The Economic Consequences of Homelessness in The US

Opposing Arguments
Those opposing state funding for shelters, permanent housing, and social welfare
programs for the homeless often cite systemic inefficiencies and fraud. They claim that
these funds could be better used to create jobs or provide family and career counseling.
Others argue that since an individual is responsible for his or her homelessness,
providing such support is immoral because it creates a culture of dependency and
encourages free-riders. The argument that “homelessness is a choice” includes the
belief that individuals are choosing not to work, and thus to not have income for
housing, and the belief that individuals are homeless through “deviant” life choices such
as using drugs or alcohol. However, these lines of argument disregard the health and
economic factors leading to homelessness (as discussed above). Being homeless is a
complex issue covering individual adults and children, as well as two-person and singleparent
families.
Responding to homeless families raises some complex ethical issues, such as whether
it is better to keep children with parents in a homeless shelter or whether or not to return
abuse victims to potentially dangerous situations. While these concerns are valid and
could be addressed if better evidence were made available, this does not preclude the
need to provide support to families and their children in times of need. Children who
experience family homelessness are at risk of higher stress levels, health problems, and
need for pediatric health care, which also increases costs to the overall system when
interventions to address episodes of homelessness are not addressed.
In addition, there is political and philosophical opposition to prioritizing social services
for housing and homeless programs (so-called “political will”) within governmental
entities and in communities at large that contribute their taxes to such programs and
elect representatives to reflect such priorities. Under-prioritization of such services tends
to disregard the preventative and cost-saving characteristics of social services aimed at
addressing homelessness and instead focuses on opportunity cost trade-offs and a
cost-minimization approach to governance. This means that such political will fails to
recognize the costs of services already being supported to address the adverse effects
of homelessness such as health care and criminal justice system costs.
Another political solution often proffered comes in the form of exclusionary or punitive
policies tasked to law enforcement services. These policies, such as bans on
panhandling or sleeping in public, are counterproductive to the interventional objectives
of housing and homelessness agencies. However, these services have been shown to
stem from socialized reactions such as disgust or a desire for physical separation from
symbols of poverty, and they were not derived from evidence-based or outcomeoriented
solutions. Instead, these policies are studied in similar terms to the microaggression
phenomena associated with homelessness, such as dangerousness,
assumptions of substance abuse, laziness, and intellectual inferiority. Such negative
public perceptions of individuals experiencing homelessness also implicitly support and
bolster counterarguments to implementation of housing and homelessness services.
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