Could Shared Housing Help Curb Homelessness?

Last week I wrote about Alan Graham, whose unconventional Community First! Village has been widely publicized and is becoming widely imitated. This week I’m writing about an unconventional man mostly ignored, Michael Ullman. My January 13, 2023 column examined his work, which grows out of his 25 years of experience in managing and researching homeless services, and his hundreds of conversations with people living in shelters and on the streets. He is still rowing against the current with his National Homeless Information Project.

Ullman, for example, deconstructs the way the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development defines as “homeless” individuals living in large group shelters. Ullman rightly notes, “The primary job of homeless services providers is to move persons from the ‘streets’ (unsheltered) into housing. This is what the public wants to see.” Housing without much privacy is still housing, as people in the military, correctional centers, half-way houses, and many families know: “Much of the world lives in a manner that HUD would classify as homeless even though the people would consider it a natural and supportive way of living.”

That’s true. Sleeping in the same room with 1-3 other persons is different from sleeping in a large room with plywood dividers, which is different than sleeping on the streets. Ullman has pointed out that “communities and governments build shelters because that is where they want the street dwellers to go — and go there, they do, about 400,000 daily. If you think your shelters are not nice enough, fix them up.”

Other Ullmanisms: “Understanding homelessness demands a more historical understanding on the trends of household formation and composition. The key change in household formation since the 1960s is the rise of single adult households either via divorce, never marrying, or simply out of choice due to the relaxation of strict family and gender norms which previously offered a safety net. The more single adult households you have, the more homelessness.”

Ullman has complained about HUD “anti-family policies [that] deter the ability of housing-voucher holders to allow family members or friends to live in their HUD-supported unit. . . . It is extremely difficult for people to give up the belief that affordable housing is the key driver of homelessness. Providers see it because they try to house homeless people in their own apartments instead of urging them to go back to family or putting them in shared housing at half or sometimes a third of the cost.”

Ullman’s website includes an open letter to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who gave $30 million for a Research Institute on Homelessness at the University of California at San Francisco. Among Ullman’s recommendations: “Stop opening Emergency Shelters (aka Navigation Centers) . . . the success rate from these Navigation Centers is less than 15%, with most clients just returning to the streets.”

Ullman knows that “the primary engine for homelessness is the formation of one-adult households without sufficient resources. Most adults without resources live with other adults. This is why homelessness is not significantly higher. . . . Currently, an individual with a housing subsidy cannot allow another family member or close friend to just come live with them without jumping through massive hoops with HUD that make it nearly impossible. These types of regulations are anti-family and anti-community and a big part of why we have such high levels of homelessness.”

His advice to San Francisco is good: “Prioritize the development of shared-housing opportunities for any new or re-opened voucher. This can create 50 to 100 percent more housing opportunities with the same amount of funding. Only a very small percentage of homeless persons clinically require their own apartment. Most can and many thrive in shared-living situations. Shared living is how regular people making $50,000 to $100,000 make it in San Francisco. Homeless people can do this too.”

True, but Ullman also notes that the basic problem is one more of culture than particular public policies: “More and more people do not want to live with other people — that is the simplest way to put it. And they don’t want to move — which answers the question why someone who says they can’t afford to live in San Diego would not move to Arizona (which plenty of people do) let alone Tennessee where you can actually rent a place for under $400 a month. Too many don’t want to return to family . . . or live with others.”