While nearly three-quarters of US mayors feel voters hold them accountable for addressing homelessness “a great deal” or “a lot,” only 19 percent believe they have either a great deal or a lot of control over addressing the issue, according to a new report from BU’s Initiative on Cities 2021 Menino Survey of Mayors. Photo by Michael Dwyer/AP Photo

Politics

US Mayors Say Homelessness Crisis Falls to Them, but They Lack Support and Funding

In latest Initiative on Cities Menino Survey of Mayors, leaders cite limited funding as major barrier to addressing the issue

The majority of US mayors believe that the public holds them accountable for addressing homelessness in their communities, but say they don’t have the power to address the problem in the face of political opposition and lack of funding to build new shelters. And only 40 percent of them say they have a clear policy goal tied to reducing or eliminating homelessness. These are among the top findings in a report just released by Boston University’s Initiative on Cities (IoC), titled Mayors and America’s Homelessness Crisis, which asked elected city leaders about their views on the challenges they face in dealing with homelessness and their approaches to confronting the issue.

The report, coauthored by Katherine Levine Einstein, a College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of political science, and Charley E. Willison, a Cornell University assistant professor of public and ecosystem health, is the second set of survey results from the 2021 Menino Survey of Mayors.

For the 2021 survey, IoC staff interviewed 126 mayors of cities across the United States with more than 75,000 residents. The first report, released in December, detailed mayors’ concerns about residents’ mental health and students’ loss of classroom time during the COVID-19 pandemic. A third report—to be published later this winter—will cover mayors’ views on closing the racial wealth gap.

The authors of the current report note that homelessness in the United States is an acute and growing problem in cities of all sizes. It affects more Americans than opioid use disorders and overdose deaths, and more than those who receive cancer diagnoses each year. People who experience short-term homelessness in a shelter or other temporary housing have mortality rates three times higher than the general population.

Even with data available to document the extent of the problem, Einstein says the IoC’s research provides important insights into local government leaders’ attitudes and efforts to deal with homelessness.

“Prior to this survey, we actually had very little understanding of how local governments were approaching homelessness,” says Einstein. “And this is a huge problem, because cities are some of the most important actors when it comes to addressing homelessness. They’re incredibly important. They’re big sites of homelessness. And local officials have at their disposal a lot of policy levers that they can use to potentially address this crisis.”

The IoC report paints a group portrait of American municipal leaders keenly aware that the public cares about addressing the homelessness crisis—and that citizens see mayors as in charge. At the same time, however, the mayors feel buffeted by a lack of funding for housing and shelters and public opposition—from both residents and business owners—to opening new housing or shelters near them.

“It’s absolutely a sort of ‘not in my backyard’ phenomenon where people don’t want to see visible visual manifestations of homelessness in their neighborhoods. But they also don’t want to see the policy solution. It’s a really challenging policy area,” Einstein says.

The survey found that 73 percent of mayors see themselves as highly accountable for addressing homelessness in their cities. But at the same time only 19 percent felt they had “a lot” or “a great deal” of influence to address homelessness. Another 38 percent said they had little or no influence.

The survey found mayors identify a range of barriers to decreasing homelessness in their cities, with limited funding the top concern: more than 60 percent of mayors say lack of resources hindered their ability by “a lot” to address the problem. (The survey found that 21 percent of mayors plan to use American Rescue Plan funds to address homelessness.) More than half of the mayors surveyed cite public opposition to new housing and shelters as an additional obstacle. Mayors also cite limited social services and a lack of coordination between different government and social services agencies as major challenges to overcome.

In a statement that accompanies the release of the IoC report, Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway of Madison, Wis., says that addressing homelessness requires a coordinated response from government and social services agencies, as well as more state and national funding.

“While we continue to create and improve shelter options here in Madison, we need supportive services to address the health, mental health, education and employment needs of people experiencing homelessness,” Rhodes-Conway says. “We need to help people move into decent and stable housing, while also working toward effective, long-term solutions—including building more permanent, affordable housing options and investing in initiatives that combat underlying inequities in our community. Ultimately, this requires political will at all levels of government.”

Given the severity of the problem, Einstein says researchers were surprised to see how few mayors in the survey say they had staff dedicated to addressing homelessness.

The survey found that while 38 percent of mayors indicate they had social services staff dedicated to serving people experiencing homelessness, another 28 percent say they have no staff tasked with those duties. Another 22 percent say they’ve dedicated members of the police department to deal with homeless residents.

Researchers also asked mayors about which groups influence local homelessness policies. More than 90 percent of respondents cite the importance of local nonprofit organizations in shaping city policies. Social service agencies that make up the Continuums of Care—local entities that coordinate housing and services for homeless individuals and families—are also key influencers, according to more than 80 percent of mayors. Police came in third, with more than 75 percent of mayors saying law enforcement had a strong voice over local homelessness policies—just ahead of people at risk of or experiencing homelessness themselves.

Einstein says that the survey shines a light on police involvement in both influencing what homelessness policies should be and in implementing them.

“That’s really important, because even if you’re bringing on board the police, to use the jargon of homelessness policy, in a harm reduction capacity, even if you’re bringing them on board to act in this sort of social service provision capacity, we unfortunately know that all too often when you bring the police into the picture, the possibility of [a] more punitive response comes into play. And I think the police would be the first to say that they’re not social policymakers or implementers. And so I think it creates real problems, the extent to which we’re relying on the police to implement our homelessness policy.”

Researchers also asked mayors how they define success in addressing homelessness. A majority—60 percent—do not define success based on a goal of reducing homelessness in their cities, while the other 40 percent do. In verbatim survey responses, mayors cite a range of ways to measure how their cities fare in dealing with homelessness. For example, the survey found 16 percent of mayors say matching their unhoused community members with support services made their policies successful, while 11 percent say reducing complaints from residents about homelessness was a benchmark.

The IoC received support for this research from Citi and the Rockefeller Foundation. IoC researchers collaborated on the homelessness crisis report with Community Solutions, a nonprofit that works to end homelessness.