them to take.

Now, it’s not all doom and gloom. There is one example of a city that banned homeless encampments AND reduced homelessness. The city of Houston, Texas, like many cities, has laws banning homeless encampments. However, Houston is unique in that it also has a robust public housing and homelessness response policy. Between 2011 and 2023, Houston documented a 60% decrease in the number of homeless people in the city.

How did they do this? They adopted a research-based strategy called “Housing First.” This philosophy simply says that the fastest way to put someone on a path out of homelessness is to give them a place to live. When you think about it, this conclusion is both obvious and inescapable. For example, consider how you would go about finding a job if you don’t have a place to sleep, shower, and change your clothes. It’s just not realistic. Housing first is about getting someone a place to live, then working on getting them work and whatever else they need. As they stabilize, many people begin working and gradually take on more of their housing costs.

Subsidizing housing in this way wasn’t the only strategy Houston used. They also implemented a coordinated entry system which allowed them to keep track of people who needed housing and other services. This allowed all of the various social service organizations to combine their efforts to curb homelessness and provide resources, rather than just having a bunch of different siloed systems or the every-man-for-himself approach that a lot of local governments have.

The Houston model has proven over the past 15 years that it works. But it’s the exception that proves the rule. Homeless encampment bans are a net negative for society…unless they’re paired with housing-first initiatives, a coordinated service-delivery system, and subsidized public-housing options.

And for those who argue that these things are too expensive – Houston has been doing it for 15 years. It’s not too expensive for them. And if you think your city or county are different, and you can’t afford this – ask yourself how much you’re paying by not doing it. The cost of a month in jail is over $3,000. For that same price, you could easily pay for someone to stay in an apartment.

Once again – it’s your money. Cities and counties can spend money on housing people — or spend a lot more money policing, prosecuting, and incarcerating them.