We talk to Gregg Colburn about his ground-breaking book on homelessness in the USA – and what might lie ahead for Australia.

By Meg Mundell

Photo: Unsplash

Your book is shaking up perceptions. What did you set out to investigate – and what did you discover?

We wanted to find out why some US cities have a lot of homeless people, and other cities don’t. After analysing a bunch of data, we found a good answer: it comes down to housing.

We discovered that cities with high rents and low rental vacancies had more homelessness. There were no exceptions – not one single counterexample. So, we had the title of our book! Homelessness is a Housing Problem.

What got you curious about this topic?

When I moved to Seattle, I noticed a lot of unsheltered homelessness here. After talking to people in my social circles, reading newspapers, I realised: nobody agrees about what’s causing this problem, or why it’s getting worse. Everyone had a different explanation.

That concerned me. When we don’t understand what causes homelessness, we run programs that don’t work. The problem gets worse, and everyone loses confidence in finding a solution.

So how do different US cities compare?

Our coastal cities – Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, New York, Los Angeles, DC – had the highest rates of homelessness. Like Sydney or Melbourne, they’re growing, prosperous places. Those cities have around five times as much homelessness as cities at the lower end of the scale.

The “low” group was the rustbelt cities: Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, St Louis. After their manufacturing industries [declined] in the mid-20th century, those cities had very depressed economies. Lots of people left, so they had big vacancy rates. Housing became really cheap. And today, those cities have nowhere near the level of homelessness you see in our coastal cities.

You test some popular ideas about what causes homelessness. How did they stack up?

When we see visibly homeless people dealing with addictions or mental health issues, we jump to the conclusion that those conditions are what’s driving the homelessness crisis.

But Seattle doesn’t have more people with mental illness or addiction. It’s just that the consequences of addiction are different in cities like Seattle. Because those cities don’t have enough affordable housing.

Our Southern states have incredibly high levels of overdose deaths, because of the opioid crisis in those areas. But those cities don’t have huge problems with homelessness. Because even if people have addictions, they can usually afford housing in those cities.

What about demographics – aren’t some groups more likely to become homeless?

If you’re poor, you’re disabled, a person of colour, or LGBTQI – all those vulnerabilities can increase your risk. They’re like sorting mechanisms: they can make you more likely to become homeless. But they don’t explain why Seattle has far more homelessness than Chicago. In the end, that comes down to housing.

Why is it important to debunk these myths?

If we blame the individual, that absolves us of any collective responsibility. If I tell myself Joe is homeless because he made poor decisions, I can just walk past him, go about my day.

In certain political circles, that blaming is central to the argument, which then precludes further investment. You end up in a downward spiral.

Rising rents are often blamed on population growth. But you point to “housing supply elasticity” as a major factor. How does that work?

“Supply elasticity” is about how markets respond to price changes. When the price of housing in a city increases, how much housing can they build in response?

Some cities have a more elastic housing supply – they can build more housing relatively quickly. That comes down to the regulatory environment, because it’s easier to build more houses in places with less strict rules; and also topography, because it’s harder to build in very steep places, or areas bordered by water.

Sun Belt cities have rapid population growth, but they can more easily accommodate more housing. It’s flatter and there are fewer regulations, so it’s easier to build. You can have more urban sprawl. Supply is more elastic.

In coastal cities like Seattle – with a strict regulatory environment, plus topography constraints – it’s harder to build extra housing to meet demand. Add a massive tech boom, with a huge increase in population. House prices and rents go up. And you end up with a massive housing crisis.

So how do we fix homelessness?

Building more housing is the best solution. To reduce homelessness within an area, we need to build more affordable rental homes there. Get people into stable housing.

Then you ask: what can we do to prevent people from becoming homeless? You might get 20,000 people into housing, but meanwhile another 30,000 are coming into the crisis system, so the problem’s still getting worse. So you also need to stop that flow of people into homelessness.

Homelessness is often framed as a human rights issue. But some people reject that view. Why should they care about fixing this problem?

There’s a strong economic argument for solving homelessness. Sure, providing housing and services is not cheap. But homelessness is terribly expensive. We don’t think about all those costs, because they’re distributed across lots of different systems.

Once people are stably housed, they use fewer societal resources, and they contribute to businesses. In the long run, investing in more housing would save us a lot of money.

You just got back from an Australian book tour. How are our cities tracking? What does the future hold?

Australia is ten or fifteen years behind the US on homelessness. Your rent spike is more recent, so you’re still on the upward curve. All the evidence suggests your cities will follow similar trajectories to the US. If the situation persists, in ten years your cities will look like US cities today. That means you need to disrupt this trend: put policies in place and build more housing.

Gregg Colburn is an Associate Professor at the University of Washington. His latest book is Homelessness is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain US Patterns, co-authored with data journalist Clayton Aldern.

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