The Discomforting Solution to Homelessness

"PEOPLE ARE UPSET OVER THE homelessness problem in American cities," writes Jacob Hornberger. NZers are just as disturbed about our homelessness problem here. Visit any of our major towns and cities and you'll see the streets playing host to many poor souls unable to put a roof over their heads.

 

Most people pass them by, perhaps with a sinking sense of guilt. Or perhaps not. But the problem seems so intractable, so most do very little. 

If there's nothing to be done, why do anything at all? 

But there is something to be done, says Hornberger, and should be done by anybody who cares. Two things in particular, which you'll find at the bottom of the post. And could be done bloody quickly - iff there were a will.

But first, just think for a minute and compare two sorts of places. You see homeless folk on the streets when you walk the main streets of our major towns and cities. But think for a minute: do you see them so often, or at all, in any of the smaller towns or cities?? Even the poorer of our small towns and cities???

Hornberger grew up in what was officially the poorest city in the U.S. Located right on the U.S.-Mexican border, Laredo, Texas, his hometown, was also home to many new immigrants, both legal and illegal. And yet, as he says, for all the very visible poverty, "There was no homelessness. That is, there was no one living on the streets or in their cars, as we see in many American [or New Zealand] cities today."

Now, think about that for a moment. People say that poverty is the cause of homelessness. But if that’s the case, why wasn’t there any homelessness in Laredo?
    The answer is: At that time, there was was no zoning in Laredo. Anyone could establish low-income housing anywhere he wanted, including such things as trailer parks, low-priced rental units, and multiple-family housing.
    Thus, everyone was able to find housing at some price.

It's breathtakingly simple when you think about it -- and it's not because of any "wrap-around care" or any of the welfare buzzwords you hear that have been so unsuccessful at helping our own homeless folk.  And the simple fact is this: If governments restrict where and how many roofs can be put up (which is what zoning is designed to do: for the town planner it's a feature, not a bug), then there will be fewer roofs available for people to put over their heads. And those few will be at higher prices than they otherwise would.

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I should point out that Laredo also had public-housing units (which, ironically, had been started by my grandfather). But even if the government had not entered into the housing market, there still wouldn’t have been a homelessness problem in Laredo.
    When I returned to Laredo after graduating from law school, one of our legal clients was a man who specialised in building and providing low-cost housing for the poor — for a profit. He would buy his building supplies in Mexico, where he could get them at a much lower price, bring them back to Laredo, and use them to build low-cost motels. His motel rooms were oriented toward the very poor. They were clean and simple. People could rent the rooms on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis.     He always had a very high occupancy rate.
    He was free to situate his rental units anywhere in town. That same freedom applied to mobile-home parks. That’s because there were no zoning laws.

Take a short break and think about that again:  no homeless people because homes of all kinds (trailer parks, low-priced rental units, multiple-family housing, clean and simple motel units, mobile-home parks) could be situated anywhere in town. And they could be situated could be situated anywhere in town because there were no zoning laws.

Forgive me for writing this as if you, dear reader, were a six-year old. And for underlining those conclusions. But it seems as if those who refuse to understand this have less understanding of the world and how it works than even the most stunted young child. Allow builders the freedom to build where there is demand for it, and of the type that's demanded, and you will have more buildings at better prices that are warm, and dry, and occupied by those who were formerly homeless. That's the experience of places like Laredo. (Do you understand, Chloe Swarbrick, who walks past the homeless every day on K Rd, who says new homes should be built only in places town planners dictate. Do you even give a shit, Chris Bishop, averting his gaze, who says new homes should only be built where, and how, he dictates. Are you listening David Seymour, ignoring the waifs and strays around the less-leafy edges of his electorate, who says we must "fix infrastructure first"?)

That same freedom [says Hornberger] does not apply in cities where there is a homelessness problem today. I guarantee you: Show me a city that has a big homelessness problem and I will show you a city that has zoning.
    To protect citizens’ property values from such things as mobile-home parks and low-price housing, local officials enacted zoning laws. They figured that they could abolish “blight” by simply using the force of zoning laws to make low-cost housing illegal. What they ended up doing is producing a massive homelessness problem.
    Today, much of the anger that arises from the homelessness problem is directed toward the homeless. But what are they supposed to do — commit suicide? They can’t afford to rent a place in which to live because zoning laws have knocked out low-priced housing within the city.

Indeed.

Zoning only came to New Zealand in 1928 with the Town Planning Act (brought in by a conservative government, wouldn't you know). Back then, it was a relatively new phenomenon. But if you observe things today, you will notice that town planners and the like today much prefer to live in those places like Devonport, Ponsonby Parnell and the like that were built before town planners infested the country -- and the places that are built today based on town planners' rules are those like Albany and Manukau and (gulp) Hobsonville.

Unattractive. And (still) unaffordable by most measures. Especially to those sleeping on the streets.

Think about it.

AND THINK ABOUT THIS too, especially if you castigate homeless folk because "they should just get a job." Have you ever considered that government-mandated minimum-wage laws prevent them from getting a job at a wage that is lower than that government-mandated minimum? 

It's all very well for "Chippy" to crow about "raising the minimum wage," as if that has magically "lifted all boats" to that government-mandated level. But what he ignores, or hopes that you do, is that the real minimum wage is zero. Which is what most of those homeless are currently "earning." 

And most of those are only earning that because Chippy's much-touted raise in the government-mandated wages level simply places a large gulf between what they're earning, what they could earn, and what employers are allowed to pay them.

It's as if the Prime Minister were gloating about taking several rungs out of the ladder they might have climbed themselves, if he hadn't taken them away.

It would be one thing if they were free to get a job at less than the governmentally set minimum wage. In that case, one could legitimately say, “Get a job, you bum.” But when their labour in the marketplace is valued by employers at less than the artificially-set minimum wage, the state has locked them out of the labor market with its minimum-wage law. Thus, telling them to “Get a job, you bum” is nothing less than cruel and abusive. And if they can’t get a job, then how are they supposed to be able to pay rent for housing, especially when rents are exorbitantly high because of zoning laws?

It's a tragedy. But it's not intractable. It is fixable. It's fixable iff there were a political will to to do it.

Want to do something about the homeless? Tell your politicians to fix it. And make sure you tell them how:

(1) repeal zoning laws, and
(2) repeal minimum-wage laws.