Accountable yet feeling powerless: Report highlights challenges mayors face in addressing homelessness

Homelessness is a societal problem that’s not easily fixed. It’s a political challenge for mayors as much as it is a civic one—one that requires collaborative effort from many stakeholders, not just a single political leader.

The 2021 Menino Survey, published this month, sheds light on these challenges through mayoral perspectives on homelessness and the related responsibilities and opportunities that come with municipal leadership.

“The findings of the survey were many,” said Jake Maguire, principal at Community Solutions, a nonprofit that works to end homelessness, which collaborated with Boston University on the project. “The biggest one is that the overwhelming majority of mayors felt like they were held accountable for homelessness, and the overwhelming majority felt like they were powerless.”

Specifically, 73 percent of the 126 sitting mayors from 39 states surveyed for the project reported they felt constituents held them “highly accountable for addressing homelessness in their communities, but 81 percent feel that homelessness in their cities is outside of their control,” a brief from Community Solutions about the findings says.

The survey was launched in 2014 by the Boston University Initiative on Cities, according to the organization’s website, and is named after the late Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, who co-founded the initiative. This year’s survey, which encompasses many topics along with homelessness, is the first to include questions about homelessness.

The problem of homelessness is sweeping, affecting more Americans than those diagnosed with cancer each year or struggle with opioid use disorder, an introduction to the report notes. The impact of homelessness is “comparably devastating: mortality rates for people who experience short-term homelessness in a location such as temporary housing or a homeless shelter have mortality rates three times that of the general population,” according to the survey. “Despite this stark reality, we have very little systematic knowledge about the policy landscape shaping how we address this crisis in the United States.”

But even though it’s a sweeping problem that just about every community must confront, it’s addressed via a fragmented approach, according to Maguire. From cities and counties to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and other governmental agencies, along with local nonprofits, each takes a different approach—and each is funded separately.

“You’re drawing all these overlapping circles on a map, and everyone is responsible for their own money,” he continued. “It ends up feeling like a game of Chutes and Ladders—it’s this very complicated maze of accountability, which is why it’s hard for one person to take accountability.”

Politically and otherwise, mayors stand at the frontline the homelessness crisis, weighing the “needs of different civilian constituencies and (managing) complex bureaucracies responsible for cities’ service delivery and policy implementation. They are uniquely positioned to comment on the tensions and realities of homelessness and responses to homelessness in their jurisdictions,” the survey notes.

They’re uniquely positioned because they’re able to bring everyone into the same room, Maguire said.

“Even though the mayor isn’t in charge of the VA, or the housing authority, all these different authorities, they do have convening power,” he continued, noting positive headway can be made “If they can use that convening power to get everyone behind a shared aim. The most successful communities we have seen have found a way to do that.”

As an example, Maguire pointed to Rockford, Ill., a “small- to mid-sized community” that has effectively addressed homelessness locally.

“Going back several years now … the mayor got everyone into the same room together,” Maguire said. The mayor told the stakeholders, “‘I want action on this issue.’” A command center was stood up and everyone involved gathered weekly to report progress. Data was made available by those working at street level, available to everyone, and “they were able to optimize the federal resources that already existed. That’s a community that has now ended veteran homelessness; they’ve ended chronic homelessness; they’re making significant progress toward ending family homelessness,” he said.

But while they’re in a position to make lasting change, 60 percent of mayoral respondents in the survey weren’t able to give a clearly defined goal to reduce homelessness. Forty percent “explicitly outline a policy goal of reducing homelessness. When asked to define success, 42 percent of mayors highlight better housing, while 16 percent mention access to better social services. Eleven percent emphasize minimizing what they perceive as the negative impacts of homelessness on surrounding residents and businesses,” the survey says.

At least in part, Maguire said this is because of the “disconnect between the purview of a mayor’s authority and the way the problem exists—we have a problem that spans jurisdictions, and not just city jurisdictions,” agencies as well.

Lack of resources disseminated to individual entities prohibits one organization from tackling homelessness on their own. Without adequate resources, mayors reported relying on police departments to address homelessness in their cities. Almost one-third of cities (28 percent) represented in the survey reported having no dedicated staff exclusively serving the unhoused. And of those that do have staffing for homelessness, 22 percent of mayors placed those staff members in their police departments.

This approach isn’t effective at ending systematic homelessness because, “notwithstanding the fact that folks who are working in police departments are doing their best, this is a social problem,” Maguire said. The path toward a solution begins with uniting and aligning “all of these different organizations and agencies. Maybe we wouldn’t have to lean so much on police departments.”

But before any meaningful steps can be taken, Maguire said it’s important for mayors and county leaders to change the way they understand and address homelessness.

“Solving homelessness is possible. If I was talking to city and county officials, that’s a story I’d want changed,” he said. And “if it is possible, the question becomes, ‘what are the barriers that are standing in our way?’”