It’s Time to Criminalize Homelessness

Some of you are here because of the provocative title. Some of you likely think I mean it’s time to criminalize living in a box on the street or panhandling in front of the subway station. I don’t. The people who should be punished for homelessness are not the ones without roofs over their heads. It’s those who created and perpetuate a system that failed them in the first place.

I live in Eugene, Oregon, a city that by some accounts, has the worst homelessness problem in the United States. From my apartment, I can see three luxury apartment buildings being built in a community that is already rife with half-filled luxury apartment complexes. Who has been displaced to erect these buildings? Who approved their production when rent prices are skyrocketing? There’s a madness in the development but I fail to see the method.

When we live in what some say is the richest country in the world (though that may depend on the measurement used), that anyone should be couchsurfing or living out of their car is abhorrent, and it starts with the governments—federal, state and local—that are failing to promote the general welfare. The market has failed the people. The government has failed the people. Our neighbors must bear the brunt of their folly.

Oregon has actually taken the first steps to address a small part of the issue. In 2019, the state passed the first state-wide rent-control bill in the nation, which caps yearly rent increases at 7% plus inflation, or a max of…10.3%. Yikes. A spike like that in rent is enough to force some people out of their homes and back into the housing market…which is rife with expensive luxury condos and lacks more utilitarian accommodations. Which then forces people onto the streets.

From 2018 to 2019, the homeless population in Lane County, where Eugene is the county seat, grew 32%. The city’s response has been to have some people from Boston tell them where they were going wrong and then build a 51-bed supportive housing project.

Don’t get me wrong. That’s a good thing and should help some of the chronically homeless. But it doesn’t change the structures and systems that are in place that put such a burden on families. 47% of households in Eugene live in poverty or within the ALICE threshold—a United Way measure that quantifies the number of employed households living just over the poverty line. There are almost no (affordable) rental vacancies in Eugene, which drives up rent and allows landlords to be highly selective in whom they rent to.

That also means there’s no incentive for developers to build the kind of low-to-mid-tier housing Eugene needs. Doing so would only cut into the profits for the property management companies that run the Eugene housing market. Instead, developers build up fully-furnished dorm-style apartments for the students at the University of Oregon because they know they can take advantage of those students going into debt and line their pockets before the next great bubble (student loan debt) bursts.

So that’s a lot of doom and gloom. What’s there to be done?

Raise the Minimum Wage

Oregon’s variable minimum wage already far outstrips the federal rate of $7.25 an hour, but it still isn’t enough. The ALICE Household Survival Budget, a measure of a barebones existence in Lane County, says that a single adult needs $22,000 per year to scrape by. That’s about $11.00 an hour, just a quarter less than Eugene’s minimum of $11.25. That’s assuming, of course, that one could find enough work at the minimum wage to make $22,000 per year, something that isn’t guaranteed and would likely be achieved through holding multiple jobs.

Raising the minimum wage nationally to even $13 an hour would be enough to help the bootstrappers among us have a little money to save and eat something besides ramen.

Fix the Rent Cap

That landlords can raise the rent 10% per year is an absurdity. I’m sure it will help a bit and that landlords probably don’t raise rents by the maximum amount every opportunity they get, but a 10% spike allowed is completely ridiculous. Nationally, there needs to be a rent cap even more aggressive than Oregon’s. I’d tie it directly to inflation, but I’m open to further argument on that.

Tie Luxury Development and Redevelopment to Affordable Housing Development

Something must be done about the incessant gentrification of the cities of America. Not only does gentrification ruin the character of a neighborhood, it usually forces people out of their homes and small businesses to close. It’s time we did something about that. Somehow tying the development of affordable housing to luxury development would be one way to ensure a mixture of housing that fills needs for every income level.

Establish a Housing Guarantee and a Wealth Tax

It’s not going to be cheap to ensure housing for everyone. The new era of robber barons is upon us, and we have to get ahead of it before another depression hits. Guaranteeing housing for everyone and paying for it with a wealth tax is one way to increase equity in the United States.

I don’t know if any of these proposed solutions will work or how long it will be before we feel their effects. I do know that if we don’t do something, and fast, the problem will only get worse.