I hate to admit it, but I used to hold the same view of homeless people many other folks seem to have.
Most of ‘em are winos and druggies, I thought. Headcases and drifters. Derelicts pestering me for money on the street or at red lights because they don’t want to work. Petty criminals causing problems for the rest of us solid citizens.
Erich Bridges
Three years ago, Steve Blanchard, minister of compassion at my church, First Baptist in Richmond, Va., invited me to volunteer in the food pantry/clothes closet/shower ministry that operates three times a week in the church basement. I call it The Jesus Room.
I accepted Steve’s invitation and actually got to know some of the human beings I’d been casually judging and dismissing for so long.
Among the first folks I befriended were “The Collective,” as they called themselves — two couples and a single man who came in for services together, sat together and left together. I learned they were living in tents behind a grocery store on the edge of town, where I later visited them. They pooled their benefit checks to pay for food and other basics. Ed and Lisa were refugees from Boston; both had health problems. Mickey, also from Boston, had cancer and hepatitis. His partner, Denise, was from Chicago and had become estranged from her family. Scott, the cheerful leader of the group, was from New York. He lost his long-term job there when his company relocated, then he lost his home.
They all were in their late 50s or 60s, an increasingly common demographic among unhoused people as they grow older along with the general population. I wrote about them, and the realities of aging while homeless, for BNG in 2023.
The good news: All five now have a place to live. Scott, 67, bought a used car with savings from his Social Security checks, lived in it with Ed and Lisa until he found an affordable room to rent, then helped them find housing. Lisa got a job while Ed received treatment for his medical issues. Mickey and Denise also found a halfway decent and affordable place to live. That’s almost a miracle these days in the Richmond area, where expensive apartments and condos are sprouting everywhere but low-income housing is exceedingly difficult to find.
What’s more, Scott is now one of our regular volunteers in the compassion ministry. He works alongside me and others most days we’re open, serving food and helping our clients in other ways.
Denise and Mickey talk at their tent camp in Richmond, Va., in 2023. Homeless at the time, they now have housing. Access to affordable housing is the key to getting off the street for most homeless people in America, regardless of other circumstances.
Lack of affordable housing
Lack of housing isn’t the only reason nearly 800,000 people live on the street in America — and many more live on the edge of homelessness. The causes are legion: job losses, foreclosures and evictions, health costs, family breakups, economic crises nationally and regionally, COVID, drugs, alcohol, mental problems. And yes, the homeless population still contains some long-term “rough sleepers” who choose to live that way and turn down offers of shelter.
But far and away the main cause of contemporary American homelessness is the lack of affordable housing for low-income people and others who lose their jobs or fall on hard times. Richmond is a microcosm of the problem: The city had a shortage of more than 23,000 affordable housing units for sale or rent in 2023 and declared a “crisis in affordable housing.”
Many double-wage families can’t find a decent place to live, much less people on the street.
Antwan, 30, has mostly been sleeping outside since he was 19. For the past two-plus years, his home has been a tent.
My friend Antwan, 30, has mostly been sleeping outside since he was 19. For the past two-plus years, his home has been a tent.
“I lived in it this past winter,” he said. “I had a heater, though. Stuff like that don’t really bother me. I don’t want to be there, for sure, but I can handle it.”
He works low-wage jobs, even while living on the street. Street life is tough, though. “Traumatic experiences,” he explained. “Sometimes you don’t even realize they’re traumatic. You just live life, you know?”
He comes to our compassion ministry to get food and clothing and take showers.
“I feel like it’s a family here, and you can trust people,” he said. He hopes to save enough money to buy an e-bike. He wants to deliver DoorDash, be his own boss, maybe even get out of the tent and into decent housing one day.
I could tell you about many other clients who come to us for a little help. They don’t fit a single profile — and with a few exceptions, they certainly don’t fit the ugly stereotype of homeless people I used to have.
But you’ll find that ugly stereotype shouting from every page of Donald Trump’s “executive order” of July 24, “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets.” The order makes it sound as if zombie-like hordes of street people are tearing down our society.
Imaginary crime wave
“Endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe,” the order declares. The “overwhelming majority of these (homeless) individuals are addicted to drugs, have a mental condition, or both. … Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order. Surrendering our cities to disorder and fear is neither compassionate to the homeless nor other citizens. My administration will take a new approach focused on protecting public safety.”
Homeless clients wait outside the basement door at First Baptist Church in Richmond, Va., where they can get food, clothing, showers and laundry service three times a week.
It goes on from there, at considerable length. The bottom line: Push homeless people off the streets and into “treatment” (which is unavailable or inadequately funded in most places), already-overflowing shelters — or jail.
Trump put an exclamation mark on this supposed new approach Aug. 11 when he seized control of the Washington, D.C., police, declaring “liberation day” from a mostly imaginary crime wave, which he claimed was being led in part by homeless vagrants bent on destroying the nation’s capital. In fact, violent crime in the district has fallen to a 30-year low after spiking in 2023, according to statistics from the Department of Justice.
Trump claimed the city was being “overrun by violent gangs, bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people.”
The mostly performative (so far) statements and police actions in D.C. play into other falsehoods and conspiracy theories regularly spouted by Trump and his minions: that Democratic-led and/or majority-Black cities are awash in crime and disorder, that local law enforcement must be bolstered by military force of dubious legality, that undesirable groups (immigrants, the homeless) must be physically removed from society by any means necessary.
“D.C can be a rough place, but in the last year, homicides, carjacking, robberies and other crimes have fallen,” wrote CNN’s Stephen Collinson. “It’s nowhere near as dangerous as it was in the 1990s, when derelict houses served as crack dens within sight of the U.S. Capitol. A wave of gentrification and regeneration has been transformational.
“But that doesn’t fit the president’s dystopian vision of American cities pulsating with violent crime and gang warfare. There’s a strong racial undertone to his demonizing of urban life, since many residents are minorities. Trump is always slandering cities like Detroit and Chicago that have large Black populations.”
Aside from the racist dog whistles, Trump thinks the action makes him look like a law-and-order tough guy. It works with his gullible base, which shows increasing signs of shrinkage. With the rest of us, it shows him for the bully he is.
“Homeless people, like immigrants, are easy targets. They can’t fight back.”
Homeless people, like immigrants, are easy targets. They can’t fight back. They lack representation. And as my unhoused friend Allen notes, “People in tents don’t vote.”
Housing first
Worst of all, re-criminalizing and re-institutionalizing homeless people simply will not work. Trump’s order rejects and calls for the defunding of the one approach that has worked in recent years: Housing First. That means getting people off the street and into safe housing first, then providing other services they might need — such as drug treatment, mental health counseling, job training.
Ryan Dowd, a longtime worker with the unhoused and expert on homelessness, summarizes the “Housing First” strategy and its history:
Back in the ’80s and ’90s when homelessness was a new phenomenon, most nonprofits and governments did what made sense: requiring a person to resolve underlying mental health and substance use issues before they are assisted with housing.
It sounds like a good idea — in theory. The problem was it didn’t work. It turns out that in many ways “common sense” doesn’t work with homelessness. Homelessness is too complicated.
A former president did something brilliant, shifting federal policy away from “what seems like it should work” to “what research has proven works.” It wasn’t Biden. It wasn’t Obama. It wasn’t Clinton. In 2004, President George W. Bush made “Housing First” official federal policy.
An oversimplified explanation of “Housing First” is that it is much easier to work on people’s underlying mental health and substance use issues after you get them housed than when they are struggling to survive. The research is clear that “Housing First” is effective: It decreases homelessness by 88% and increases housing stability by 41% compared to “Treatment-First” or “Abstinence-Based” programs (the policies of the ’80s and ’90s).
Is “Housing First” the final end-all perfect solution to ending homelessness? No. But there is new research every month that helps us develop even more effective methods. In fact, most people are unaware how much we collectively learn each year about what works (and what doesn’t) for homelessness.
(Trump’s) executive order doesn’t use any of the research from the last two decades. It simply goes back to the failed policies of the ’80s and ’90s.
Indeed, it’s a pretty safe bet that this so-called “new approach” — coupled with the drastic cuts to social programs, Medicaid and other assistance to the needy rammed through by the administration and Congress — will significantly increase homelessness, not end it.
“If we want to end the suffering on America’s streets, we need to start with truth: People need housing to stabilize,” according to Stephen Popovich, an addiction medicine specialist in Richmond. “They need medications that work. They need services that are accessible and humane — not criminalization, not coercion alone.”
A society that mistreats its most vulnerable citizens cannot be called civilized. It certainly can’t be called Christian.
Erich Bridges, a Baptist journalist for more than 40 years, has covered international stories and trends in many countries. He lives in Richmond, Va.
Related articles:
The Jesus Room | Opinion by Erich Bridges
Homeless is not the way you want to spend your sunset years, but more and more older Americans find themselves there | Analysis by Erich Bridges