A Valley city says it cut its homeless population in half. Why am I skeptical?
by Amy Silverman | illustration by Koren Shadmi
I always said I wanted to live in a real city. And now I do.
It’s not just Downtown Phoenix. The skyline in my particular ’burb, Tempe, is erupting – every week, it seems, adding a new high-rise. (High for us, anyway.)
The drive from Phoenix over the Mill Avenue bridge has always been my favorite, but now it’s stunning, as the fake but pretty Tempe Town Lake gives way to some serious urban density. I love it.
Not so long ago, you could drive through Phoenix or Tempe after dark and – quite literally – not see another human being. Now it’s impossible to find a parking spot pretty much any time of day. Used to be, it took 20 minutes to get anywhere in town. Make that 45 now, if you’re lucky.
With our increased urbanity has come more diversity, and some of the tough realizations about what it means to be a real city. Wide streets and bad drivers make this place unsafe for pedestrians; artists have been priced out of most spots; the price of everything is going up. Rents are high and, even with a stagnant market, it’s tough to buy a house here.
And there are homeless people. Later this month, hundreds of volunteers will fan out across metropolitan Phoenix to try to figure out just how many. It’s called the Point-in-Time Homeless Count, and it’s not just done here. It happens all over the country during the same time period, and those counts are tied to funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
I think it’s kinda bullshit. Quite a few experts in the field do, too. In 2017, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, now called the National Homelessness Law Center, called the count “severely flawed.” It’s widely accepted that the discrepancy between the folks who volunteers encounter and the actual number of unsheltered people is dramatic. The guidelines for determining who is and is not homeless are contested. A lot of homeless people don’t want to talk to anyone in a position of authority. Many are transient. Some simply get missed.
Common sense should warn us to be wary of this kind of census and make us ask why the count is tied to funding when its conclusions are so obviously flawed. (Spoiler: A low count means less government spending, so there’s a built-in political incentive to bull-rush the low counts.)
But mostly, my BS radar is lighting up because of history. For me, any kind of count of this nature feels reductive and, if not dangerous, then pointless.
In late 2013, then-Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton announced that there were no more homeless veterans living in Phoenix. He’d eliminated the problem. “Phoenix Puts Roof Over Head of All Chronically Homeless Vets,” the mayor’s office announced in a press release. The Obama White House followed a few days later with a statement titled, “Phoenix Reduces Its Population of Chronically Homeless Veterans to Zero.”
The national headlines followed.
“Phoenix Says It’s the First City to End Chronic Homelessness Among Veterans”
– The Washington Post
“Program to End Homelessness Among Veterans Reaches a Milestone in Arizona”
– The New York Times
“How Phoenix Ended Homelessness Among Vets” – USA Today
A couple months later, I visited the Justa Center, a Downtown Phoenix nonprofit that serves homeless seniors a few blocks from City Hall. It was business as usual, the director said. He was still seeing several veterans every day.
To be fair, Mayor Stanton had led the effort to find millions of dollars for housing for homeless vets. I’m sure some people were well-served. But today in Phoenix, there are hundreds of veterans living on the streets, according to charities who serve them. I don’t blame Stanton (now a U.S. congressman) for that. It’s the public relations stunt that bothers me.
And that’s why I was concerned when Tempe officials announced late last year that they had cut the city’s homeless population in half. As one political consultant I mentioned it to quipped: If they really did that, Tempe would be an overnight international model.
So far, I haven’t seen those headlines. Is it so far-fetched that no one’s buying it?
I don’t doubt the good intentions, not at all. Unlike Scottsdale, which won’t consider light rail (even for the resort employees who travel hours to get to work each day) and puts up warnings about panhandlers, Tempe has some compassion. It’s not perfect – no city is – and there are ongoing debates about park regulations and allowing churches to offer free meals. When we spoke, the city’s human services director described the sound, kind approach his staff takes toward homeless people, as they gently encourage help, including immediate shelter and maybe permanent housing.
And I have no doubt this approach has worked, to some extent. I’m just not sure you can quantify it.
I’ve lived in a central, urban pocket of Tempe for almost 30 years, and I have complicated feelings about the alchemy of compassion and safety. Sometimes I do feel concerned when I’m walking alone at night on a quiet street and encounter a person obviously experiencing a psychotic episode.
I hate myself for being afraid, and I hate what we as a society have done – including in Tempe – to keep these people away. If you haven’t heard of the concept of hostile architecture, surely you’ve seen it. The idea is to discourage people from reclining across a bench or sleeping in a shaded corner. Pay attention the next time you pass a bus stop – there will likely be individual seats or uncomfortable-looking dividers discouraging loiterers.
I hate the hostile architecture, yet I’m a total hypocrite, because I also hate what’s become of the sweet Tempe Public Library, a spot so overrun with homeless people (even with the city’s reportedly diminished numbers) that even my most enlightened acquaintances admit they can’t stand to be there.
There are no good answers, not for me. Nothing here is simple. Tempe’s homeless numbers are down, but Phoenix’s are up? It doesn’t take a social scientist to figure out what’s going on. It’s a game of pass the buck in human form. And the stakes are getting higher every day.
I don’t have any answers, but I hope someone else does – soon. Have you heard what’s going on in Utah? With encouragement from the Trump administration, officials have identified 16 acres of land just outside Salt Lake City. They plan to build a campus to serve up to 1,300 homeless people struggling with mental illness and addiction. The very big catch: None of this will be voluntary. People will be rounded up and forced to live at this facility, forced to undergo the treatment officials see fit.
What could go wrong? Just look to the recent actions of ICE. Or go back a little further in history, to the time when institutionalization was rampant. When Ronald Reagan opened the doors to those facilities and patients flooded the streets with few resources beyond the clothes on their backs, the president wasn’t doing anyone any favors. That’s what got us to where we are today. But bringing institutions back would set us back a century, and don’t bet that our current leaders wouldn’t let it happen.
You can count on it.
Born and raised in Phoenix, Amy Silverman is a multiple winner of the Virg Hill Arizona Journalist of the Year award. She also penned the memoir My Heart Can’t Even Believe It.
