And Housing for All

that link and you can get a copy immediately. It is an exhaustive coverage on the history and policy aspects of this super complicated issue that I know faces us all on a day to day basis. Now, you know, we're all aware of the problems whether you live in Texas, Illinois, New York, California, Alabama, that homelessness faces in the United

States of America. This is a salient issue and something that touches all of us in one way, shape or form, and so it's worth understanding it and understanding the complex issues that regard it. I would love to tell you that we come out of this conversation with a solution. I mean, I have my own solution. It's just you know,

build housing. I've always said, you know, hey, if I'm going to run for president, I'm going to have I'm going to be the one issue president, you know, in twenty twenty eight, and it's going to be We're just going to build houses. We're going to build lots of houses like we did in the late nineteen forties, early nineteen fifties, and you know, hopefully everything else takes care of itself. But I'm going to build a ton of houses. President House, you guys can call me whatever it takes,

you know. But you know, assuming that I don't win the next presidential election, which is extremely unlikely, let's take another tact and try today to learn a little bit more about this issue and about what we all can do about it in order to make it so much less powerful in society today. So with that being said, after these short words, here's the interview. All right, welcome

back to the show. As I mentioned moments ago, I'm sitting down with author and advocates Maria Foscarinas, and we're going to be talking about her most recent book today and Housing for All, the fight to end homelessness in America. Well, no matter where you live, if you live in the United States. You are aware of the homeless crisis and problems that face the United States, and so I think this is a really poignant book that everyone should read right now to get a deeper understanding of what is

really a complicated topic. But I wanted to start by asking you, as the author of this book, why did you write this book, but also not just why did you write the book, why did you get involved intimately in this particular issue.

involved because I wanted to do something about it. I wrote the book after having spent over thirty five years as an advocate working on homelessness at the national level, and I really got involved at the moment where homelessness, or close to the moment where homelessness became a national crisis that was in the early nineteen eighties. Homelessness has not always been a crisis at this scale, certainly in our country, and I got involved just as it was

exploding and turning into a national crisis. And so I feel like I've really seen the evolution of homelessness over a long period of time. I've been involved in many of the major battles to address it, and I have a perspective that I've gained as a result of this work. I wanted to share that. I also wanted to share stories of the many, many people I've met on house, people that I've met and worked with over the years, and I shared just a few of them in the book.

But I wanted to do that because these are voices and stories that need to be heard, and I try to do them at least a little bit of justice through the book.

And you know, sometimes I think about, you know, historical parallels and times that come before, and oftentimes I see a lot of the guilded Age in where we are right now, and the ideas of the Gospel of wealth and the accumulation of all these things. But of course the guilded Age is followed by the Progressive era for those who don't know the American history, which is an effort to sort of curb some of the abuses on there.

Since you study this issue so much, in this question of wealth disparity, I thought i'd ask you, do you have any opinions as to where we are in a society right now when it comes to this issue of wealth disparity. I wonder if we're sort of getting to the point where people are fed up off that we might start to actually do something about this issue. I

see rhymes of that right now happening in society. But what do you think, Because it occurs to me that it's really hard to address firmly this issue of homelessness and houselessness without addressing the underlying cause of wealth disparity.

There's a large number, a huge percentage of people who are literally living paycheck to paycheck, and that's you know, that's a real point of connection if people pause to think about it, to people who are at this extreme end of that equality. I see homelessness as the extreme end of income and wealth inequality in this country. It's a continuum. It's not like homelessness is something special or unique. It's the extreme end of what is affecting very many people.

And you know, I think that does create a potential for change. And we see the anger in a lot of people who feel like they're cut out, out, left out of American society. And you know, that anger maybe driving the phenomena of our current political climate of Trump and you know, you mentioned musk that can be directed in a different way, if people have a greater understanding of why people are poor, why people are homeless, what

is actually driving inequality? There are people who are making a lot of money and have a lot of wealth, and of course that's the definition of inequality, but why is that? So? Why do we allow this? What kind

of society do we really want to live in? Do we really want to be part of a society where it's okay for some people to have extreme wealth and others not to have enough to survive, and many many others to be struggling and wondering if they're going to be without a roof over their heads soon, if they

have one emergency that they can afford. So I think it does raise these larger questions, and I hope that your historical analogy proves to be correct, that this will drive people to a more progressive error different It's certainly not going to happen by itself. So it takes activism, and it takes understanding, and it takes building coalitions and having also a vision of a different way to be well.

a mighty but a mighty stone cutter. That is, with one blow he felled that stone. And that's not true. They just didn't see all of the things that came before that. But one of the things that I thought was really powerful about the book, and I wanted to ask you about at least one or two of them,

are the real life examples. And in particular, I wonder if you could tell us one or two real life examples of homelessness and not only the people that involves, but the trade offs that they have to make, because that's really what struck me was this was that these were people who were having to make what were unfortunately rational decisions that were the lesser of two evils that resulted in them perhaps not having a place to stay

for that night. But if you back up and you look at it, you would say, well, that's actually the logical decision that they made in that circumstance. That's not everyone, but I think that that's some people. So if you could, if you could tell us some one of those stories, I think it would illuminate this issue a lot.

with his parents. His parents died, his name wasn't on the lease, and so suddenly he was without any place to stay. He was working. His work was an overnight shift stocking shelves in a convenience store. He couldn't go to a shelter. First of all, there were off and the shelters were full. But even when they weren't full they had curfeused. He had to be in by a certain time and that would have and he couldn't keep his job, so he had he made a choice to

keep a job and live under a tarp outside. And of course Denver gets very cold during the winter, and he was under his tarp and times when it was freezing and snowing, and he was there and he started experiencing pain in his limbs. He knew the dangers of frostbite, and he went to try to get medical help, but each time was sent away with painkillers. Eventually he had to have his one of his legs, his right leg amputated below the knee, and lost all five toes on

his other foot remaining foot. So this is horrible story. I know about this story thanks to advocates who were were working with him and who actually went with him to the hospital when he had the amputation and had him and were able to film him. He wanted to tell the story. He wanted to have this publicized, and it was on local TV. He was very very clear about what he needed and about how to solve homelessness, and his answer was housing. There just wasn't housing, you know.

I talked about shelter, but we know shelter is not the solution. Shelter is also not available. It wasn't available to Danny in a either just as a matter of numbers or and certainly not a number as a matter of actual availability to him. Shelter is not available around the country and the numbers needed. So this is clear. This is an unders muted fact that there are not enough shelter beds even to meet the need. And also, no one working on this issue thinks shelter is a solution.

Housing is. But that story really stuck with me because it just it was so dramatic, and yet it's not at all unusual this, I mean, amputations happened regularly. Death people die because they're living outside. So that's one of the stories of the cost of allowing people to be homeless in this country.

It's not both, and so he made a choice, and that choice to keep his job is perfectly rational from every perspective. It's just because of how we set up the rules of this game that he wound up losing his limbs. And hopefully that's not what anybody intended. Now, one of the things that I wanted to ask you about, and you kind of started to hint about it in the introduction. You're right, and I'm quoting the book now. It's a quote housing was increasingly treated as a commodity

for investment, not a place to live. And I think that's probably not how many of us think about housing, but it's very accurate. And so I wonder if you could explain it exactly what you mean by that, and then also walk us through a little bit how did that happen, because I have to imagine historically that hasn't always been the case.

a first step. But then later, especially in the wake of the foreclosure crisis in two thousand and eight. Around that time, when a lot of people lost their homes and a lot of properties went into foreclosure, that's when investors really swooped in and bought them up and converted them into properties for profit essentially. So this is very different than you know, a person or a kind of mom and pop landlord who owns a property and rents it out, or somebody who buys a property and holds

onto it as a kind of equity. These are investors whose purpose is to make a profit. We've heard about private equity. Well, private equity entered the residential housing market in a big way starting around then with the foreclosure crisis, and so now and they're also building properties precisely for

the purpose of renting them for profit. And when you think start thinking of housing that way and treating it that way, then it's you know, someone is a day late on rent and they're out, and you know, if you can raise the rent, you do. You squeeze it as much as you can. And so when housing is treated that way, they are going to be people who are left out. If the sole criterion about for housing is profit, you're not going to be concerned about ensuring

that everybody has an affordable place to live. So that's what you know. The term commodification of housing means that housing is treated like an investment vehicle and as a vehicle for profit, not as something that meets a basic human need. The counter the contrast to this is thinking of housing as a social good, something that everybody needs.

Everybody needs a safe, decent place to live, and just like everybody needs water or air, you know, these are put these could be treated as public goods, and the way to do that is invest in them. There used to be there there's a concept called social housing where housing is treated as a social good, but it's invested

in by government. Government funding helps to make it affordable for everybody so that everybody can actually have access to it, so it doesn't become this game of musical chairs where you know, some people get it and other people are left without. So that's that's the contrast between treating housing as a commodity and as a social good.

fairly obvious housing. If people are in housing, then society will get stronger because we're helping those individuals. Did they need help to get there? Yes? Did they quote unquote deserve that? Did they do something to earn it. I don't know, maybe, but to me it seems like we should be focusing more on the efficacy of solving the problem versus the morality of whether or not someone deserves something. I don't know, what do you think about that?

that homelessness is a choice. People choose to be homeless, and that's really I think related to this point that you're making about morality. So if people are choosing to be homeless, it's somehow their fault, and if they lose their limbs or if they can't have to sleep outside, that's their problem, it's not our collective problem. And that is a narrative that has started then but has really seeped in in to a lot of public policy discussion.

About homelessness, and it's not It's been adopted by Democrats and Republicans alike. Think about you know, President Clinton and his eliminating welfare as we know it and the welfare queens stereotype that went along with that. I mean, these narratives drive policy, and they sustain it, they support it, they make you know, they make it easier to enact

these kinds of policies. So I think that that's you know, the idea that housing and when people need government investment to make housing affordable, that somehow there's something wrong with them. That's a very dangerous way to think about this issue, and it's we don't have to think of it if that way we could be thinking about it in a way it says, well, this is something we all need. We all need housing, and why is it that somebody

could be working and not be able to afford it? Well, why, you know, the minimum wage hasn't been raised for over a decade, you know, I mean these I think we can look more deeply into this and ask why, And that's a question of basic fairness. So, yes, efficacy, we can solve a problem, but we can also think about what kind of society we want to live in a home? Is something essential. Without housing, you really can't do other basic things in life that everybody should and wants to

be able to do. You know, it's hard to go to school, it's hard to keep a job, it's hard to raise a family if you don't have a stable place to live. Isn't this something that we as a society can get behind, that everybody should have a stable, decent place to live. I think we can. But we have to think about this a little bit more deeply and ask these questions.

I wanted to read a section from the book. And this is in chapter one, by the way, so and this is it can be a little bit longer of a quote with the dove's tales into a question here, so just picking it up here, it says quote, by the early nineteen eighties, homelessness was dramatically growing, while the estimated number of homeless people was and still is a matter of heated debate. Most everyone agreed that whatever the

number was, it was rapidly going up. Many experts believed that more people were homeless in the nineteen eighties than at any time since the Great Depression. Annual surveys initiated in nineteen eighty four by the US Conference of Mayors, a group representing big city mayors, documented a soaring demand for emergency shelter in major metropolitan areas around the country, coupled with an inability of local authorities and private charities

to meet it. The populations affected by homelessness were also quickly changing. Families with children became the fastest growing group. Homelessness among racial and ethnic minorities also grew, forming a disproportionate percentage relative to their representation in both the population at large and stable were housed. Low income individuals, in particular, younger working men and women were affected as well. End quote. I really have to ask why was it in the

nineteen eighties that homelessness exploded so much? What was the factor here where we're dealing with economic downturn, or was this a deliberate public policy change that affected the situation.

programs that took a huge cut. So in the at the end of the previous decade in nineteen seventy nine, federal funding paid for over three hundred thousand new units of affordable housing that year, and then two three years later in nineteen eighty two, that number was down to just over three thousand, So that's a huge, huge cut. When you cut housing like that, you really changed the landscape.

And this was coming on the heels of developments that had already happened in the nineteen seventies in the private market, where developers were tearing down inexpensive housing. At the time, there were a lot of SROs, single room occupancy hotels, which were a source of cheap housing for many people. Those had been developed during that previous decade and about a million such units had been lost, and there had

been an economic downturn. So on top of these developments came the Reagan cuts, and that just triggered this huge explosion of homelessness which had been waiting to happen, but it erupted at that time. So that's when it really became a crisis.

historically insane. We did it after World War Two, so it's something that we can certainly do, Okay, But from my perspective, I don't see a solution to this problem that's long term until the government simply says, all right, we're going to build more houses. Am I crazy?

they have to say, am I crazy? That just shows us how it shows how far the narrative has gone away from this site. You know there is there are solutions other than that, and that could be Those could be housing vouchers. So housing, you know, it used to be the government provided affordable housing by directly subsidizing it. In the mid seventies, this change to more of a focus on providing money for people to rent on the

private market through something called housing vouchers. Those could right now, those are so underfunded that only one in four people who are poor enough to get a voucher actually gets it. So a big increase in housing vouchers is the other option that's less desirable, I think for a number of reasons.

One is that that would have to be accompanied by strong enforcement of laws, will enactment at the federal level of a law preventing discrimination against voucher holders, which is a huge problem now people get these vouchers, it's they're very hard to get, and then they get turned away when they try to use them to actually rent housing,

So that would be a caveat on that. And then it's also can be very expensive because what you're doing there is subsidizing private market housing where rents are really skyrocketing. We have all seen this how high rents have gotten. So then you'd be subsidizing those high rents. It's much more direct and effective for government to directly subsidize affordable housing, and it has to be really it's not just a

question of building housing or any housing. It's a matter of building affordable housing, housing that can be affordable even to extremely poor people. And you know other countries do this. Finland, for example, has virtually ended homelessness because it invests in housing.

Vienna has a program of social housing that is a listiting interest from policymakers now here in the US as well as other countries, and people are visiting it, trying to learn about it, trying to create similar models here. So these are things that are possible. They're not at all crazy.

policy discussions, so it surprised me. Could you tell the listeners what is that and a little bit about its story because I thought it was really interestingly documented in the book.

a emergency shelter, emergency relief. Part two was prevention, how to prevent homelessness. Part three was how to end homelessness This and that was housing, low income housing. So this was basically the a proposal put together by people who were knowledgeable, who were seeing a lot of them were legal services groups who were seeing homeless clients in their day to day work, and what they and we all

thought was needed to address the then exploding crisis. And it was actually it was something I took up to Capitol Hill and tried to get support for and eventually was able to get it introduced by Mickey Leland, a Congressman from Texas in fact, who sponsored it. It was hard to get support for it. I mean this was the time when Reagan was in office, when he was saying homelessness is a lifestyle choice and it's certainly not an issue for the federal government. So this was very

hard to get. Eventually, we did get an introduced, and you know, getting any part of it enacted was extremely challenging. The part that eventually made its way through Congress and got enacted in nineteen eighty seven was Part one. That was emergency relief. That was our emergency relief part of the proposal, excuse me, and it primarily was focused on emergency shelter, and that got enacted as what is now called the McKinney Vent, a Homeless Assistance Act. That was

the first federal, major federal legislation addressing homelessness. And getting it passed took a big campaign by a variety of actors I call them strange bedfellows, kind of very out there activist at the time, a pro bono lawyer who was actually a Republican who worked with me specifically and myself, and of course advocates around the country who organize in their communities to get support to back our efforts to

get this legislation. So we got this. It was supposed to be just part one, the first step, and the additional steps were to follow, but of course the additional steps didn't come, certainly, not as part of this proposal. So that was the Homeless Person's Survival Act. And that's to say that even in those early days, we knew that emergency shelter was not the solution. We had a bigger plan in mind, but getting the political backing to make it happen at that time was a bridge too far for us.

not sure, you tell me. But if you don't have a private jet, maybe you could think about why does that person have to have twelve of them? You know, maybe we could have that are in a better condition, Maybe we could approach the homelessness situation easier. The point I'm trying to make is this is solvable for the United States. This isn't a problem. This isn't an attack from an alien species in my opinion, that we have no control over. This is something that we could fix

if we wanted to. The question is do we want to? All right? And with that venting done, though, I want to ask a little bit for my last question because I know where we're coming up on time here, but I want to ask about something past the nineteen eighties, because you write about how in the twenty tens and beyond, and here I'm going to quote, so it's quotation, a new coalition, including many who had personally experienced homelessness, was growing.

I'm interested about that new coalition, Where did it come from, what made it different, and what might it herald about changes in policy going forward.

were activists homeless people even in the early days. But I think my sense is that this is more prevalent now. And you know, we're seeing also people who have experienced homelessness become running for office and winning, becoming members of Congress. Corey Bush, who unfortunately lost her primer but was probably the most visible member of Congress who had experienced homelessness herself. But on city councils there are people who have experienced

homelessness who are now council members. So I think there's now a new opportunity here with people who have to firsthand experience becoming either activists or politically involved or otherwise entering positions of some greater power than we've had. And

that's creating an opportunity. The more that there are people who have that direct experience who are in side government and in positions where they can really make, really support efforts to make change, I think that's reason for optimism, and I think that helps bring this effort to a next.

and that can happen at any level. Can happen at the local level, It can have at the state level and the federal level. I think the state and local levels are right now the place to focus because you know, things are rather much more difficult at the federal level at the moment. But there's quite a lot of activism happening at the state and local level, and some of it is seeing successes. So find out who's active in your community and get involved.

it with more. I would wager to say, if you read this book, you will have a better understanding of the issue of homelessness than just about anyone who you walk past on the street. And it's hard for me to say that every day, but this is one of those books that really does cover it all. And I want to thank you so much for coming on the show, Maria. It's been great. I think we learned a lot. I love the book and I know my listeners will as well.