Tim Steller's column: 'Housing First' challenged as homelessness solution for Tucson

You might have heard Tucson officials tout their efforts against homelessness using a simple phrase, “Housing First.”

The idea sounds simpler than it is, as if we’re just rousting people from the washes and putting them in apartments — addictions and mental illness be damned. That’s not really the case.

Mayor Regina Romero, who campaigned on using housing-first policies in 2019, proudly pointed last week to the Jan. 25 visit of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness as evidence Tucson is addressing our homelessness crisis the right way.

“USICH is here to work with us because we have had success in permanently housing over 220 folks through Housing First,” she said in a news release.

Still, the approach has its detractors, among them the two challengers who have filed to run against Romero, a Democrat, in this year’s election. Ed Ackerley and Zach Yentzer, both independents, say they oppose the emphasis on Housing First as Tucson grapples with an addiction and homelessness crisis.

“Housing First has a place with a certain sector of our homeless population, who are maybe struggling with eviction or job loss and need to have a supporting housing format to get between life phases,” Yentzer said in an interview. “When it comes to those experiencing mental health and substance abuse, we need more and different solutions.”

Ackerley took a similar position: “Housing first proposes giving a homeless person access to low barrier housing,” he said via text. “Simply giving a home to a homeless person without addressing underlying issues of mental illness, drug abuse, or criminal behavior is not the solution.”

Tucson officials say that’s not what’s happening at all, that offering services is part of the program.

At the Jan. 24 council meeting, Romero said, “Housing First makes sure that each person has a roof over their heads, a warm meal, a place to take a shower and wash their clothes, and at the same time, we work to help residents get all they need to move out of homelessness more permanently.”

Promise and challenges

If you walked around Santa Rita Park late last week, you could see signs of both the promise and challenges of the problem the Tucson metro area is trying to confront.

City officials closed and cleaned the park Tuesday, after giving long advance warning. On Friday, it was noticeably emptier, though at least one tent was back up, and some people appeared to be doing drugs by the bathroom.

For the first time I can remember, having visited Santa Rita occasionally over the years, I saw a significant number of skateboarders in the skate park and people playing basketball on the court. It’s possible, though, that they were so outnumbered before that I didn’t notice them.

As to the homeless people who have for years gathered and slept there, “Nobody left that park without having a resource for shelter,” said Brandi Champion, Tucson’s Housing First program director. “That doesn’t mean that they took it.”

Champion was hired in 2021, when Tucson launched its Housing First program. She had worked for years at Old Pueblo Community Services, which has long followed a Housing First approach.

Tom Litwicki, who directs Old Pueblo, told me there are about three decades of research supporting that approach. What underlies it, he said, is the idea that people can’t address the root causes of their homelessness while living outside, stressed and vulnerable.

As Champion put it, “How do you get out of your addiction or your mental illness without even having a place to sleep at night, let alone a place to use a bathroom or cook a meal?”

The city typically brings people into transitional housing at places like the newly purchased Wildcat Inn, where they receive services, even as basic as training in how to be a good tenant, she said. Then they move to permanent housing.

‘Just moving people around’

One of Yentzer’s main critiques of the approach is its scale. The Wildcat Inn has 70 beds and a capacity of 96. He noted it cost the city $3 million to buy and $800,000 per year to operate, and the city has spent around $10 million to buy the Wildcat Inn plus two other properties that bring around 50 more beds into service.

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“We’re not seeing a return on investment that I think is scaled to the need of the community,” he said.

He proposes drastically increasing shelter capacity while making permanent housing contingent on users earning it through addressing problems such as addiction. He also wants to increase the use of drug courts that give people the choice between treatment and the criminal-justice system.

“What we’re doing, because we don’t have enough shelter at scale, is just moving people around,” Yentzer said.

He and Ackerley also proposed similar concepts of a center for everyone on the street to come into to be evaluated and start receiving services. Yentzer called it a “navigation hub,” while Ackerley called it a “transition center.”

Ackerley, too, says we need need to use the criminal-justice system more as a lever — something city officials have viewed skeptically.

“Incarceration does not usually result in somebody coming out of jail in a better position than they went in, if they went in with substance abuse,” Tucson Police Chief Chad Kasmar said at the Jan. 24 council meeting.

Ackerley told me, “Lawless behavior needs to be adjudicated, and they need to be held accountable.”

“We can’t lump all homeless people into a group and say they all need low-barrier housing,” he added

Ackerley and Yentzer both cite the Gospel Rescue Mission as using an approach closer to what they want, often labeled “treatment first.” The mission’s Center of Opportunity, on South Palo Verde Road, is not a “low barrier” shelter, unlike the city facilities and some others using the Housing First approach.

Lisa Chastain, the CEO of Gospel Rescue Mission, told me the center requires residents to be sober while there, although they will hold a place for someone who goes to detox. They also do not admit people with serious mental illness unless they’re under a doctor’s care, she said, though most residents take some sort of psychoactive medications.

With such significant conditions, the center is not always full. On Friday, 130 out of 350 beds were empty.

Tucson’s biggest issue

It struck me while interviewing people about Housing First this week that the differences in approach may not be as big as they seem. Both sides of the debate try to put unhoused people in temporary facilities and offer services that help them into more permanent homes and more stable lives.

“What they’re doing is confusing Housing First with housing only,” Litwicki said of the approach’s critics.

The biggest difference is whether to have any conditions or barriers to the temporary housing that gets people off the street. I’m somewhat drawn to the idea that it’s not our job as a city to solve the deepest problems in people’s lives, but simply to get people housed, and do more only as possible.

“To get housing, you shouldn’t have to stop drinking — you should have to be a good tenant,” Litwicki said by way of example. “If they have a drinking problem, they’ll probably have a hard time being a good tenant. But it’s not my place to tell them they need to stop drinking.”

For her part, Chastain said she’s not for “either-or” solutions but for “everything” as the metro area grapples with the problem. “We need Housing First, we need Gospel Rescue Mission, we need Salvation Army, we need Primavera,” she said.

No issue is bigger in Tucson this year. So it’s right and good, I think, to hash out how well we are doing and whether this approach will ever reach the scale the addiction and homelessness crisis requires.

Tim Steller is an opinion columnist. A 25-year veteran of reporting and editing, he digs into issues and stories that matter in the Tucson area, reports the results and tells you his conclusions. Contact him at tsteller@tucson.com or 520-807-7789. On Twitter: @senyorreporter