Should We Give Homeless People Homes?

Albuquerque is a regional center for homelessness, with the number of those without homes increasing due to diminished services and resources. However, the city is taking a holistic approach to solving homeless, implementing "Housing First" policies, a van program that finds panhandlers and offers them work for the day, and other comprehensive services.

Providing people with housing and then giving them the services they need to stay housed is also a very effective way to save tax-payer money. Reducing chronic homeless through programs like The Madrone Project helps keep the unhoused healthier, reducing their trips to the ER, and also saves tax dollars that go into policing those living on the streets. Spending money on housing and services can be considered an investment that helps get people housed and healthy again, as well as a financial strategy to reduce government and hospital costs.

In California, homeless populations oftentimes face much greater health issues which financially impacts the state's public health care system. To address barriers to obtaining housing, with a sub-goal of bettering people's health, Los Angeles County has implemented a housing for the homeless pilot project that makes housing a part of a health care plan.

The VA has shifted its approach to ending homelessness among veterans. Now, a place to live--more than drug treatment or mental health counseling--is considered the starting point for helping a soldier who is struggling to cope with life after discharge.

Dallas has emerged as a national model for addressing homelessness with its systematic approach combining strict enforcement of anti-camping laws with comprehensive support services and permanent housing placement. The city works with over 150 partners, including police, shelters, and housing providers through its Continuum of Care program to patrol downtown, direct people to shelters, and transition them to permanent housing with wraparound services. They’ve moved more than 270 people off the streets and declared an end to downtown homelessness in May 2025.

Los Angeles County’s Homeless Outreach & Mobile Engagement (HOME) program uses street psychiatry to get psychiatric medication to people experiencing homelessness in an effort to get them a step closer to housing. The HOME team has 223 full-time staff members and served 1,919 people last year, 22% of whom ended the year housed.

Tiny home complexes are emerging as solutions to combat homelessness throughout the country, offering a cheap and efficient way to provide shelter amidst the national housing crisis. In some cases, living in a tiny home community serves as a stepping stone to help locals achieve permanent housing.

Efforts from the local Housing, Health and Human Services Center helped make Bergen the first — and one of the few — U.S. cities that have reached functional zero for chronic homelessness. Through providing counseling services and helping those in need access care and other resources like employment, the Center has helped several people secure housing, nearly eliminating long-term homelessness for veterans and those struggling with conditions like addiction and other mental illnesses.

Community mental health centers have been strained in Kansas ever since the state changed its approach to mental health treatment by reducing hospital beds in the 1990s. The intended shift to a community mental health approach didn’t go as planned, and as a result, available inpatient behavioral health beds have drastically decreased, leaving more people in hospitals and often on the streets.

Even while Los Angeles police criminalize homelessness with "sweeps" to clear encampments from public property, state and local programs have helped thousands of people find housing and receive services like counseling and criminal record expungement. Programs like LA DOOR and Project Roomkey use public-health and housing-first approaches to address people's underlying problems rather than subject them to endless cycles of arrest and incarceration, all of which cost far more than the helpful strategies while remaining far less effective. Street outreach is done without police escorts, to build trust.