The Press Democrat
MARISA KENDALL, CALMATTERS
June 28, 2023, 12:10PM
 
LaVoy Darden is looking for someone.

Making the rounds through Houston’s homeless encampments as an outreach specialist for a local nonprofit group, he offers snacks, builds trust, and puts people on a waitlist for affordable housing. On good days he gets to tell them they’re moving into a home.

But first, he has to find them. Today it’s a scorching 93 degrees, and there aren’t as many people out and about as usual. He spends hours combing the streets of Houston in his van – stopping along the way to update other clients on their housing searches – before he spots her.

He leans out the driver’s-side window and yells. “Hey! You move in Monday!”

Sending someone from the street into permanent housing is the ultimate goal for Darden and legions of other outreach workers like him all over America. But it seems to happen more often in Houston, where the homeless population shrank by more than half over the past decade. Compare that to California’s major cities, where the population surged by double-digits, and in some cases triple-digits.

It’s not just Houston. Texas as a whole last year recorded a 28% drop in homelessness since 2012, while California’s homeless population grew by 43% over the same period. In Texas, 81 people are homeless for every 100,000 residents. In California, the rate is more than five times worse.

And that’s despite the fact that Texas spends far fewer state dollars on homelessness. Last year, not counting federal money, Texas put $19.7 million into its three main homelessness programs – equal to about $806 per unhoused person. California, on the other hand, poured $1.85 billion into its three main programs – or $10,786 for every unhoused person.

How do residents view homelessness in each state? The difference is stark: Homelessness is the No. 1 issue on California voters’ minds, according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll. In a 2020 poll of Texas residents, it didn’t even crack the top 10.

Why is Texas doing so much better on homelessness? Right-leaning observers are quick to blame the discrepancy on California’s too-progressive policies. Liberals may distrust the statistics coming out of Texas. But the reality is more nuanced – as California leaders are realizing, while their cities and nonprofits send delegation after delegation to Texas.

With homelessness causing major tension in many California cities, and local and state efforts to get people off the streets continuing to fall short, Golden State leaders are desperate for new solutions. So desperate, that they’re going to a state whose deep-red policies California Democrats are better known for scorning than emulating.

San Jose’s homelessness response team visited Houston earlier this year. City and county representatives from the Los Angeles area went last fall. They came away jealous of some of the advantages Houston has over California cities – such as the lower housing costs that make it easier for the Texas metropolis to find or build homes for people.

But the Californians also were impressed by the way the city coordinates with the county and other local organizations, prioritizes funding for permanent housing instead of temporary shelters and finds places for people before clearing encampments.

“What those folks are doing – really focusing on housing folks – is working,” said Alex Visotzky, senior California policy fellow for the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

In April, two city council members from the East Bay city of Richmond headed to Austin to tour a 51-acre tiny home community that provides permanent housing for 350-and-counting homeless residents. Elected officials from Sacramento trekked to San Antonio to see a 1,600-person shelter that offers everything from dental care to counseling – serving nearly the city’s entire homeless population in one place.

Many experts agree California can learn something from these homeless solutions. But unless the Golden State fixes its housing affordability crisis decades in the making, copying the Lone Star State will get us only so far, said Eric Tars, legal director of the National Homelessness Law Center.

“Elected officials in California are desperate for quick-fix solutions,” he said. “They want a silver bullet to be able to solve homelessness for them. And so when they see results like what’s happening in Houston…they say, ‘that’s great, we want that.’”