The Argument for Shrinking Homeless Shelters

Unfortunately, there are still homeless shelters that take in more than 10 people at a time. A shelter for 200 homeless people (or worse, 1000) is not any kind of accomplishment. That approach is decades out of date and is limiting homeless people, not helping them.

Living with more than 10 people is unnatural unless you come from a very big family. Ideally, there would be no more than five people in a shared dwelling, to simulate normal living conditions. I've always said that learning to live with 50 or more people is no kind of preparation for independent living beyond homelessness. Any community that size takes a lot of work to remain healthy and can cause significant stress to its members if it isn't. In fact, there should be some kind of guidebook for living in any of the bigger homeless shelters as the experience is overwhelming, stressful, and an unrealistic representation of life off the streets.

It doesn't surprise me that every day thousands of homeless people choose to sleep on the streets rather than enter a massive shelter.

The small homeless shelter I operate is run out of a garden variety house with room for six residents and one staff quarters. Usually I keep it to no more than five people total living in the house. It's only on special occasions like birthdays, movie nights or fishing trips that we have a few extra people sleeping over (like a normal house), or if someone is doing home detox we have a few extra staff.

As a social worker living in a homeless shelter with four residents, I'm under enough stress. I can't imagine the insane amount of stress put on residents who live in a space with more than 10 people.

In terms of economies of scale and the idea that you can help more people for less money if you squeeze them into a large shelter, the math doesn't add up. Read "Million-Dollar Murray," a classic article by Malcolm Gladwell from the New Yorker, that debunks many myths surrounding homelessness and the cost of the chronically homeless to society.

Some of the best shelters have reported costs of $100,000 per person per year for adequate service with wrap-around support (counseling, social workers, etc.). Any of the residents staying at my shelter can rack up $100,000 in expenses to the government and community in a given month if they aren't sheltered with us. We certainly don't need $400,000 a month to work with our four residents (but wow, that would be nice). You get the idea. Smaller, higher quality services make much more of a difference in homeless people's lives than large institutional shelters, and significantly decrease the cost of homelessness for the taxpayer.

You may ask why these large shelter institutions aren't shut down and smaller more effective shelters funded in their place. Often times it's because the very people who are brought in to consult with and advise government policy makers are from the larger institutions with problematic, wildly out-of-date practices. In my mind, the homeless sector is slow to adapt to current needs and implement innovate ideas. Quite frankly, being decades behind today's easy-to-implement innovations is an invitation to have your funding cut completely.

Sadly, the only way we could pass legislation to downsize shelters would be to partner with the "not in my backyard" (NIMBY) crowd to pass a bill limiting the size of homeless shelters to no more than 10 shelter beds in the one dwelling, for example.

If you have stayed in a homeless shelter, how many other people were staying there and what are your thoughts on this topic? If you have other ideas that could help downsize shelters that do not require partnering with the NIMBY crowd, please contribute to the discussion. Everyone reading my articles here is always invited to join the International Homeless Forum, especially if you are currently or formerly homeless.

Photo credit: Linda Bisset