Let's Break the Barriers Keeping the Homeless from Permanent Housing

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I must confess, I indulged in a bit of self-pity over the weekend. As part of a group trying to put together shelter options for people experiencing homelessness this winter, the constant stream of barriers to doing so finally knocked me down, and I wallowed for a moment in a feeling of abject failure.

Then I realized that the barriers that I, as part of a team of organizations and individuals with plenty of resources to address the challenges, was running into was just a sampling of the barriers a person who is homeless experiences, with none of the resources or contacts I am able to access with little difficulty. That reality is one of the many reasons our Church holds a preferential option for the poor as an integral part of our teaching.

“The primary purpose of this special commitment to the poor is to enable them to become active participants in the life of society. It is to enable all persons to share in and contribute to the common good. The ‘option for the poor,’ therefore, is not an adversarial slogan that pits one group or class against another. Rather it states that the deprivation and powerlessness of the poor wounds the whole community. The extent of their suffering is a measure of how far we are from being a true community of persons. These wounds will be healed only by greater solidarity with the poor and among the poor themselves.” (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice for All, no. 88)

At least one area of deprivation requiring solidarity with the poor is clear – we need a statewide commitment to sheltering the poorest among us, not in large dormitory-style shelters, but in actual housing where a person can live, breathe and obtain the services he or she needs to stay successfully housed without worrying from minute to minute about where they will be sleeping next.  

Government offers some assistance, primarily in the form of housing vouchers to people living in poverty to ensure the holder pays no more than 30 percent of their income, whatever that income may be, toward housing.  This is a much-needed program, but there is a limited supply of vouchers and nothing about a voucher requires a landlord to accept the person holding it as a tenant. In Utah, a person with a voucher is expected to locate housing in a state that heavily favors landlords and a market that can easily pick and choose tenants, rarely choosing the tenant who has been involved in the criminal justice system, has a part-time minimum wage job or has mental health issues without a steady ability to pay for needed treatment.

Our ever-tightening housing market also means we are not able to move people quickly through the homeless services system and into housing, thus the need for temporary overflow shelter during the winter months to do little more than keep people warm. In this time of pandemic, that shelter also needs to be configured to prevent rampant spread of the virus through a gathering of individuals with little or no resources to combat the illness. Even where we have identified potential sites, we still need a stable source of funding and, perhaps most importantly, a community willing to welcome people in need of shelter.

Government, non-profit and private entities are working together to find and finalize winter shelter. But the best option, the one that would truly recognize the dignity and sanctity of lives currently lived on the street, would be permanent housing. This is the only option for the poor that is just, as it is the only option we with more wealth would accept for our own families. Our homeless neighbors, those camping on the street or temporarily in resource centers, need us to put our Catholic faith into action to help overcome the barriers they face to meeting their basic need for safe housing.  

As it is written in Isaiah, “true worship is to work for justice and care for the poor and oppressed.” Winter is here and our brothers and sisters remain homeless. We must all work to ensure our communities welcome the poor into our midst, and break down the policy, funding and political barriers that individuals experiencing homelessness face every day in their search for housing.