Utah is Ending Homelessness by Giving People Homes

In eight years, Utah has quietly reduced homelessness by 78 percent, and is on track to end homelessness by 2015.

How did Utah accomplish this? Simple. Utah solved homelessness by giving people homes. In 2005, Utah figured out that the annual cost of E.R. visits and jail stays for homeless people was about $16,670 per person, compared to $11,000 to provide each homeless person with an apartment and a social worker. So, the state began giving away apartments, with no strings attached. Each participant in Utah’s Housing First program also gets a caseworker to help them become self-sufficient, but they keep the apartment even if they fail. The program has been so successful that other states are hoping to achieve similar results with programs modeled on Utah’s.

It sounds like Utah borrowed a page from Homes Not Handcuffs, the 2009 report by The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty and The National Coalition for the Homeless. Using a 2004 survey and anecdotal evidence from activists, the report concluded that permanent housing for the homeless is cheaper than criminalization. Housing is not only more human, it’s economical.

In human nature, there's usually an inverse relationship between the effort expended in acquiring an item of value and the degree to which the recipient foists responsibility for the item onto others.

Well that comment flipped my switch. We completed our dream home during the real-estate crash and during that fiasco got stuck holding our first house (not worth what we owed etc. etc.) Around that time a family we knew were foreclosed on and needed a place to live -- mother and father and two teenage girls. So we put several thousand into the old place on new paint, carpet and I sacrificed a couple weeks of my free time doing small repairs to make the place nearly new for them. We then rented it to them for several hundred a month less than the going rate for that sized house. It was meant to be a stop-gap until they got on their feet again. Three years later they were still there with no sign of ever leaving.

When I heard the market was back up and that we could actually pocket a few bucks if we sold that house we gave them notice and instead of 30 days said they could take 60 days. They took over 120 days to move out and when I got the keys I was floored at how filthy the place was. No bashed in walls or anything stolen, but grease and dirt everywhere, filthy tile grout, disgusting refrigerator, shower scum that needed a paint scraper, a self-cleaning oven that hadn't been cleaned in three years, etc. etc. He promised that in place of the discounted rent he'd take care of the landscaping -- nope. Vines grew out of control and destroyed my custom back fence. Trees overgrown to the point where the back lawn had shriveled up from lack of sunlight, dog-chewed doors and door frames where dry rot had set in, Destroyed screens and screen doors, and the back lawn turned into a cratered minefield from their pet rabbits, garage concrete that reeked of animal urine, badly oil-stained driveway etc. etc.. It took me three months and several thousand dollars in materials to get it right doing all the labor myself. And after all that they went around telling mutual friends how selfish we were for not giving them their $1000 deposit back.

Nope, there are some people who are just incapable of owning a home or taking care of things. The government can give away all the houses they want. In a couple of years those free house will be wrecked and unlivable. Count on it.

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