Though homelessness is largely seen as an urban problem, it's an increasing phenomenon in rural areas. Some rural law enforcement officials say that local efforts to help the homeless are often insufficient and believe incarceration can better help homeless people, April Ehrlich reports for NPR.
The NPR story uses rural Shasta County in Northern California as an example. County officials recently got a $1.6 million grant to build a homeless shelter. But the police chief of Anderson, Michael Johnson, told county supervisors to reconsider in February 2019, Ehrlich reports. "It is just another enabling mechanism for the homeless, the transients and the displaced people here," Johnson told the board. "When you create something and enable people, you're going to attract more."
"Johnson proposed an alternative: a detention facility to house people who have committed low-level crimes such as public drinking, urinating in public or sleeping in public spaces, which are sometimes unavoidable for people without homes," Ehrlich reports. Johnson said incarceration can serve as a wake-up call for homeless people who are struggling with drug addiction and mental health issues, and that jails can help them get into programs that will help them. However, federal law prohibits incarcerated people from accessing full Medicaid benefits, which would hamper jails' ability to provide addiction and mental health services to the homeless.
The NPR story uses rural Shasta County in Northern California as an example. County officials recently got a $1.6 million grant to build a homeless shelter. But the police chief of Anderson, Michael Johnson, told county supervisors to reconsider in February 2019, Ehrlich reports. "It is just another enabling mechanism for the homeless, the transients and the displaced people here," Johnson told the board. "When you create something and enable people, you're going to attract more."
"Johnson proposed an alternative: a detention facility to house people who have committed low-level crimes such as public drinking, urinating in public or sleeping in public spaces, which are sometimes unavoidable for people without homes," Ehrlich reports. Johnson said incarceration can serve as a wake-up call for homeless people who are struggling with drug addiction and mental health issues, and that jails can help them get into programs that will help them. However, federal law prohibits incarcerated people from accessing full Medicaid benefits, which would hamper jails' ability to provide addiction and mental health services to the homeless.
Tristia Bauman of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty disagrees with the notion of incarcerating homeless people to help them. "That is not only an ineffective approach — it's also the single most expensive approach," she told Ehrlich. Bauman said that focusing on providing housing to homeless people with no strings attached produces better outcomes for health and education, and it's far cheaper than any other approach.
NPR notes that a low-barrier homeless shelter in rural Oregon, near Shasta County, shows benefits of a housing-first approach. A former firefighter who has struggled with addiction told Ehrlich he had a room at the shelter for four months, and is now sober and saving money to rent an apartment.
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