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The Spokesman-Review

Shawn Vestal: Researchers find housing markets explain variation in homelessness among cities

PARKS WITH A PLAN

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The Spokesman-Review

Researchers find housing markets explain variation in homelessness among cities

One key dynamic of urban homelessness is laid bare in a new book by a pair of Seattle researchers.

When they compared major cities across the country, they found that homelessness was not strongly associated with high levels of poverty in a community.

What it was very strongly correlated with was high levels of wealth.

The authors of this new book, “Homelessness is a Housing Problem,” found that many cities with very high levels of poverty – from Detroit to Dallas to Miami to Philadelphia – have relatively low rates of homelessness.

Meanwhile, many expensive coastal cities, such as San Francisco and Seattle, have comparably low poverty rates – and much more homelessness.

Homelessness, in other words, is “more a symptom of affluence than of poverty,” the book concludes – because of the effect on the overall housing market. Communities with a lot of poverty, but sufficient affordable housing, have among the lowest rates of homelessness.

This is food for thought as we struggle with our own homelessness crisis and housing shortage. The relationship between our tight, increasingly expensive housing market and the number of people living on the streets is direct. As affordability and access shrink, the number of people who SPOKESMAN COLUMNIST fall out of that market rises. That may seem commonplace, and others have made a similar point. But in this new book, authors Gregg Colburn, a University of Washington real estate professor, and Clayton Page Aldern, a neuroscientist turned journalist and data scientist, have produced a set of comparisons among American cities that dramatically reinforce that reality.

Their book does not attempt to address individual causes of homelessness, whether it’s addiction, mental health or bad luck. (Though they emphasize that research indicates the approach with the most success among individuals is permanent supportive housing with voluntary, not mandated, support services.)

It takes as a given that those problems exist everywhere, and attempts to answer why there is so much variability in homelessness among major cities.

The title gives away the conclusion.

“Regional variation in rates of homelessness can be explained by cost and availability of housing,” they wrote. “Housing market conditions explain why Seattle has four times the per capita homelessness of Cincinnati. Housing market conditions explain why high-poverty cities like Detroit and Cleveland have low rates of homelessness.”

They continued, “Variation in rates of homelessness is not driven by more of ‘those people’ residing in one city than another. People with a variety of health and economic vulnerabilities live in every city and county in our sample; the difference is the local context in which they live. High rental costs and low vacancy rates create a challenging market for many residents in a city and those challenges are compounded for people with low incomes and/or physical or mental health concerns.”

The authors compared cities on a variety of measures, including all the usual suspects in the public discourse about homelessness. (Spokane was not among the cities included.)

These cities varied from those with very high rates of homelessness such as New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco (which have between 9 and 10 homeless individuals per 1,000, according to federal statistics for 2019) and those with lower rates such as Detroit, Chicago and Indianapolis (at 2 to 3 homeless individuals per 1,000).

King County and Multnomah County, Oregon – Seattle and Portland, basically – were both around 5.

What they found should give a lot of people pause about their assumptions.

On mental health measures, they found no correlation between high rates of reported mental illness in a given state and homelessness – in fact, they found the opposite: “Homelessness rates are higher where serious mental illness rates are lower.”

When they examined rates of drug use, they found no correlation: “Accordingly, we can only conclude that the disproportionate rates of homelessness in cities like San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and Seattle are not driven by more drug users residing in those locations. Something else is happening here.”

When they looked at unemployment rates, they concluded they have “no predictive value” for whether a city has a lot of homeless people.

Along the way, the authors debunk a few shibboleths. When they looked at the assumptions underlying the infamous “Seattle is Dying” documentary (which focused narrowly on drug abuse and which proposed sending homeless people to McNeil Island) and a “study” on the “ruinous compassion” of shelter by Christopher Rufo (which identified robust shelter capacity as one cause of homelessness), they found no supporting evidence.

They examined the “if you build it they will come” mythology – the notion that providing services lures people into homelessness. They concluded: “The balance of the academic evidence suggests that public assistance benefits and services work to limit homelessness rather than accelerate the phenomenon.”

They also looked at the idea that Democratic policies cause the problem, but concluded by noting that several blue cities such as Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland do not have large homelessness problems.

In short, every potential explanation but one fell by the wayside: the cost of rent and the availability of rental units, which are affected by the expense and availability in the overall housing market.

To simplify: A low-income renter in Detroit can find an apartment relatively easily for between $600 and $700 a month, while a similar renter in San Francisco would have a harder time finding one for three to four times that amount.

And that dynamic is affected by a housing market where costs at all levels – mansions to hovels – are high.

“The point is that the housing market – as a whole – helps create the conditions in which homelessness varies from region to region,” the authors write. “It’s not merely a shortage of low-income housing: it’s an overall housing shortage that matters.”

Shawn Vestal can be reached at (509) 459-5431 or at shawnv@spokesman.com.

SHAWN VESTAL

PARKS WITH A PLAN

(Editor’s note: homelessness is addressed pretty far into the article, so I will start by giving you the part pertinent to homelessness)

"Like other plan elements, a focus on homelessness within the plan was driven by community feedback while the issue has been at the local and national forefront for some time, Jones said.

One of the master plan’s goals is to address the role and the policies of Parks and Recreation in working in partnership with other city departments and agencies with addressing homelessness concerns. According to the draft plan, parks departments nationwide vary in addressing homelessness. Some, for instance, partner with organizations serving the homeless, and others sanction encampments.

As Parks employees often interact with homeless individuals, one of the plan’s proposed strategies to this end include trauma- informed training for frontline staff members.

People who experience homelessness depend on park spaces for their survival, Laybourn said.

“I really would love to see Spokane be smarter than a lot of other cities in getting ahead of understanding how to strike that balance between the rights of all people to exist in public space while maintaining a welcoming atmosphere for all park users,” she said. “We gave some strategies and action items within this plan to help the city get ahead of where some other cities are struggling today in helping to create that balance and show a compassionate and effective response.”

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

A new community park in the North Indian Trail neighborhood.

At least one dog park and pickleball or multi-use court in each of the city’s three city council districts.

Addressing the role of city parks with homelessness issues.

Those are some of the proposals included in the latest draft of the Spokane Parks and Recreation’s Parks and Natural Lands Master Plan, a document designed to guide investments and development for the city’s approximately 3,800 acres of parks and natural lands over at least the next six years.

Parks and Recreation released the draft last week with the Spokane Park Board set to vote on the document June 9. The ideas within were derived from months of surveys, meetings, workshops and other events “Now, we’re at a stage where we listened to the public, who gave us great feedback. We drafted a plan,” said Parks Director Garrett Jones. “Now, let us know how we did.”

Park bond initiatives in the past have supported parks improvement projects. Whether the city could take the same route here is a strategy the department will look at in the near future, Jones said.

Parks staff worked with consulting firm Design Workshop to put the draft together. It’s designed as a living document, one that could be updated as funding opportunities, trends and desires change over time.

“There’s a lot of transparency in this plan about what is going to be done, with how and when, that you don’t always get in a plan like this,” said Anna Laybourn of Design Workshop, who headed the consultant team for Spokane’s master plan document. “The city wants to make sure how they’re getting to this overall vision.”

Minnehaha Park’s sign is photographed Thursday defaced with graffiti in Spokane. Upgrades to the park are being considered.

TYLER TJOMSLAND/ THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

Spokane Parks’ most recent systemwide master plan dates back to 2010. Washington state requires Spokane Parks to have an updated plan for grant funding eligibility through agencies like the Recreation and Conservation Office.

Whereas previous master plans were typically built around input from staff and city officials, Jones said Spokane Parks wanted this iteration to be “a public-facing plan driven by the community.” As such, Parks and Recreation collected more than 5,000 responses through various means, around five times more than what was collected back in 2010.

The level of public input to formulate Spokane’s draft plan exceeded Design Workshop’s expectations as compared to plans the firm has done with similar-sized cities, Laybourn said. She said the consultant was particularly impressed by the city’s modes of outreach, such as conducting workshops at schools to collect student feedback or recruiting volunteer ambassadors – including those in the homeless community.

“From youth to low-income to every sector of the city being represented, we had a number of ways to measure if we were on track for receiving the type of input we needed to be broad and inclusive,” Laybourn said.

Parks and Recreation – aligned with the thinking of a 1913 plan created by the Olmsted Brothers, a prominent landscape architecture firm – sought to address gaps in areas where parks and other amenities are either unavailable or not easily accessible.

“The biggest theme from this plan is a focus from the community on neighborhood and community parks,” Jones said. “We really haven’t had those major investments in our neighborhood parks since the 1999 bond, and that really only hit a certain percentage of those neighborhood parks.”

Actions proposed to this end include concept plans for revamped versions of Minnehaha and Cowley parks as well as an idealization of what a new park might look like in the North Indian Trail neighborhood.

Currently, Meadowglen Park is a vacant and undeveloped city-owned property located at Indian Trail Road and Bedford Avenue. The city has owned the property since 1986, according to the draft plan.

Compared to the city’s other neighborhoods, North Indian Trail has the highest percentage of residents who live outside of a 10-minute walk to a park, according to the draft plan.

Minnehaha Park is home to overgrown tennis courts, a historic building and a small, aging playground. Meanwhile, Cowley – described as underused, with a reputation marred by past negative activity and vandalism, Jones said – is located next to Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center.

The Minnehaha, Cowley and Meadowglen plans are classified as “first-tier” priorities in the draft document, recommended for implementation sometime over the next decade.

Other first-tier proposals include acquiring property east of South Ray Street in the East Central Neighborhood for the development of a future pocket park as well as land in the Shiloh Hills neighborhood, east of North Nevada Street, for a community or neighborhood park.

Like Meadowglen, the draft also calls for prioritized development of three other vacant park properties in each city district: Wildhorse, Skeet-somish and Sterling Heights.

With dog parks, the plan recommends a study to locate up to 10 potential sites for off-leash dog parks citywide. The city presently has only two off-leash public dog parks, both within the city council district that represents south Spokane: The Downtown Spokane Dog Park on Riverside Avenue and the SpokAnimal Dog Park in High Bridge Park.

Beyond the new additions, the plan places an emphasis on restoring parks like Minnehaha that are in failing or poor conditions – namely, Courtland Park, Liberty Park, Grant Park, Summit Boulevard Parkway, North Maple Street Parkway and Logan Peace Park.

Another objective identified in the plan, as driven by community feedback, is updating and adding new parks facilities, such as restrooms, trails, trailheads, fishing areas and bike-skate parks within the northeast city council district and water access for kayaking, fishing and other activities.

In determining where to locate new parks and restore existing ones, the draft plan looked at equity gaps and underserved areas and populations that “don’t benefit as much” from the parks system as other parts of Spokane, Laybourn said.

“The city has really invested in some of its incredible signature parks in the past,” Laybourn said. “What we’ve learned from the community is the desire to upgrade the older or overlooked parks that are a focus of everyday life, and that’s going to require some additional funding the city doesn’t have.”

Like other plan elements, a focus on homelessness within the plan was driven by community feedback while the issue has been at the local and national forefront for some time, Jones said.

One of the master plan’s goals is to address the role and the policies of Parks and Recreation in working in partnership with other city departments and agencies with addressing homelessness concerns. According to the draft plan, parks departments nationwide vary in addressing homelessness. Some, for instance, partner with organizations serving the homeless, and others sanction encampments.

As Parks employees often interact with homeless individuals, one of the plan’s proposed strategies to this end include trauma- informed training for frontline staff members.

People who experience homelessness depend on park spaces for their survival, Laybourn said.

“I really would love to see Spokane be smarter than a lot of other cities in getting ahead of understanding how to strike that balance between the rights of all people to exist in public space while maintaining a welcoming atmosphere for all park users,” she said. “We gave some strategies and action items within this plan to help the city get ahead of where some other cities are struggling today in helping to create that balance and show a compassionate and effective response.” Greg Mason can be reached at (509) 459-5047 or gregm@spokesman.com.