Can $750 End Homelessness?

Exciting studies are crushing old myths and projecting new possibilities

It’s midnight. Some combination of insomnia, restlessness, or nocturnalism has kept you in front of your television watching reruns or, worse, the news. As a commercial break ensues, the solemn soprano of Sarah McLachlan or a cheap imitator adorns your speakers, but before you can enjoy the vibrant vocals, you are accosted with images of a malnourished child or an abused puppy. After a years-long minute of this poverty porn, your only reprieve comes in the form of a grown-up child-actor reminding you who they are—Is that what they look like now??—and telling you the good news:

“For just $2 a day, you can save this child/puppy from its terrible fate. WILL YOU HELP US?”

We’ve become largely immune to these types of guilt-inducing, exploitative pitches, and this is for the better. But should we be resistant to all pitches that suggest small amounts of money could solve big problems?

This California Study might be worth suspending your suspicion.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

A nonprofit called Miracle Messages partnered with USC to conduct a study which gave $750 a month for six months, with no strings attached, to a sample group people experiencing homelessness. The results were staggering: people used the money to secure housing, health care, food, and transportation. Many were able to resolve their homelessness.

Many are quick to use this study to point to the need for UBI (Universal Basic Income.) It’s not that I’m disinterested in that idea… but I just can’t pass up the opportunity to focus on the myths that these results completely blow out of the water.

Here’s a few assumptions this study challenges:

• You can’t give homeless people money, because they will waste it on drugs, alcohol, etc.

• Homelessness is a moral/spiritual crisis, not a resource crisis

• Homeless people can’t be trusted on their own to know or do what’s best for them

• Homelessness is too complex of a problem to just throw money at

And this one is going to sting for some of you (because it does for me):

• We need to funnel all money through governments entities and trusted nonprofits rather than directly to the people who need it.

Ouch.

Disclaimer: I’m not anti-nonprofit. (Though I’ll be honest, I grow a little more disillusioned each year.) Even in this study, a nonprofit played a role in helping to distribute money, keep track of people, and in identifying the people in need to participate. I also believe that $750/month could work for a LOT of people and reduce homelessness to a much more manageable number, but probably not end it.

But here is what I am sitting with and what I think nonprofits should sit with:

If $750/month ($9k/year) could end the homelessness of one person… is the money we’re spending still justified?

I think the answer can be “Yes”! A great case manager making $50k and providing rental help for 25 people is probably cheaper than $9k a year per person, and is providing a higher level of support to each individual. Great! A great grant-writer and accountant can help you bring in/save more money than they likely cost. Terrific! But I suspect that most nonprofits and continuums of care might look at the administrative costs to operate intricate and highly-managed programs and may, given this new metric, realize that the math doesn’t math the way it should.

And more than the nonprofits, this $750/month should change the way governments think about homelessness spending.

The last time I worked in LA, shelters were being reimbursed at a rate of $40-50 per person per day to provide room and board to the unhoused. That amounts to $1200-1500 per month, and if you’re calculating along at home… that means we’re paying nonprofits twice as much to temporarily host homelessness as it could cost to allow the unhoused people to just deal with it themselves.

Again, I don’t want to make too much of a blanket statement here. Do I think we should close all the shelters tomorrow and give everyone $750/month instead? No.

But do I suspect we could easily redirect half of what we’ve been spending to manage homelessness toward ending it and see an immediate lasting impact? If you’ve read anything I’ve written, you know my answer already.

Overall, these findings are just one more nail in the coffin of the myth of deservedness—the idea that homeless people don’t deserve or can’t be trusted with the resources that would solve their issues without supervision or control. Any time that myth gets punctured a little more, you can bet I’m gonna bring it to your inbox so we can dance a little on shame’s grave.

What questions or revelations does this study elicit from you? Let me know in the comments!

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