A Common Sense Institute report released last week affirms how soft-on-crime and easy-on-drugs policies make homelessness worse in wealthy, high-government-spending states like Colorado. To control for states with larger populations and thus higher homeless numbers, the report analyzed the number of homeless people per capita in each state. It turned out Colorado was top-10 across the board: ninth for total homelessness rate, seventh for chronic homelessness rate, 10th for unsheltered homelessness rate, seventh for severely mentally ill homelessness rate, and seventh for its rate of homeless individuals with chronic substance abuse issues. Colorado’s capital ranked fifth among the nation’s 50 largest metro areas for total number of homeless people, sixth for number of chronically homeless people, 11th for total number of unsheltered homeless people, fourth for the number of severely mentally ill homeless people and fourth for the number of homeless people with a chronic substance abuse issue. CSI’s primary conclusion from the report debunks “housing first” policies. That approach involves shepherding people from the streets into lodging before addiction or mental health treatment, often on the taxpayer’s dime. Its premise is the high cost of housing in a community is at root of chronic homelessness. The institute tested that assumption about housing costs using an analysis where a coefficient ranging from 0 to ±1 indicated the strength of the relationship between one set of variables and another. The categories in the analysis included the statewide rate of illicit substance use in the past year; the statewide National Incident-Based Reporting System combined rates of violent and property crime; the state-level number of hours needed at the average wage to pay the average rent; total state government spending per capita; statewide labor productivity rates; statewide combined 2015-24 grant distributions from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; the statewide rates of serious mental illness in the past year; statewide disposable income; the statewide poverty rate, and the statewide ratio of police per population. The correlation coefficient between state-level homelessness rates and rent affordability was 0.35 — but other correlations proved much stronger. Namely, homelessness rates and state rates of illicit substance use had a correlation coefficient almost twice that — 0.57. Other leading correlations higher than housing costs were labor productivity (0.47) and total state spending per person (0.42). The study further found states with higher rates of homelessness tend to have lower rates of police per capita.  The institute’s message to Colorado’s state housing office? Redefine your performance metrics in your funding evaluations to include long-term self-sufficiency markers, such as sustained employment (e.g., six to 12 months post-program), income stability above poverty thresholds, and reduced reliance on public assistance.  The institute also recommends the state move away from highlighting short-term outputs like “number of people housed” — the essence of “housing first” — or “meals served.” Instead, highligh outcomes like “percentage transitioning from unhoused to self-sufficient.” “Though housing prices and area pay scales do contribute to homelessness,” the institute wrote in the report’s “bottom line,” “understanding the wider array of factors at play paints a fuller picture of possible causes of homelessness. Drug prevalence, crime rates, labor productivity, and state spending levels all show statistical associations with homelessness rates in this analysis.  As such, federal homelessness abatement funding should be available for a broad swath of programs, not just “housing first.” More to the point, handing only a room key to someone with serious substance or mental health issues — accomplishes little. ...read more read less