Homing in on health: U.S. homeless prescribed stable, safe housing. Reuters, March 7, 2019 — Carey L Biron
When Catherine Crosland sees patients in the U.S. capital, her key concern is whether they have somewhere to live.“The biggest social determinant of health is housing status,” the doctor told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at a clinic below a Washington D.C. shelter.
Being homeless, she said, “causes risks to your health, lack of access to food and hygiene, the threat of violence, depression and substance abuse”.
Crosland is the medical director for homeless outreach services at Unity Health Care, a non-profit focused on low-income communities in the capital. In that role she sees patients in clinics, on sidewalks and at encampments - and the effect a lack of housing has.
Last year, she said, one patient with several chronic medical problems lost her apartment in a fire. That forced her to move with her son to a motel housing homeless families.
For a month, Crosland said, the woman was dependent on fast food and soup kitchens — and in that time gained 20 pounds (9kg). She died two days after going to hospital showing signs of heart failure and high blood pressure.
“To me, she died because she lost her housing — absolutely, 100 percent,” Crosland said.
That fits research - most recently data from a 2018 study that found “rough-sleeping” adults in Boston were three times more likely to die than those of the same age living in shelters, and 10 times more likely than the state’s general population...
The full read is 7 minutes well worth it — see the link.
A day or two ago, kosak Dr Teeth, a social science researcher, posted a diary, Universal Basic Income Doesn't Make Sense to Me, on the idea of alleviating dire poverty by having government give an equal amount to all Americans (or whatever country would try it) in order to be able to give it to people most in need. From the tenor of the comments, UBI didn’t make sense to most readers there, either, but the discussion did get into a lot of valuable points on the specific and general topic.
Most of it took place while I was off googling and wikipeding for some points that seemed relevant. When I got back, I was most struck by the pragmatism of BlackSheep1 saying
First, let’s make sure we don’t lose Social Security for our retirees, and/or SSI for our disabled folks (and while we’re at it, damn it, let’s index those to cover inflation without having to have an actual act of Congress for every raise).
Then, let’s do universal single-payer healthcare for everybody (and it damn sure ought to cover mental health, eyeglasses/contacts, hearing aids, and dental care too). Let’s make it possible for folks who aren’t able to work not to starve.
Take some of that kind of stress off our most vulnerable, and see if we don’t have more energy and productivity injected into the workforce as a result.
“Energy and productivity” tied right in with much of what I’d looked for and found, based on past discussions across years to decades: programs that last are programs in which as many sectors of the demographic as possible have a first-hand stake, not the target demographic alone — that target demographic needs a wide spectrum of support.
So it makes sense that a basic early question in choosing direction would have to be what methods inject and recirculate cash throughout the economy with as little disappearance as possible, in order to exert the most impact upon poverty.
As the Reuters article implies, housing —and all that that implies, or might productively involve— might very well be the key, starting with construction jobs but not stopping there by a long shot, because everything connects with everything, as Jean Muir long ago said.
My riff on all that was:
SaltLakeCity and NewOrleans and a few other US places had also found some very good results with HOUSING FIRST for the homeless — it apparently has the side-or-secondary effect of dramatically reducing a lot of public costs by facilitating meeting needs besides housing that tend to get far worse and therefore cost more (i.i.u.c.) when people have nowhere to live (notably healthcare costs and crime issues).
This article from January does report, though, that Utah’s 91% decrease in homeless population thru housing programs has reversed and spiked the past couple of years, as funding dried up and land costs escalated.
If ways can be found around those and related obstacles, though, Universal Housing (especially if it includes water, elec and heat/cooking) looks likely to both meet the major needs of the poorest and reduce the costs of other programs, which would let the other programs stretch further. (And obviate Universal Basic Income.)
Subsidized community gardening (attached to housing) has in some places shown solid results for countering depression and anxiety, sparking motivation to develop and pursue goals again, and other individual and socia effects, besides helping with neighborhood food supply, decreasing air pollution, and employing gardening coaching-and-facilitator staff.
Also Universal National Service (as long as including women in the draft has been proposed): I forget if Sanders and others suggest one year or two or what, but in many countries it’s two years and combines skills -training and deployment to meet national needs together with education, healthcare, and all basic living costs. So, that’s at least one year and maybe 2 in the life of every young person by which to lever up out of poverty if they’re in it.
And re-expand SNAP, Meals On Wheels, etc — these programs have a track record of reducing public costs for healthcare.
And revive the farm/food surplus programs to protect family farms and increase the supply to food banks, public schools, Meals on Wheels, old age homes.
...wow I had forgotten all those until I was 4/5 of the way thru’ the Universal Housing paragraph.
Of course, all this might only be utopian fiction...
More ideas about how Americans can support housing the homeless?