Number of unsheltered dropped by more than half in this Nevada city after large tent to house its homeless was built
The “Biggest Little City in the World” is earning a new distinction: one of the few cities in the West to get large numbers of homeless off its streets.
The city teamed with Sparks, a neighboring city, and surrounding Washoe County to build a Nevada Cares Campus in 2021 that could accommodate more than 600 people in a giant tent and satellite sleeping pods. Since that year, the number of homeless living on the street has plummeted to 329 this year from 780, according to annual point-in-time counts.
The 58% drop is striking when compared with many other Western cities which have seen their unsheltered homeless populations grow or stagnate since the pandemic, amid soaring drug addiction and a federal appeals-court order that prevents cities in the region from clearing streets without providing enough beds. California has spent about $20 billion over the last five years to combat the problem, yet still has half the nation’s unsheltered homeless.
Once people are off the street and in the tent, the other part of Reno’s approach kicks in: helping them find a job, access other services and move them into permanent housing. Other cities are taking notice.
It’s a good and necessary foundation but certainly not all of the equation. Mental health and addiction services are also necessary. Simply housing people will help a good chunk of the homeless population but that is largely the unseen homeless population that couch surfs and/or stays in their cars. They are very at risk of falling into the chronically homeless which takes a lot more resources to fix.
“Housing first” is the idea that most of life falling apart is from losing your most basic need: shelter.
It’s stressful to keep a job, distancing from friends and dates and family, if you don’t have a home and smell weird
Instead, when we give people homes without conditions, they can breath a sigh of relief, and have enough spoons to tackle the rest of the problems.
As pointed out, or as might need to be pointed out, nobody builds something this expensive without considering the auxiliary social services to help people get out of the situation for the next occupant.
It’s the most cost effective thing you can do, anything else is cruel, bureaucratic, and inefficient.
If you already have a job and relationships and suddenly end up unhoused, the community letting that spiral to your job firing you is a failing of the whole town. It doesn’t have to, all we need is to fill those empty homes…