Opinion: A housing bill, but where’s housing for the homeless?

As winter fast approaches, in the wake of Connecticut’s most recent housing bill passing into legislation, it is clear that we are ignoring one of our most vulnerable populations: unsheltered homeless individuals.

Housing First is the only approach proven to significantly reduce the number of people living on the streets, and it is actually more cost-effective than leaving people outside.

Research shows that supportive housing dramatically lowers hospitalizations, emergency room use, psychiatric crises, and shelter stays, which creates net savings for taxpayers. It is the humane approach and the financially responsible one.

With the exception of promising a pilot program for portable showers and laundry services, Connecticut’s new housing bill (HB 8002) offers nothing to the 500+ people sleeping outside tonight. These are people who cannot wait for zoning reforms, planning committees, or long-term market shifts.

HB 8002 may reshape how development occurs and create a savings account for middle-class home-buyers, but none of its provisions will bring unsheltered homelessness down and help people trapped in a vicious cycle of trauma. Only Housing First could do that.

I know this not just from policy research, but also from seeing it affect the lives of people I love.

I was grateful to meet a woman in recovery who shared with me her incredible story. She told me about how she once lived unsheltered for over a year. While on the streets, she became a victim of human trafficking, was sexually assaulted by a group of men, and fell deeply into addiction and psychosis, which layered trauma on top of already existing complex post-traumatic stress disorder and schizoaffective disorder.

This wasn’t the result of laziness on her part. She was set up for failure from childhood after being abused by her family, and later faced more abuse in romantic relationships. She bounced around from one unsafe situation to another, without the tools to get help or help herself.

The turning point in her life did not come from punishment, policing, or incarceration. It came when she was enrolled in a free, stable housing program funded through the state’s Department of Rehabilitation.

Having a door that locked, a safe place to sleep, and supportive services, as well as just one supportive person in her life, empowered her to stabilize and probably saved her life.

After a few years of stable housing, safety, and trauma therapy, she found the strength to get sober and pursue higher education and a good career. She is still healing, but she is alive today because someone believed she deserved housing first.

I think about her every time I hear about some new catastrophe with my younger brother, who lives with his partner in Hartford. He is also struggling with addiction and mental illness, and is always one crisis away from getting kicked to the street.

If that happens, he will not qualify for most housing programs because he is unwilling to give up drugs and alcohol at this time and has behavioral problems. This would exclude him from qualifying for disability or for a sober living home. And shelters, as we know, can be dangerous places where violence and assault are far too common. On top of that, the waiting lists are long.

As the state of Connecticut stands currently, if my brother ends up on the street, he is far more likely to die than to get better.

“ Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy” (Proverbs 31:9).

How we treat the people with the least in our society says everything about who we are. Connecticut calls itself compassionate and justice-driven, yet we allow hundreds of people to sleep outside every night, including in winter, because it’s easier to ignore what makes us uncomfortable.

The reality of high unsheltered numbers results in real effects on our communities. We see increased emergency calls, more unsafe encampments and public places, higher public health costs, an increase in policing and incarceration, and a greater risk for violence.

If Connecticut wants to address housing, I believe it must adopt solutions that actually address homelessness.  Housing First is an effective method that has been tested in cities all over the United States and Canada , as well as in countries like Finland .

Housing First looks like: permanent supportive housing on a statewide scale, deeply affordable units, not just more market-rate buildings, mental health, harm-reduction, and trauma-informed services, and strong community bonds between service recipients and providers.

What does HB 8002 do for the unsheltered homeless population in our state? Nothing.

A bill cannot be called “housing reform” when it ignores the people with no housing at all.

If Connecticut wants cities that are safer, more stable, cost-effective, and more reflective of our values, the way forward is Housing First.

Everything else is neglecting the human rights and safety of our most vulnerable nutmeggers.

Rachel Kohn is a Master of Social Work Student at the University of Connecticut.