June 10, 2025 • 34 mins
Addiction, mental illness, or poverty may explain why an individual may lose their housing—but these factors fail to explain why Seattle has five times more homelessness than Chicago. Through rigorous analysis, Colburn demonstrates that high rent prices and low vacancy rates are the true culprits behind regional homelessness variations. This revelation transforms how we should approach solutions.
Colburn advocates reframing housing as essential infrastructure—just as we invest billions in roads and transit without controversy, we must prioritize housing development as a public necessity. This perspective shift could unlock the political will needed to address our housing shortage crisis meaningfully.
Whether you're a policymaker, planner, or concerned citizen, this conversation offers crucial insights for understanding and addressing one of America's most persistent challenges. Listen now to discover how changing our approach to housing could transform our response to homelessness.
Show Notes:
- Further Reading:
- Neighborhood Defenders: Participatory Politics and America’s Housing Crisis by Katherine Levine Einstein
- When We Walk By: Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness in America by Donald Burns and Kevin Adler
- There is No Place for Us: Working and Homelessness in America By Brian Goldstone
- To help support the show, pick up a copy of the book through our Amazon Affiliates page at https://amzn.to/4mr2A0A or even better, get a copy through your local bookstore!
- To view the show transcripts, click on the episode at https://bookedonplanning.buzzsprout.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Stephanie Rouse (00:00):
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(00:43):
You're listening to the BookedOn Planning podcast, a project
of the Nebraska chapter of theAmerican Planning Association.
In each episode we dive intohow cities function by talking
with authors on housing,transportation and everything in
between.
Join us as we get Booked onPlanning.
Welcome back, bookworms, toanother episode of Booked on
(01:13):
Planning.
In this episode we talk withauthor Gregg Colburn on his book
Homelessness is a HousingProblem how Structural Factors
Explain US Patterns.
As Gregg reminds us in theinterview, this book is really
focused on the factors thatexplain homelessness at a
regional level, not at theindividual level.
So while factors like povertyor addiction will predict why
someone might end up losingtheir housing, it does not
(01:33):
explain why Chicago has lesshomelessness than San Francisco.
Jennifer Hiatt (01:38):
This book is a fantastic, deep dive into what
is most likely one of the worstculprits of our housing crisis
today at a city level an overalllack of housing at every
affordability level.
Without housing, our crisisresponse systems become a
bottleneck for people enteringhomelessness that have nowhere
to go to exit the system.
Stephanie Rouse (01:57):
Thinking of the homeless response system in a
systems approach, as the bookadvocates for as well as
infrastructure, like we wouldthink of building roads, was an
enlightening perspective.
If we can shift our thinking totreating home building the same
way that we do road building,we could boost support for
getting more housing built tohelp alleviate homelessness in
our cities.
Jennifer Hiatt (02:16):
Hopefully, after this discussion, you will see
the benefit of shifting yourperspective on homelessness.
Let's get into our conversationwith author Gregg Colburn on
his book Homelessness is aHousing Problem how Structural
Factors Explain US Patterns.
Stephanie Rouse (02:31):
Gregg, thank you for joining us on Booked on
Planning to talk about your book.
Homelessness is a HousingProblem, how Structural Factors
Explain US Patterns.
So foundational to tackling anyproblem is to have a good set
of data to understand the issueIn the world of homeless
services.
One of these data points is thepoint-in-time counts, which is
not always the most reliabledata set.
(02:51):
Why is it so hard to calculatethe full extent of homelessness
in our communities, and is therea better approach?
Gregg Colburn (02:58):
Well, first of all, thanks for having me.
I appreciate the opportunity tobe on the podcast with you.
So I mean, this is a difficultpopulation to count.
I mean that's the simple answerto this question, and I think
that's a pretty intuitive formost folks.
When they hear that the pointin time count is inaccurate or
not as precise as we'd like itto be, it's like it's
understandable why that's thecase.
And so there's been a lot ofresearch over the years showing
(03:18):
that the point in time count islikely an undercount and
potentially a significantundercount, and particularly
with folks who are living inunsheltered situations, because
it's sometimes hard to find themif they're in the woods or
under a bridge or whatever thecase may be.
And so you know there's been alot of time spent thinking about
how we can improve that.
I was actually just at apresentation last evening with
some researchers from theUniversity of Washington who
(03:39):
have been working with KingCounty to improve their method
of counting and estimating thehomeless population, using kind
of a snowball sample, where youtalk to someone and they refer
you to people and they aremaking the argument that this
will lead to a more precisemeasure not perfect, but a more
precise measure, and so I think,collectively, the nation is
trying to move in that direction.
We use the pit count in our book, and people said, well, how
(04:00):
could you use numbers that weknow are wrong in your book?
And what I say to that is thereason we're comfortable doing
that is we're taking a prettybroad brush, look, which is
we're saying that Seattle hasfive times the homelessness of
Chicago.
Might that be six times, verypossibly.
You know, the undercount isprobably greater in Seattle than
in Chicago, and so we are notmaking a precise analysis.
I think when you try to makeprecise analyses with the PID
(04:22):
count, that's where it becomesproblematic.
And so when people say, well,why don't you run the analysis
of if rents go down by 10%,what's going to happen to
homelessness?
And that requires a reallyprecise understanding of what
happens year to year, and that'swhere things get a little dicey
.
And so the pit count is useful,it's important, it's great that
we have it, versus not havingit, with all of its shortcomings
.
We just have to kind ofexercise humility in how we're
(04:44):
using those numbers.
Jennifer Hiatt (04:46):
And just so we all get on the same page during
the conversation.
I know this is a difficultrequest, but can you kind of
define homelessness and explainwhy this is actually somewhat
difficult to do really?
Gregg Colburn (04:56):
For sure, for sure.
So the definition ofhomelessness is not uniform
around the world is the firstpoint, and so what I'm going to
I'll describe how we define itin the United States, provide
some global context on how otherpeople define it and then break
down kind of the homelesspopulation in the United States,
which is important for thisconversation.
So US Department of Housing andUrban Development has defined
homelessness as people who areliving in homeless shelters and
(05:18):
people who are living inlocations that are unfit for
human habitation.
That's a quote from thedefinition, and so unfit for
human habitation would includeliving in your car, living in a
tent, living on a street, etc.
What is not included in the USdefinition is, jennifer, if, out
of the kindness of your heart,I fall intoa tough time and say
can I sleep on your couch for awhile, and you say yes, and I'm
(05:40):
now living doubled up in yourhome, I'm not homeless per the
federal, us federal definition.
In many jurisdictions in Europethat would be included in
homelessness because I'munstably housed, I've lost my
tenancy or the place where I'mliving, and the only reason I'm
not homeless is out of goodnessof your heart.
And so there's been interestingresearch demonstrating that if
we were to include doubled upsituations in the United States,
(06:01):
our number would bedramatically higher than it is
right now.
So it's a fairly limiteddefinition.
Even within that limiteddefinition, we're now up over
700,000 people, which we know isan undercount.
So this is not an insignificantnumber.
And then what's really importantis to kind of break down that
population, and we can do thatin a variety of ways.
One of the most common ways isjust sheltered versus
(06:22):
unsheltered, and so that's a keydifferentiation that HUD uses
and local jurisdictions use todifferentiate.
And so you'll see places likeNew York City, which have huge
shelters, huge capacity, wherethe large 95% of the people
experiencing homelessness in NewYork City are residing in
shelter, and the West CoastSeattle, all the way down to Los
Angeles far more limitedshelter systems, and so what
(06:43):
you'll see is in many cases,more than half of the people
experiencing homelessness areunsheltered One.
The homeless populations arehigh, and the shelter response
is more limited on the WestCoast, and so the breakdown is
different in differentgeographies.
Stephanie Rouse (06:56):
Your whole book is about what is the cause of
homelessness and I think a lotof people, if you ask them,
would give different reasons,and some of the examples might
be addiction, causing them tolose their housing.
But you describe in the bookthat these kind of things are
just risk factors and not theactual cause.
So can you describe thedifference between what a risk
factor would be and what thereal driver of homelessness is,
(07:16):
and why it's important todistinguish between the two of
them?
Gregg Colburn (07:20):
Sure, and just to be really clear, those risk
factors that you identify at theindividual level are causes at
the individual level.
So what we're not saying isthat addiction, mental illness,
poverty aren't causes.
They are if you're trying topredict the likelihood of
homelessness for an individualperson.
The purpose of our book is toexplain regional variation, to
explain why some cities have alot of homelessness.
When your unit of analysis is acity, those factors are not
(07:44):
causes of homelessness.
That is not why Seattle has somuch more homelessness than
Chicago.
And so what we do when we'relooking at through a city lens,
and what we say in the book isthis book is about cities, not
about people.
It's not because people don'tdeserve dignity and respect and
care and compassion.
Of course they do.
What we're trying to do in thisbook is explain like what the
heck is going on in Seattle andSan Francisco and Los Angeles.
Explain like what the heck isgoing on in Seattle and San
(08:04):
Francisco and Los Angeles.
That's the purpose of the book.
When you use that lens, whenyou use that focus, these other
factors help to explain whobecomes homeless in Seattle.
It doesn't explain why Seattlehas five times the homelessness
of Chicago.
So we would call, at acommunity level, the shortage of
affordable housing as the rootcause of this crisis and the
primary explanatory factor ofwhy Seattle has so much
homelessness.
And then these other individualrisk factors are really sorting
(08:26):
mechanisms that kind of help toidentify people who aren't
going to have a housing whenthere's not enough housing.
Jennifer Hiatt (08:32):
This level of homelessness, especially
unsheltered homelessness, is arelatively new phenomenon that
we started to see in the 1980s.
So what are some of the causesof this crisis?
As you say, like in the cities,big cities having disparate
housing issues.
Gregg Colburn (08:47):
I'm going to just do a real quick history detour
and then kind of get to the rootof your question.
But what was fascinating is westarted to see more homelessness
at the end of the 70s and early80s.
And this is at a time of therecession coming out of
President Carter's term ofpresident, and then Reagan gets
elected in 80.
(09:07):
And basically the publicnarrative at that point was
we're in a recession, of coursewe're going to have homelessness
, and then all of a sudden theeconomy starts to take off in
the latter half of the decade ofthe 1980s and homelessness
didn't disappear, and so thiscaused kind of a national
reckoning of like well, wait asecond, we are equating
homelessness with economicdownturns, which is what
happened during the GreatDepression in the 1930s.
(09:28):
Right, we had massivehomelessness around the United
States, which was totallyintuitive because we had 25%
unemployment.
Banks were failing, people werelosing their homes.
Again, one plus one equals two.
That makes perfect sense.
We tried to apply the samelogic in the late 70s and early
80s, and then it didn't reallyhold.
So that's when people reallystarted to ask the question of
like well, what's going on here?
Because now the economy ishumming unemployment's back down
and yet we're still seeinghomelessness.
And that's when researchersreally started to say, like well
(09:49):
, there's probably somethinggoing on with the housing market
here, and ultimately.
So what we do in our book is wekind of take this research that
we've known for some time,package it in a way that's
hopefully a little moreaccessible for general readers
and we demonstrate that theproblems that we have in New
York and DC and Boston andSeattle and San Francisco and LA
is not that we have moreaddicts or mentally ill people
or more poor people.
We certainly have those folks.
So does every other city.
(10:10):
The difference is is that wehave really really high rents
and really low vacancies, whichmeans that if you're
precariously housed or in atough situation, it's a very
little margin for error.
You might be able to figure itout in St Louis, where rents are
750 bucks a month.
Trying to figure it out in SanFrancisco when it's 2,500 bucks
a month, is just really, reallyhard.
So that's kind of the thesisthat we're making is that these
(10:31):
housing market conditions arereally are by far the best
explanatory factor for hugerates of homelessness in our
coastal cities.
Jennifer Hiatt (10:38):
When most people think of the regional
differences that we were justtalking about in homelessness,
we often hear well, thosecommunities.
They either encouragehomelessness by providing social
support or the weather is goodthere, so of course the unhoused
people go there.
But your book points out thatthe data shows that those
factors really actually aren'tall that important when we are
talking about why this disparateaction is occurring as well.
(10:59):
So can you also explain this?
Gregg Colburn (11:00):
So those factors are I jokingly call them the
cocktail party conversationaround homelessness.
When people lecture me abouthomelessness as I'm holding a
glass of red wine, this happensfar more than I would like, and
certainly more than my wifewould like, as she rolls her
eyes.
So, anyway, it's like, as theconversation goes, greg, it's
warm in LA and it's cold inChicago.
Of course LA is going to havemore homelessness, and so that's
a true statement.
(11:21):
I've lived in Chicago.
It's very cold, but when wezoom out, there's plenty of warm
locations that don't have a lotof homelessness cities in
Arizona and Texas and Floridaand there's a lot of cold places
like Boston and New York thathave tons of homelessness.
And so it's really tempting toblame Mother Nature, because
then we don't have to look atourselves in the mirror is the
way I kind of think about thatexplanation and it makes some
intuitive sense of when you walkaround LA and LA is pretty mild
(11:44):
and temperate, and it's like,okay, yeah, I think I'd rather
be homeless there than inChicago.
That might be true.
I don't want to be homelessanywhere, let's be very clear
about that.
But yeah, it might be betterthan Chicago, but that could be
true.
But it also there's animplication in this idea is that
people are then moving to thoselocations because of this
temperate climate, which thengets into this whole magnet idea
whether it's warm weather orgenerous benefits that we're
(12:05):
creating the conditions toattract people to communities
and that's why we have tons ofhomelessness on the West Coast.
And what we see in the researchis very, very little evidence of
that.
Margot Kuchel at University ofCalifornia, san Francisco, did
this huge study of homelessnessin California.
They found that 90% of thepeople experiencing homelessness
in California are fromCalifornia.
So is there an anecdote to thecontrary, of course, and someone
might get ahold of that personin a newspaper and write an
(12:27):
article about it and that thencements in people's minds of
that.
This is a mobility story.
Ultimately speaking, the vastmajority of people experiencing
homelessness in communities arefrom that community.
There is mobility from likesuburban locations to the urban
core, because that's whereservices and transportation
exist, but state to statemobility that's not the story
here.
That's not why LA has a lot ofhomelessness.
We test it in the book.
(12:47):
Looking at TANF, which is theprimary federal welfare program
for families, typically womenand children what we see is
people are not congregating instates with more generous
benefits.
People are not makinglocational decisions to uproot
their lives for an extra $100 or$150 a month.
Right, the idea of generousbenefits we always have to put
in quotation marks because theyaren't terribly generous.
They're just more generous thanSouth Carolina, for example.
And so because of thedisruption to social networks
(13:11):
and the cost in theinconvenience of moving, what we
see is that low-income folksactually move state to state at
very, very low levels.
They tend to move a lot, but ittends to be local moves, it's
not state to state moves.
And so this magnet theory of boyif we just stop providing
benefits, then all of this willgo away is super prevalent.
It's been around for a longtime and I kind of joke, but
(13:32):
it's true.
I've heard this almost everyplace I go and I tell people
like that's not how magnets work, you all can't be the
destination, like physics 101would teach you that.
Yeah, it's a sticky, prevalentexplanation that almost has zero
empirical support for it.
Jennifer Hiatt (13:46):
Well, it doesn't seem to me to have too terribly
much common sense supporteither.
I mean, I do get.
If you were going to behomeless, maybe you'd want to be
warm, but people are people,regardless of their situation.
Like you want to stay whereyour support system is.
You want to be where yourfamily and your loved ones and
your friends are, where youmight have a chance.
So it never really made senseto me that people would just
uproot entirely for, like yousay, an extra a hundred dollars.
Gregg Colburn (14:09):
Right, it doesn't make much sense either, but
there are plenty of people, forsome reason, who want to blame
the outsider, whether it'sasylum seeker or migrant, or
it's someone from Indianapolismoving to LA, it's just, it's
prevalent.
Stephanie Rouse (14:19):
And also I think the issue with people's
perception in that regard isthat they're thinking a very
narrow portion of the definitionof homeless, just the people
that they see unsheltered, nottrue homelessness that might be
in a shelter, whether it's notgoing to impact them because
they're within a building versusliving on the streets.
Gregg Colburn (14:35):
Yeah, I think that's a super important point,
and one of the analogies that Iuse for people is this iceberg
analogy of homelessness, in thesense that the visible
manifestation of homelessnessthat you might see on Third
Avenue in Seattle is a small tipof the iceberg.
That's visible, and what wedon't see is people living in
their cars, showering at theYMCA and then going to their
jobs.
We don't see women and childrenin shelter who are getting up
(14:55):
and going to work and getting ona bus to go to school, and so
that's a huge chunk of thehomeless population that we
don't see, and so we basicallyjust focus on Joe on the street,
and that's to us.
Joe equals homelessness andit's an important part of
homelessness and Joe deservesour compassion and treatment and
respect and all that, but it'sa very small sliver.
(15:19):
And you've already kind ofmentioned this high level.
But how does increased housingcosts explain differences in
regional rates of homelessness?
Yeah, so when we plot justabsolute rents, so just looking
at what is the rent per monthrelative to rates of
homelessness, what we see is anupward sloping line that has a
fair amount of kind ofstatistical evidence behind it,
far more so than drugs orpoverty or mental illness or
weather or whatever all thoseother things.
And the way that we explainthat is trying to get to $2,000
(15:40):
a month is hard and getting to700 bucks is a little easier.
So being poor in Detroit is nopicnic, but through low age
labor, familial support, publicassistance, you might be able to
get to seven 800 bucks a month,which is enough to keep you
housed.
Those supports certainly stillexist in San Francisco, but
they're just nowhere near enoughto get you there, and so it's
pretty simplistic.
No one's giving a Nobel prizefor this analysis.
(16:02):
That we do, but it's prettycompelling.
Like there isn't a good counterexample.
Every place that has lowvacancies and high rents in the
United States has a lot ofhomelessness.
Stephanie Rouse (16:10):
And then, building on that, why does
housing cost burden, a factorthat the industry really relies
on heavily to measure wherewe're at, not directly explain
homelessness?
Gregg Colburn (16:19):
So I want to be really careful with this.
High housing cost burdens doincrease the risk of
experiencing homelessness at theindividual level.
If I'm 50% cost burdened andthe two of you are 25% cost
burdened, I'm more likely toexperience homelessness, no
doubt.
But what's interesting is, at acommunity level, high housing
cost burdens are not predictiveof high rates of homelessness.
Why is that?
One is our samples of thelargest metro areas, so we don't
(16:41):
look at midsize cities, andthere is some research showing
that when you get above 35% at acommunity level, you do have
higher homelessness.
In our sample we don't see itbecause housing cost burdens are
actually pretty similarthroughout the United States.
And this is one of my favoritetrivia questions at a party when
people are talking abouthousing what city do you think
has a higher housing cost burden?
Detroit or San Francisco?
99 out of 100 people will saySan Francisco, of course, and
(17:04):
the answer is Detroit.
It's really shocking.
Why does Detroit have such highhousing cost burden?
Their housing is cheap.
Their incomes are unbelievablylow.
It's staggering when you lookat average or median incomes in
Detroit, and so the averagerenter in Detroit is highly,
highly cost burdened.
The average renter in SanFrancisco is paying a lot but
wages are high.
You know Seattle, we have a $20minimum wage and so even you
(17:26):
know working minimum wage inSeattle, you're making 40 grand
a year.
So the point is is that thevariation in housing cost burden
is not doesn't show up asterribly predictive because of
this kind of Cleveland, detroit,san Francisco kind of weird
dynamic where you can have highhousing cost burdens in places
with very different dynamics.
So that's where we kind of saylike that's less predictive than
just the absolute value of rent.
(17:47):
Knowing what the absolute rentis is more important, at least
for the analysis that weconducted in our book, not to
suggest that housing cost burdenisn't something that we
shouldn't focus on.
Of course it is.
When you're 50% cost burden itconstrains consumption on
education and food and clothingand all this stuff that's really
important and we know thosehouseholds are more precariously
housed and are at higher riskof homelessness.
So I'm really careful not todismiss that as something that
(18:08):
we should care about from apolicy standpoint.
It's just not as predictive inour analysis.
Jennifer Hiatt (18:13):
Not just one factor, it's multiple factors
all the time.
There's never a silver bullet.
Can we just build our way outof this problem?
Will simply increasing thesupply of housing correct the
market, and should we be relyingon the market to solve this
problem?
Gregg Colburn (18:27):
I think the market should build a heck of a
lot more housing.
It should be easier, cheaperand faster to build more housing
, and no, that alone will notend this, but fixing this
without more housing will bereally, really difficult.
So I kind of refer to changesin land use and regulatory
regimes as a necessary butinsufficient condition to
dealing with this.
Once you have sufficienthousing and you have vacancy,
then, when you do have supportsand subsidies in these programs,
(18:49):
you can actually get peopleinto housing, which is why we've
seen sustained success inMilwaukee and Houston and other
jurisdictions who had vacancyand cheaper housing.
And then when you got vouchersor other supports from the
federal government, you got aunit boom, we've got a voucher,
let's get people in there.
And so the problem with citieslike Seattle is when we got
rental assistance during COVIDemergency rental assistance
there wasn't a place to putpeople, literally wasn't a place
(19:10):
to put people, and so it took areally long time for us to use
these federal resources that wewere praying for for decades,
and finally the truck shows upwith a bunch of money and we
literally couldn't even use it,which was so frustrating.
And so that's why you know yourquestion's a really good one,
and I'm always careful becausepeople accuse me of just saying
Greg just thinks we should buildmarket rate housing.
Everything's going to go away.
I was like, no, you need toread the book.
That is not the point.
(19:31):
It's certainly important.
It's certainly important.
We're three to seven millionunits short in the United States
, according to a variety ofsources.
Developers, private developers,will build a lot of that
housing because we just have avery limited subsidy program in
the United States.
But once we have that housing,then we can think about what
subsidies and supports do weneed to make sure that people
can access that housing, andthat's an important conversation
for us to have.
(19:52):
I'm grateful to have thatconversation.
So it's a both and as aprofessor, I always say it's D,
all the above, like we need todo all those things.
Just subsidy alone won't workbecause we still have this
massive deficit of housing andjust building more market rate
housing and deregulating alsowon't be enough on its own.
Stephanie Rouse (20:07):
Yeah, because even the cost of building new
housing is so high that you'renot building affordable units.
I think here in Nebraska youcan't build a single family for
anywhere even near $300,000anymore.
That's like it's over in the$400,000 range and that's not an
affordable unit to a household.
Gregg Colburn (20:23):
Not at all.
Jennifer Hiatt (20:24):
Yeah, I'm on the board of a land trust here in
Lincoln and we attempt tosubsidize for affordability and
right now the best we can comein at it's $175,000, which is
theoretically affordable at 80%.
But even then, right now, wecan't keep a house payment for
$175,000 house below $1,700.
It's ridiculous.
Gregg Colburn (20:46):
Yeah, I mean you throw 7% mortgage rates on that,
and something that may havebeen three, four years ago with
the three and a half percentmortgage is very different now
with the 7% mortgage, and thenbuilding costs and labor costs
have gone up too.
So it's it's tough, and and I,I you know I say this all the
time on the coast when I'mspeaking like I've spent a lot
of time in the Midwest on thistalk and I'm deeply concerned
about the Midwest and what I'mseeing in the housing market
trajectory, and I've been inGreen Bay and Cedar Rapids, iowa
(21:08):
, and was just in Missouri last.
Rents are going up and they'renot starting to talk about
homelessness and so it's reallyalarming.
Jennifer Hiatt (21:18):
Yeah Well, and here at least in Nebraska, a lot
of the problem too is thatpeople have bought up all the
land around a community.
They see the picture and theintention is to keep the supply
low, to keep the price high,because it's a lot easier to
build one house and sell it for700,000, and build 10 houses and
sell them for 70,000.
You know it's.
Stephanie Rouse (21:39):
So the solution that you propose in the book to
make meaningful progress andhomelessness is to shift our
thinking around the issue to asystems approach.
What does this look like?
Gregg Colburn (22:04):
housing costs, burdened and lose a job, and the
next thing, you know, I can nolonger make my lease payments.
And then I'm calling my friend,jennifer, saying can I sleep on
your couch?
And then at some point Jennifersays you know, you've been here
for a month, greg, it's time toget out.
And then I end up at theshelter door or I'm sleeping in
my car, or whatever the case maybe.
And so one of the reasons wehave a huge homelessness problem
is the flow into homelessnessis far greater than our systems
can exit people from that state.
And so when we center housingin this conversation, it not
(22:31):
only helps getting people out ofhomelessness, it also reduces
the flow into homelessness.
And so we have a crisisresponse system and I'm glad we
do, because it saves lives andit cares for people, and that
system consumes a lot of money.
And so what happens is is thatwhen we don't build housing, we
get more people flowing in.
We can't get people out of thecrisis response system because
we don't have housing, and whathappens is we keep building
larger and larger systems thatconsume lots and lots of money.
(22:51):
New York City is the primeexample of this.
Their shelter system consumesbillions of dollars a year and
they just literally warehousepeople in that system.
A shortage of housing iscausing people to enter, and
there's not enough housing andaffordable housing on the back
end to get people out, and sowhat happens is people kind of
get stuck.
It's a bottleneck in thatsystem, and so neither my
co-author nor I would everadvocate for eliminating the
crisis response.
(23:11):
We absolutely need that, butwhat we also need is capital
investment in housing andsubsidy for housing, such that
we don't need to keep building alarger and larger crisis
response system, Because that,in my opinion, is a bridge to
nowhere.
Is it better than potentiallyhaving people on the street?
Yes and no?
Some people will say yes, somepeople say no, but if you've
ever spent any time in ahomeless shelter, it's not a
place that I would want to spendany material time.
(23:32):
We know the impacts on kids areterrible once they get into
shelter, right, and so we haveto keep thinking about that.
And I just think about LA allthe time, which is the good
people of LA who are working inthe crisis response system just
get torn apart in public opinionin the newspaper every day,
we're actually getting a ton ofpeople into housing.
It's actually remarkable.
But then the flow in is evenfaster and so the numbers go up.
And then everyone says theydon't know what they're doing,
(23:54):
they're incompetent.
It's like no, that's totallyunfair, they're actually really
good at what they do.
What we're incompetent at iswe've created the conditions for
people just to be flowing intohomelessness at such high rates.
And then I think the other pointthat's really important here is
that we end up with thesedebates and this is certainly
happening in Seattle right nowwhich is, if we think about the
marginal dollar.
We're all constrainedfinancially, so where are we
going to put the next dollar?
(24:15):
Do we put it into shelter orpermanent housing?
We probably do need moreshelter in Seattle, given the
rates of unshelteredhomelessness here.
But what's interesting is whenyou think about a shelter as a
system.
If the length of stay in ashelter on average is 60 days,
that means with each bed you canserve six people in a year,
basically two months for eachperson, because homelessness
tends to be pretty episodic.
People are in and out in andout in and out.
(24:36):
If, because you have morehousing, you can reduce length
of stay from 60 to 30 days, onethat's good because it's less
time in shelter for people, butyou can now serve 12 people in
that same shelter bed.
So when you build more housingand you reduce length of stay,
you're also increasing thecapacity of your shelter system
without building new buildings.
And so this whole like linkingall these systems together is
(24:57):
super, super important.
And when the spigot's on andpeople are just coming to that
system and they can't get out,then the whole thing gets mucked
up.
If people are staying there fora year, then one shelter bed
serves one person, right, andthen the whole system is not
working the way it should.
And so, again, it's easy totalk about it Like I can just
pontificate about this, but Idon't have to do it under the
aliases no-transcript.
Jennifer Hiatt (25:32):
One of the points that you make in the book
is that we should shiftperspective on how we think
about permanent supportivehousing, shelter, housing, this
type of thing, and startthinking of it the same way we
think about publictransportation.
It's a public good.
Government should be providingit.
It's that simple.
It's that simple.
It's not easy.
How could our listeners helpsupport shifting policies and
(25:53):
political will towards thatsystems approach and start
thinking about these things in amuch different way?
Gregg Colburn (25:59):
Yeah.
So my current mantra and thisis going to be my next book
project is I want to reframehousing as infrastructure.
Because once we start to talkabout infrastructure, the
relationship between the privatemarket and the public sector
blurs a little bit.
I think one of the problemswith housing is that we view it
as a private good for the vastmajority of people in the United
States and then when we startto talk about government
involvement in housing, weimmediately go to Cabrini Green
(26:20):
in Chicago or Pruitt-Igoe in StLouis and say that was a
disaster.
Why would we do that?
And I worked hard, bought myown house, why shouldn't
everyone else do that?
And so I find that thisprivatization and kind of the
private good nature of housingis super harmful when we start
to think about these broaderissues.
Have our two largest employers,amazon and Microsoft, who've
(26:44):
given billions of dollars forhousing because they realize
like they can't be a company ifpeople can't afford to live in
this region.
If only software engineers canafford to live in Seattle and no
one who's going to serve coffeeor clean the headquarters at
night or whatever can live there, they've got a problem.
And so once we see theseproblems and then we kind of say
well, housing is infrastructure, it's important for economic
development, it's important forall sorts of things.
Is infrastructure, it'simportant for economic
(27:04):
development, it's important forall sorts of things?
Then we open up ideas of ohwell, we've made massive
infrastructure investments onroads and bridges and ports and
all these things, and no one'sscreaming socialism, and it's a
good that everyone needs.
So in our region we passed $55billion for transit.
These investments are longoverdue.
We should have done this 30years ago.
It was a fight, but done.
You know, in a variety of taxesyou might pay more when you go
(27:25):
to the football game or park oryou know whatever.
I don't even know what all thetaxes are.
But we're getting to $55billion over 25 years.
Our former governor, jay Inslee,who just stepped down after
three terms two years ago wewere in a meeting and he was
telling me that he was going topropose $4 billion for housing
grant, but just bonding, and itwas greeted as if it was the
(27:45):
most radical thing that had everbeen proposed in political
history, like $4 billion forhousing.
And I wanted to be like we justpassed $55 billion for transit,
10 times that.
Yet $4 billion for housing waslike dead on arrival, I mean, it
went nowhere, it wasimmediately out.
And so I think part of theproblem is is like we just don't
think about it in that way.
And so I think, changing theway that we think about housing,
(28:06):
that it is vital to the healthof communities, it's vital to
the health of our economy, thenwe can start to have a broader
conversation of oh well, what ifgovernment had a more active
role in financing housing, suchthat you're not paying 7% on a
mortgage, you're paying 1% whenyou develop it or you know
whatever the case may be, andthen you blur the lines between
public and private and justrecognize that communities are
not going to be healthy andvibrant if people can't afford
(28:27):
to live there.
Sometimes I feel like I'mspitting into the wind on that,
but that's kind of the currentmessage that I'm going for.
I think it's really, reallyimportant, and I will say the
one beneficial byproduct of thiscrisis is that I think more
people are open to listening tothat.
Now In know in Seattle it'slike I'm never going to see my
grandkids because my kids andgrandkids can't afford to live
here, and now they're living inIowa.
You know that kind of sometimesit's selfishly motivated, but I
(28:49):
frankly don't care how you getthere.
But if you kind of get to thepoint where this is a problem,
it might be that you're justfrustrated that you continue to
see people on the street and youdon't want that fine, different
.
Otherwise you're still notgoing to see your grandkids and
there are going to be a lot morepeople on the street.
Stephanie Rouse (29:04):
Well, when you write that book, we're more than
happy to have you back on totalk more in depth about
reframing the conversation as aninfrastructure issue.
Gregg Colburn (29:12):
Happy to do it.
I got to write the darn thingfirst.
Stephanie Rouse (29:15):
And as this is Booked on Planning, what books
would you recommend our readerscheck out?
Gregg Colburn (29:19):
I recommend a lot of books when I'm on the road.
One that I think is reallyimportant we didn't talk about
this in this conversation, butit's super important is the
local politics around housingdecisions.
You know, and so you just thinkabout Tuesday night planning
commission.
They're going to talk about amultifamily housing development,
and then five people show upand say no.
And then, in the name ofdemocracy, the city council or
the planning commission sayswell, five people showed up,
(29:42):
they said no, so the answer isno, and then we end up with a
screwed up housing system.
And so Katie Einstendingcolleagues at Boston University
wrote a book called NeighborhoodDefenders, which is an awesome
description of basically howthis process worked in Cambridge
, massachusetts, but it'sapplicable to every jurisdiction
in the United States, becausewhenever I bring this up,
(30:02):
everyone laughs and says that'sexactly what's going on in my
community, and so what itdemands of us is to kind of
rethink civic engagement andplanning processes, and because
the problem with the way thatwe've done it to date is the
people who would benefit fromthat housing are not invited to
the meeting right, because youcan't afford to live in
Cambridge Mass.
And so who shows up it's peoplelike me over 50, they're white,
they're single familyhomeowners and they say no.
And then elected officials orappointees to these councils or
commissions say, well, we haveto listen to our constituencies.
(30:24):
And so I think that's, forplanners, a really important
book.
And the concept is superimportant because even if you
buy the argument that we make inthis book, we still have to get
over this huge local politicalimpediment of how do we then
transition from where we are nowto different land use,
different built environment, allthat kind of stuff, and so I
think that's a really good book.
Another book that I wouldrecommend and you know, I look
(30:46):
at homelessness kind of from astructural perspective, and
Kevin Adler and his co authorlook at homelessness from a very
individual level and kind ofcentering relational breakdown
or lack of relationship, and sotheir book is when we walk by.
It's kind of an ethnographiclook at homelessness and the
work that Kevin's done in termsof connecting people
experiencing homelessness withfamily members with whom they
might be estranged.
(31:06):
It's a super touching book, acompelling read.
It kind of, to me, brings anice counterbalance to our work,
which is a little more clinicaland not super personal.
The reality is there are realpeople behind all of this, and
so I really appreciate Kevin andDon's work on this book and
kind of bringing that to light.
Another homelessness book that Iwould recommend is a recent
publication from Brian Goldstonecalled there's no Place Like Us
(31:26):
, and it's another ethnographyof folks who are working in
Atlanta, who are struggling tomaintain stable housing, and so,
again, it's a really importantstory.
You know, I think there's adebate about whether data or
stories move people to action,and so I tend to move on data,
and there's certainly people forwhom that resonates, but for
other folks it's theseindividual stories that really
matter, and so I do think havinga literature of both
(31:48):
storytelling narrative as wellas data is important, because we
need to hit people where theyare, and so those are a few
books that have been a top ofmind for me recently, but we
could spend the next hourtalking about great books,
because there's so muchimportant literature on this.
Jennifer Hiatt (32:00):
There is, I have read.
There is no place for us,though, and it's so fascinating
because when people think abouthomelessness, many think that
those are the people who arejust out panhandling, and not
that there's disgrace oranything in any action that you
have to take to survive, butpeople think, oh, these people
are lazy, they have no job, theyhave no gumption whatever.
But in reality, many of thesepeople are working multiple jobs
(32:21):
.
As you said in Detroit, many ofthese people are working
multiple jobs.
As you said in Detroit, making$5 an hour takes multiple jobs
to get up to a decent salary, sothis book particularly hit me
hard.
I'm from the rural part ofNebraska and the people living
in rural Nebraska it's a drivetill you can afford type
situation in a lot of ways, andthey are busy, busy people.
They're not just sitting around.
Gregg Colburn (32:45):
I mean in Seattle .
The last census I saw was overhalf the people in shelter in
Seattle are employed, and sothere's just a misperception.
And certainly there are folkswho are not, and we still need
to care for those folks andprovide treatment et cetera, but
there's a whole swath of peoplewho are working pretty darn
hard and still living inconditions that I don't think
any of us would be real proud ofas a society.
That this is what's happening.
Stephanie Rouse (33:06):
Gregg, thank you so much for joining us on
the show to talk about your book.
Homelessness is a HousingProblem.
How Structural Factors ExplainUS Patterns.
Gregg Colburn (33:14):
My pleasure.
I enjoyed it.
Jennifer Hiatt (33:17):
We hope you enjoyed this conversation with
author Gregg Colburn on his bookHomelessness is a Housing
Problem how Structural FactorsExplain US Patterns.
You can get your own copythrough the publisher at the
University of California Pressor click the link in the show
notes to take you directly toour affiliate page.
Remember to subscribe to theshow wherever you listen to
podcasts and please rate, reviewand share the show.
Thank you for listening andwe'll talk to you next time on
(33:38):
Booked.
On Planning planning.
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(00:43):
You're listening to the BookedOn Planning podcast, a project
of the Nebraska chapter of theAmerican Planning Association.
In each episode we dive intohow cities function by talking
with authors on housing,transportation and everything in
between.
Join us as we get Booked onPlanning.
Welcome back, bookworms, toanother episode of Booked on
(01:13):
Planning.
In this episode we talk withauthor Gregg Colburn on his book
Homelessness is a HousingProblem how Structural Factors
Explain US Patterns.
As Gregg reminds us in theinterview, this book is really
focused on the factors thatexplain homelessness at a
regional level, not at theindividual level.
So while factors like povertyor addiction will predict why
someone might end up losingtheir housing, it does not
(01:33):
explain why Chicago has lesshomelessness than San Francisco.
Jennifer Hiatt (01:38):
This book is a fantastic, deep dive into what
is most likely one of the worstculprits of our housing crisis
today at a city level an overalllack of housing at every
affordability level.
Without housing, our crisisresponse systems become a
bottleneck for people enteringhomelessness that have nowhere
to go to exit the system.
Stephanie Rouse (01:57):
Thinking of the homeless response system in a
systems approach, as the bookadvocates for as well as
infrastructure, like we wouldthink of building roads, was an
enlightening perspective.
If we can shift our thinking totreating home building the same
way that we do road building,we could boost support for
getting more housing built tohelp alleviate homelessness in
our cities.
Jennifer Hiatt (02:16):
Hopefully, after this discussion, you will see
the benefit of shifting yourperspective on homelessness.
Let's get into our conversationwith author Gregg Colburn on
his book Homelessness is aHousing Problem how Structural
Factors Explain US Patterns.
Stephanie Rouse (02:31):
Gregg, thank you for joining us on Booked on
Planning to talk about your book.
Homelessness is a HousingProblem, how Structural Factors
Explain US Patterns.
So foundational to tackling anyproblem is to have a good set
of data to understand the issueIn the world of homeless
services.
One of these data points is thepoint-in-time counts, which is
not always the most reliabledata set.
(02:51):
Why is it so hard to calculatethe full extent of homelessness
in our communities, and is therea better approach?
Gregg Colburn (02:58):
Well, first of all, thanks for having me.
I appreciate the opportunity tobe on the podcast with you.
So I mean, this is a difficultpopulation to count.
I mean that's the simple answerto this question, and I think
that's a pretty intuitive formost folks.
When they hear that the pointin time count is inaccurate or
not as precise as we'd like itto be, it's like it's
understandable why that's thecase.
And so there's been a lot ofresearch over the years showing
(03:18):
that the point in time count islikely an undercount and
potentially a significantundercount, and particularly
with folks who are living inunsheltered situations, because
it's sometimes hard to find themif they're in the woods or
under a bridge or whatever thecase may be.
And so you know there's been alot of time spent thinking about
how we can improve that.
I was actually just at apresentation last evening with
some researchers from theUniversity of Washington who
(03:39):
have been working with KingCounty to improve their method
of counting and estimating thehomeless population, using kind
of a snowball sample, where youtalk to someone and they refer
you to people and they aremaking the argument that this
will lead to a more precisemeasure not perfect, but a more
precise measure, and so I think,collectively, the nation is
trying to move in that direction.
We use the pit count in our book, and people said, well, how
(04:00):
could you use numbers that weknow are wrong in your book?
And what I say to that is thereason we're comfortable doing
that is we're taking a prettybroad brush, look, which is
we're saying that Seattle hasfive times the homelessness of
Chicago.
Might that be six times, verypossibly.
You know, the undercount isprobably greater in Seattle than
in Chicago, and so we are notmaking a precise analysis.
I think when you try to makeprecise analyses with the PID
(04:22):
count, that's where it becomesproblematic.
And so when people say, well,why don't you run the analysis
of if rents go down by 10%,what's going to happen to
homelessness?
And that requires a reallyprecise understanding of what
happens year to year, and that'swhere things get a little dicey
.
And so the pit count is useful,it's important, it's great that
we have it, versus not havingit, with all of its shortcomings
.
We just have to kind ofexercise humility in how we're
(04:44):
using those numbers.
Jennifer Hiatt (04:46):
And just so we all get on the same page during
the conversation.
I know this is a difficultrequest, but can you kind of
define homelessness and explainwhy this is actually somewhat
difficult to do really?
Gregg Colburn (04:56):
For sure, for sure.
So the definition ofhomelessness is not uniform
around the world is the firstpoint, and so what I'm going to
I'll describe how we define itin the United States, provide
some global context on how otherpeople define it and then break
down kind of the homelesspopulation in the United States,
which is important for thisconversation.
So US Department of Housing andUrban Development has defined
homelessness as people who areliving in homeless shelters and
(05:18):
people who are living inlocations that are unfit for
human habitation.
That's a quote from thedefinition, and so unfit for
human habitation would includeliving in your car, living in a
tent, living on a street, etc.
What is not included in the USdefinition is, jennifer, if, out
of the kindness of your heart,I fall intoa tough time and say
can I sleep on your couch for awhile, and you say yes, and I'm
(05:40):
now living doubled up in yourhome, I'm not homeless per the
federal, us federal definition.
In many jurisdictions in Europethat would be included in
homelessness because I'munstably housed, I've lost my
tenancy or the place where I'mliving, and the only reason I'm
not homeless is out of goodnessof your heart.
And so there's been interestingresearch demonstrating that if
we were to include doubled upsituations in the United States,
(06:01):
our number would bedramatically higher than it is
right now.
So it's a fairly limiteddefinition.
Even within that limiteddefinition, we're now up over
700,000 people, which we know isan undercount.
So this is not an insignificantnumber.
And then what's really importantis to kind of break down that
population, and we can do thatin a variety of ways.
One of the most common ways isjust sheltered versus
(06:22):
unsheltered, and so that's a keydifferentiation that HUD uses
and local jurisdictions use todifferentiate.
And so you'll see places likeNew York City, which have huge
shelters, huge capacity, wherethe large 95% of the people
experiencing homelessness in NewYork City are residing in
shelter, and the West CoastSeattle, all the way down to Los
Angeles far more limitedshelter systems, and so what
(06:43):
you'll see is in many cases,more than half of the people
experiencing homelessness areunsheltered One.
The homeless populations arehigh, and the shelter response
is more limited on the WestCoast, and so the breakdown is
different in differentgeographies.
Stephanie Rouse (06:56):
Your whole book is about what is the cause of
homelessness and I think a lotof people, if you ask them,
would give different reasons,and some of the examples might
be addiction, causing them tolose their housing.
But you describe in the bookthat these kind of things are
just risk factors and not theactual cause.
So can you describe thedifference between what a risk
factor would be and what thereal driver of homelessness is,
(07:16):
and why it's important todistinguish between the two of
them?
Gregg Colburn (07:20):
Sure, and just to be really clear, those risk
factors that you identify at theindividual level are causes at
the individual level.
So what we're not saying isthat addiction, mental illness,
poverty aren't causes.
They are if you're trying topredict the likelihood of
homelessness for an individualperson.
The purpose of our book is toexplain regional variation, to
explain why some cities have alot of homelessness.
When your unit of analysis is acity, those factors are not
(07:44):
causes of homelessness.
That is not why Seattle has somuch more homelessness than
Chicago.
And so what we do when we'relooking at through a city lens,
and what we say in the book isthis book is about cities, not
about people.
It's not because people don'tdeserve dignity and respect and
care and compassion.
Of course they do.
What we're trying to do in thisbook is explain like what the
heck is going on in Seattle andSan Francisco and Los Angeles.
Explain like what the heck isgoing on in Seattle and San
(08:04):
Francisco and Los Angeles.
That's the purpose of the book.
When you use that lens, whenyou use that focus, these other
factors help to explain whobecomes homeless in Seattle.
It doesn't explain why Seattlehas five times the homelessness
of Chicago.
So we would call, at acommunity level, the shortage of
affordable housing as the rootcause of this crisis and the
primary explanatory factor ofwhy Seattle has so much
homelessness.
And then these other individualrisk factors are really sorting
(08:26):
mechanisms that kind of help toidentify people who aren't
going to have a housing whenthere's not enough housing.
Jennifer Hiatt (08:32):
This level of homelessness, especially
unsheltered homelessness, is arelatively new phenomenon that
we started to see in the 1980s.
So what are some of the causesof this crisis?
As you say, like in the cities,big cities having disparate
housing issues.
Gregg Colburn (08:47):
I'm going to just do a real quick history detour
and then kind of get to the rootof your question.
But what was fascinating is westarted to see more homelessness
at the end of the 70s and early80s.
And this is at a time of therecession coming out of
President Carter's term ofpresident, and then Reagan gets
elected in 80.
(09:07):
And basically the publicnarrative at that point was
we're in a recession, of coursewe're going to have homelessness
, and then all of a sudden theeconomy starts to take off in
the latter half of the decade ofthe 1980s and homelessness
didn't disappear, and so thiscaused kind of a national
reckoning of like well, wait asecond, we are equating
homelessness with economicdownturns, which is what
happened during the GreatDepression in the 1930s.
(09:28):
Right, we had massivehomelessness around the United
States, which was totallyintuitive because we had 25%
unemployment.
Banks were failing, people werelosing their homes.
Again, one plus one equals two.
That makes perfect sense.
We tried to apply the samelogic in the late 70s and early
80s, and then it didn't reallyhold.
So that's when people reallystarted to ask the question of
like well, what's going on here?
Because now the economy ishumming unemployment's back down
and yet we're still seeinghomelessness.
And that's when researchersreally started to say, like well
(09:49):
, there's probably somethinggoing on with the housing market
here, and ultimately.
So what we do in our book is wekind of take this research that
we've known for some time,package it in a way that's
hopefully a little moreaccessible for general readers
and we demonstrate that theproblems that we have in New
York and DC and Boston andSeattle and San Francisco and LA
is not that we have moreaddicts or mentally ill people
or more poor people.
We certainly have those folks.
So does every other city.
(10:10):
The difference is is that wehave really really high rents
and really low vacancies, whichmeans that if you're
precariously housed or in atough situation, it's a very
little margin for error.
You might be able to figure itout in St Louis, where rents are
750 bucks a month.
Trying to figure it out in SanFrancisco when it's 2,500 bucks
a month, is just really, reallyhard.
So that's kind of the thesisthat we're making is that these
(10:31):
housing market conditions arereally are by far the best
explanatory factor for hugerates of homelessness in our
coastal cities.
Jennifer Hiatt (10:38):
When most people think of the regional
differences that we were justtalking about in homelessness,
we often hear well, thosecommunities.
They either encouragehomelessness by providing social
support or the weather is goodthere, so of course the unhoused
people go there.
But your book points out thatthe data shows that those
factors really actually aren'tall that important when we are
talking about why this disparateaction is occurring as well.
(10:59):
So can you also explain this?
Gregg Colburn (11:00):
So those factors are I jokingly call them the
cocktail party conversationaround homelessness.
When people lecture me abouthomelessness as I'm holding a
glass of red wine, this happensfar more than I would like, and
certainly more than my wifewould like, as she rolls her
eyes.
So, anyway, it's like, as theconversation goes, greg, it's
warm in LA and it's cold inChicago.
Of course LA is going to havemore homelessness, and so that's
a true statement.
(11:21):
I've lived in Chicago.
It's very cold, but when wezoom out, there's plenty of warm
locations that don't have a lotof homelessness cities in
Arizona and Texas and Floridaand there's a lot of cold places
like Boston and New York thathave tons of homelessness.
And so it's really tempting toblame Mother Nature, because
then we don't have to look atourselves in the mirror is the
way I kind of think about thatexplanation and it makes some
intuitive sense of when you walkaround LA and LA is pretty mild
(11:44):
and temperate, and it's like,okay, yeah, I think I'd rather
be homeless there than inChicago.
That might be true.
I don't want to be homelessanywhere, let's be very clear
about that.
But yeah, it might be betterthan Chicago, but that could be
true.
But it also there's animplication in this idea is that
people are then moving to thoselocations because of this
temperate climate, which thengets into this whole magnet idea
whether it's warm weather orgenerous benefits that we're
(12:05):
creating the conditions toattract people to communities
and that's why we have tons ofhomelessness on the West Coast.
And what we see in the researchis very, very little evidence of
that.
Margot Kuchel at University ofCalifornia, san Francisco, did
this huge study of homelessnessin California.
They found that 90% of thepeople experiencing homelessness
in California are fromCalifornia.
So is there an anecdote to thecontrary, of course, and someone
might get ahold of that personin a newspaper and write an
(12:27):
article about it and that thencements in people's minds of
that.
This is a mobility story.
Ultimately speaking, the vastmajority of people experiencing
homelessness in communities arefrom that community.
There is mobility from likesuburban locations to the urban
core, because that's whereservices and transportation
exist, but state to statemobility that's not the story
here.
That's not why LA has a lot ofhomelessness.
We test it in the book.
(12:47):
Looking at TANF, which is theprimary federal welfare program
for families, typically womenand children what we see is
people are not congregating instates with more generous
benefits.
People are not makinglocational decisions to uproot
their lives for an extra $100 or$150 a month.
Right, the idea of generousbenefits we always have to put
in quotation marks because theyaren't terribly generous.
They're just more generous thanSouth Carolina, for example.
And so because of thedisruption to social networks
(13:11):
and the cost in theinconvenience of moving, what we
see is that low-income folksactually move state to state at
very, very low levels.
They tend to move a lot, but ittends to be local moves, it's
not state to state moves.
And so this magnet theory of boyif we just stop providing
benefits, then all of this willgo away is super prevalent.
It's been around for a longtime and I kind of joke, but
(13:32):
it's true.
I've heard this almost everyplace I go and I tell people
like that's not how magnets work, you all can't be the
destination, like physics 101would teach you that.
Yeah, it's a sticky, prevalentexplanation that almost has zero
empirical support for it.
Jennifer Hiatt (13:46):
Well, it doesn't seem to me to have too terribly
much common sense supporteither.
I mean, I do get.
If you were going to behomeless, maybe you'd want to be
warm, but people are people,regardless of their situation.
Like you want to stay whereyour support system is.
You want to be where yourfamily and your loved ones and
your friends are, where youmight have a chance.
So it never really made senseto me that people would just
uproot entirely for, like yousay, an extra a hundred dollars.
Gregg Colburn (14:09):
Right, it doesn't make much sense either, but
there are plenty of people, forsome reason, who want to blame
the outsider, whether it'sasylum seeker or migrant, or
it's someone from Indianapolismoving to LA, it's just, it's
prevalent.
Stephanie Rouse (14:19):
And also I think the issue with people's
perception in that regard isthat they're thinking a very
narrow portion of the definitionof homeless, just the people
that they see unsheltered, nottrue homelessness that might be
in a shelter, whether it's notgoing to impact them because
they're within a building versusliving on the streets.
Gregg Colburn (14:35):
Yeah, I think that's a super important point,
and one of the analogies that Iuse for people is this iceberg
analogy of homelessness, in thesense that the visible
manifestation of homelessnessthat you might see on Third
Avenue in Seattle is a small tipof the iceberg.
That's visible, and what wedon't see is people living in
their cars, showering at theYMCA and then going to their
jobs.
We don't see women and childrenin shelter who are getting up
(14:55):
and going to work and getting ona bus to go to school, and so
that's a huge chunk of thehomeless population that we
don't see, and so we basicallyjust focus on Joe on the street,
and that's to us.
Joe equals homelessness andit's an important part of
homelessness and Joe deservesour compassion and treatment and
respect and all that, but it'sa very small sliver.
(15:19):
And you've already kind ofmentioned this high level.
But how does increased housingcosts explain differences in
regional rates of homelessness?
Yeah, so when we plot justabsolute rents, so just looking
at what is the rent per monthrelative to rates of
homelessness, what we see is anupward sloping line that has a
fair amount of kind ofstatistical evidence behind it,
far more so than drugs orpoverty or mental illness or
weather or whatever all thoseother things.
And the way that we explainthat is trying to get to $2,000
(15:40):
a month is hard and getting to700 bucks is a little easier.
So being poor in Detroit is nopicnic, but through low age
labor, familial support, publicassistance, you might be able to
get to seven 800 bucks a month,which is enough to keep you
housed.
Those supports certainly stillexist in San Francisco, but
they're just nowhere near enoughto get you there, and so it's
pretty simplistic.
No one's giving a Nobel prizefor this analysis.
(16:02):
That we do, but it's prettycompelling.
Like there isn't a good counterexample.
Every place that has lowvacancies and high rents in the
United States has a lot ofhomelessness.
Stephanie Rouse (16:10):
And then, building on that, why does
housing cost burden, a factorthat the industry really relies
on heavily to measure wherewe're at, not directly explain
homelessness?
Gregg Colburn (16:19):
So I want to be really careful with this.
High housing cost burdens doincrease the risk of
experiencing homelessness at theindividual level.
If I'm 50% cost burdened andthe two of you are 25% cost
burdened, I'm more likely toexperience homelessness, no
doubt.
But what's interesting is, at acommunity level, high housing
cost burdens are not predictiveof high rates of homelessness.
Why is that?
One is our samples of thelargest metro areas, so we don't
(16:41):
look at midsize cities, andthere is some research showing
that when you get above 35% at acommunity level, you do have
higher homelessness.
In our sample we don't see itbecause housing cost burdens are
actually pretty similarthroughout the United States.
And this is one of my favoritetrivia questions at a party when
people are talking abouthousing what city do you think
has a higher housing cost burden?
Detroit or San Francisco?
99 out of 100 people will saySan Francisco, of course, and
(17:04):
the answer is Detroit.
It's really shocking.
Why does Detroit have such highhousing cost burden?
Their housing is cheap.
Their incomes are unbelievablylow.
It's staggering when you lookat average or median incomes in
Detroit, and so the averagerenter in Detroit is highly,
highly cost burdened.
The average renter in SanFrancisco is paying a lot but
wages are high.
You know Seattle, we have a $20minimum wage and so even you
(17:26):
know working minimum wage inSeattle, you're making 40 grand
a year.
So the point is is that thevariation in housing cost burden
is not doesn't show up asterribly predictive because of
this kind of Cleveland, detroit,san Francisco kind of weird
dynamic where you can have highhousing cost burdens in places
with very different dynamics.
So that's where we kind of saylike that's less predictive than
just the absolute value of rent.
(17:47):
Knowing what the absolute rentis is more important, at least
for the analysis that weconducted in our book, not to
suggest that housing cost burdenisn't something that we
shouldn't focus on.
Of course it is.
When you're 50% cost burden itconstrains consumption on
education and food and clothingand all this stuff that's really
important and we know thosehouseholds are more precariously
housed and are at higher riskof homelessness.
So I'm really careful not todismiss that as something that
(18:08):
we should care about from apolicy standpoint.
It's just not as predictive inour analysis.
Jennifer Hiatt (18:13):
Not just one factor, it's multiple factors
all the time.
There's never a silver bullet.
Can we just build our way outof this problem?
Will simply increasing thesupply of housing correct the
market, and should we be relyingon the market to solve this
problem?
Gregg Colburn (18:27):
I think the market should build a heck of a
lot more housing.
It should be easier, cheaperand faster to build more housing
, and no, that alone will notend this, but fixing this
without more housing will bereally, really difficult.
So I kind of refer to changesin land use and regulatory
regimes as a necessary butinsufficient condition to
dealing with this.
Once you have sufficienthousing and you have vacancy,
then, when you do have supportsand subsidies in these programs,
(18:49):
you can actually get peopleinto housing, which is why we've
seen sustained success inMilwaukee and Houston and other
jurisdictions who had vacancyand cheaper housing.
And then when you got vouchersor other supports from the
federal government, you got aunit boom, we've got a voucher,
let's get people in there.
And so the problem with citieslike Seattle is when we got
rental assistance during COVIDemergency rental assistance
there wasn't a place to putpeople, literally wasn't a place
(19:10):
to put people, and so it took areally long time for us to use
these federal resources that wewere praying for for decades,
and finally the truck shows upwith a bunch of money and we
literally couldn't even use it,which was so frustrating.
And so that's why you know yourquestion's a really good one,
and I'm always careful becausepeople accuse me of just saying
Greg just thinks we should buildmarket rate housing.
Everything's going to go away.
I was like, no, you need toread the book.
That is not the point.
(19:31):
It's certainly important.
It's certainly important.
We're three to seven millionunits short in the United States
, according to a variety ofsources.
Developers, private developers,will build a lot of that
housing because we just have avery limited subsidy program in
the United States.
But once we have that housing,then we can think about what
subsidies and supports do weneed to make sure that people
can access that housing, andthat's an important conversation
for us to have.
(19:52):
I'm grateful to have thatconversation.
So it's a both and as aprofessor, I always say it's D,
all the above, like we need todo all those things.
Just subsidy alone won't workbecause we still have this
massive deficit of housing andjust building more market rate
housing and deregulating alsowon't be enough on its own.
Stephanie Rouse (20:07):
Yeah, because even the cost of building new
housing is so high that you'renot building affordable units.
I think here in Nebraska youcan't build a single family for
anywhere even near $300,000anymore.
That's like it's over in the$400,000 range and that's not an
affordable unit to a household.
Gregg Colburn (20:23):
Not at all.
Jennifer Hiatt (20:24):
Yeah, I'm on the board of a land trust here in
Lincoln and we attempt tosubsidize for affordability and
right now the best we can comein at it's $175,000, which is
theoretically affordable at 80%.
But even then, right now, wecan't keep a house payment for
$175,000 house below $1,700.
It's ridiculous.
Gregg Colburn (20:46):
Yeah, I mean you throw 7% mortgage rates on that,
and something that may havebeen three, four years ago with
the three and a half percentmortgage is very different now
with the 7% mortgage, and thenbuilding costs and labor costs
have gone up too.
So it's it's tough, and and I,I you know I say this all the
time on the coast when I'mspeaking like I've spent a lot
of time in the Midwest on thistalk and I'm deeply concerned
about the Midwest and what I'mseeing in the housing market
trajectory, and I've been inGreen Bay and Cedar Rapids, iowa
(21:08):
, and was just in Missouri last.
Rents are going up and they'renot starting to talk about
homelessness and so it's reallyalarming.
Jennifer Hiatt (21:18):
Yeah Well, and here at least in Nebraska, a lot
of the problem too is thatpeople have bought up all the
land around a community.
They see the picture and theintention is to keep the supply
low, to keep the price high,because it's a lot easier to
build one house and sell it for700,000, and build 10 houses and
sell them for 70,000.
You know it's.
Stephanie Rouse (21:39):
So the solution that you propose in the book to
make meaningful progress andhomelessness is to shift our
thinking around the issue to asystems approach.
What does this look like?
Gregg Colburn (22:04):
housing costs, burdened and lose a job, and the
next thing, you know, I can nolonger make my lease payments.
And then I'm calling my friend,jennifer, saying can I sleep on
your couch?
And then at some point Jennifersays you know, you've been here
for a month, greg, it's time toget out.
And then I end up at theshelter door or I'm sleeping in
my car, or whatever the case maybe.
And so one of the reasons wehave a huge homelessness problem
is the flow into homelessnessis far greater than our systems
can exit people from that state.
And so when we center housingin this conversation, it not
(22:31):
only helps getting people out ofhomelessness, it also reduces
the flow into homelessness.
And so we have a crisisresponse system and I'm glad we
do, because it saves lives andit cares for people, and that
system consumes a lot of money.
And so what happens is is thatwhen we don't build housing, we
get more people flowing in.
We can't get people out of thecrisis response system because
we don't have housing, and whathappens is we keep building
larger and larger systems thatconsume lots and lots of money.
(22:51):
New York City is the primeexample of this.
Their shelter system consumesbillions of dollars a year and
they just literally warehousepeople in that system.
A shortage of housing iscausing people to enter, and
there's not enough housing andaffordable housing on the back
end to get people out, and sowhat happens is people kind of
get stuck.
It's a bottleneck in thatsystem, and so neither my
co-author nor I would everadvocate for eliminating the
crisis response.
(23:11):
We absolutely need that, butwhat we also need is capital
investment in housing andsubsidy for housing, such that
we don't need to keep building alarger and larger crisis
response system, Because that,in my opinion, is a bridge to
nowhere.
Is it better than potentiallyhaving people on the street?
Yes and no?
Some people will say yes, somepeople say no, but if you've
ever spent any time in ahomeless shelter, it's not a
place that I would want to spendany material time.
(23:32):
We know the impacts on kids areterrible once they get into
shelter, right, and so we haveto keep thinking about that.
And I just think about LA allthe time, which is the good
people of LA who are working inthe crisis response system just
get torn apart in public opinionin the newspaper every day,
we're actually getting a ton ofpeople into housing.
It's actually remarkable.
But then the flow in is evenfaster and so the numbers go up.
And then everyone says theydon't know what they're doing,
(23:54):
they're incompetent.
It's like no, that's totallyunfair, they're actually really
good at what they do.
What we're incompetent at iswe've created the conditions for
people just to be flowing intohomelessness at such high rates.
And then I think the other pointthat's really important here is
that we end up with thesedebates and this is certainly
happening in Seattle right nowwhich is, if we think about the
marginal dollar.
We're all constrainedfinancially, so where are we
going to put the next dollar?
(24:15):
Do we put it into shelter orpermanent housing?
We probably do need moreshelter in Seattle, given the
rates of unshelteredhomelessness here.
But what's interesting is whenyou think about a shelter as a
system.
If the length of stay in ashelter on average is 60 days,
that means with each bed you canserve six people in a year,
basically two months for eachperson, because homelessness
tends to be pretty episodic.
People are in and out in andout in and out.
(24:36):
If, because you have morehousing, you can reduce length
of stay from 60 to 30 days, onethat's good because it's less
time in shelter for people, butyou can now serve 12 people in
that same shelter bed.
So when you build more housingand you reduce length of stay,
you're also increasing thecapacity of your shelter system
without building new buildings.
And so this whole like linkingall these systems together is
(24:57):
super, super important.
And when the spigot's on andpeople are just coming to that
system and they can't get out,then the whole thing gets mucked
up.
If people are staying there fora year, then one shelter bed
serves one person, right, andthen the whole system is not
working the way it should.
And so, again, it's easy totalk about it Like I can just
pontificate about this, but Idon't have to do it under the
aliases no-transcript.
Jennifer Hiatt (25:32):
One of the points that you make in the book
is that we should shiftperspective on how we think
about permanent supportivehousing, shelter, housing, this
type of thing, and startthinking of it the same way we
think about publictransportation.
It's a public good.
Government should be providingit.
It's that simple.
It's that simple.
It's not easy.
How could our listeners helpsupport shifting policies and
(25:53):
political will towards thatsystems approach and start
thinking about these things in amuch different way?
Gregg Colburn (25:59):
Yeah.
So my current mantra and thisis going to be my next book
project is I want to reframehousing as infrastructure.
Because once we start to talkabout infrastructure, the
relationship between the privatemarket and the public sector
blurs a little bit.
I think one of the problemswith housing is that we view it
as a private good for the vastmajority of people in the United
States and then when we startto talk about government
involvement in housing, weimmediately go to Cabrini Green
(26:20):
in Chicago or Pruitt-Igoe in StLouis and say that was a
disaster.
Why would we do that?
And I worked hard, bought myown house, why shouldn't
everyone else do that?
And so I find that thisprivatization and kind of the
private good nature of housingis super harmful when we start
to think about these broaderissues.
Have our two largest employers,amazon and Microsoft, who've
(26:44):
given billions of dollars forhousing because they realize
like they can't be a company ifpeople can't afford to live in
this region.
If only software engineers canafford to live in Seattle and no
one who's going to serve coffeeor clean the headquarters at
night or whatever can live there, they've got a problem.
And so once we see theseproblems and then we kind of say
well, housing is infrastructure, it's important for economic
development, it's important forall sorts of things.
Is infrastructure, it'simportant for economic
(27:04):
development, it's important forall sorts of things?
Then we open up ideas of ohwell, we've made massive
infrastructure investments onroads and bridges and ports and
all these things, and no one'sscreaming socialism, and it's a
good that everyone needs.
So in our region we passed $55billion for transit.
These investments are longoverdue.
We should have done this 30years ago.
It was a fight, but done.
You know, in a variety of taxesyou might pay more when you go
(27:25):
to the football game or park oryou know whatever.
I don't even know what all thetaxes are.
But we're getting to $55billion over 25 years.
Our former governor, jay Inslee,who just stepped down after
three terms two years ago wewere in a meeting and he was
telling me that he was going topropose $4 billion for housing
grant, but just bonding, and itwas greeted as if it was the
(27:45):
most radical thing that had everbeen proposed in political
history, like $4 billion forhousing.
And I wanted to be like we justpassed $55 billion for transit,
10 times that.
Yet $4 billion for housing waslike dead on arrival, I mean, it
went nowhere, it wasimmediately out.
And so I think part of theproblem is is like we just don't
think about it in that way.
And so I think, changing theway that we think about housing,
(28:06):
that it is vital to the healthof communities, it's vital to
the health of our economy, thenwe can start to have a broader
conversation of oh well, what ifgovernment had a more active
role in financing housing, suchthat you're not paying 7% on a
mortgage, you're paying 1% whenyou develop it or you know
whatever the case may be, andthen you blur the lines between
public and private and justrecognize that communities are
not going to be healthy andvibrant if people can't afford
(28:27):
to live there.
Sometimes I feel like I'mspitting into the wind on that,
but that's kind of the currentmessage that I'm going for.
I think it's really, reallyimportant, and I will say the
one beneficial byproduct of thiscrisis is that I think more
people are open to listening tothat.
Now In know in Seattle it'slike I'm never going to see my
grandkids because my kids andgrandkids can't afford to live
here, and now they're living inIowa.
You know that kind of sometimesit's selfishly motivated, but I
(28:49):
frankly don't care how you getthere.
But if you kind of get to thepoint where this is a problem,
it might be that you're justfrustrated that you continue to
see people on the street and youdon't want that fine, different
.
Otherwise you're still notgoing to see your grandkids and
there are going to be a lot morepeople on the street.
Stephanie Rouse (29:04):
Well, when you write that book, we're more than
happy to have you back on totalk more in depth about
reframing the conversation as aninfrastructure issue.
Gregg Colburn (29:12):
Happy to do it.
I got to write the darn thingfirst.
Stephanie Rouse (29:15):
And as this is Booked on Planning, what books
would you recommend our readerscheck out?
Gregg Colburn (29:19):
I recommend a lot of books when I'm on the road.
One that I think is reallyimportant we didn't talk about
this in this conversation, butit's super important is the
local politics around housingdecisions.
You know, and so you just thinkabout Tuesday night planning
commission.
They're going to talk about amultifamily housing development,
and then five people show upand say no.
And then, in the name ofdemocracy, the city council or
the planning commission sayswell, five people showed up,
(29:42):
they said no, so the answer isno, and then we end up with a
screwed up housing system.
And so Katie Einstendingcolleagues at Boston University
wrote a book called NeighborhoodDefenders, which is an awesome
description of basically howthis process worked in Cambridge
, massachusetts, but it'sapplicable to every jurisdiction
in the United States, becausewhenever I bring this up,
(30:02):
everyone laughs and says that'sexactly what's going on in my
community, and so what itdemands of us is to kind of
rethink civic engagement andplanning processes, and because
the problem with the way thatwe've done it to date is the
people who would benefit fromthat housing are not invited to
the meeting right, because youcan't afford to live in
Cambridge Mass.
And so who shows up it's peoplelike me over 50, they're white,
they're single familyhomeowners and they say no.
And then elected officials orappointees to these councils or
commissions say, well, we haveto listen to our constituencies.
(30:24):
And so I think that's, forplanners, a really important
book.
And the concept is superimportant because even if you
buy the argument that we make inthis book, we still have to get
over this huge local politicalimpediment of how do we then
transition from where we are nowto different land use,
different built environment, allthat kind of stuff, and so I
think that's a really good book.
Another book that I wouldrecommend and you know, I look
(30:46):
at homelessness kind of from astructural perspective, and
Kevin Adler and his co authorlook at homelessness from a very
individual level and kind ofcentering relational breakdown
or lack of relationship, and sotheir book is when we walk by.
It's kind of an ethnographiclook at homelessness and the
work that Kevin's done in termsof connecting people
experiencing homelessness withfamily members with whom they
might be estranged.
(31:06):
It's a super touching book, acompelling read.
It kind of, to me, brings anice counterbalance to our work,
which is a little more clinicaland not super personal.
The reality is there are realpeople behind all of this, and
so I really appreciate Kevin andDon's work on this book and
kind of bringing that to light.
Another homelessness book that Iwould recommend is a recent
publication from Brian Goldstonecalled there's no Place Like Us
(31:26):
, and it's another ethnographyof folks who are working in
Atlanta, who are struggling tomaintain stable housing, and so,
again, it's a really importantstory.
You know, I think there's adebate about whether data or
stories move people to action,and so I tend to move on data,
and there's certainly people forwhom that resonates, but for
other folks it's theseindividual stories that really
matter, and so I do think havinga literature of both
(31:48):
storytelling narrative as wellas data is important, because we
need to hit people where theyare, and so those are a few
books that have been a top ofmind for me recently, but we
could spend the next hourtalking about great books,
because there's so muchimportant literature on this.
Jennifer Hiatt (32:00):
There is, I have read.
There is no place for us,though, and it's so fascinating
because when people think abouthomelessness, many think that
those are the people who arejust out panhandling, and not
that there's disgrace oranything in any action that you
have to take to survive, butpeople think, oh, these people
are lazy, they have no job, theyhave no gumption whatever.
But in reality, many of thesepeople are working multiple jobs
(32:21):
.
As you said in Detroit, many ofthese people are working
multiple jobs.
As you said in Detroit, making$5 an hour takes multiple jobs
to get up to a decent salary, sothis book particularly hit me
hard.
I'm from the rural part ofNebraska and the people living
in rural Nebraska it's a drivetill you can afford type
situation in a lot of ways, andthey are busy, busy people.
They're not just sitting around.
Gregg Colburn (32:45):
I mean in Seattle .
The last census I saw was overhalf the people in shelter in
Seattle are employed, and sothere's just a misperception.
And certainly there are folkswho are not, and we still need
to care for those folks andprovide treatment et cetera, but
there's a whole swath of peoplewho are working pretty darn
hard and still living inconditions that I don't think
any of us would be real proud ofas a society.
That this is what's happening.
Stephanie Rouse (33:06):
Gregg, thank you so much for joining us on
the show to talk about your book.
Homelessness is a HousingProblem.
How Structural Factors ExplainUS Patterns.
Gregg Colburn (33:14):
My pleasure.
I enjoyed it.
Jennifer Hiatt (33:17):
We hope you enjoyed this conversation with
author Gregg Colburn on his bookHomelessness is a Housing
Problem how Structural FactorsExplain US Patterns.
You can get your own copythrough the publisher at the
University of California Pressor click the link in the show
notes to take you directly toour affiliate page.
Remember to subscribe to theshow wherever you listen to
podcasts and please rate, reviewand share the show.
Thank you for listening andwe'll talk to you next time on
(33:38):
Booked.
On Planning planning.
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.