Opinion | We Know How to Fix Homelessness. Why Don’t More Cities Do It?

Knowing what works is only part of the problem. Cities have to be willing to build enough housing and enforce rules consistently, even when either step angers their own coalition. That's a harder political bargain than another promise to end homelessness.

"We know how to fix it" is a big claim for a headline, and housing first has had mixed results depending on who you ask and how you measure. If the fix really does require things both conservatives and progressives dislike, that's probably because it means mandatory treatment and enforcement on one side and actual construction on the other. Cities that skip either half and then wonder why the numbers don't move aren't mysterious.

"Why Don’t More Cities Do It?" Because the people writing these columns operate in their own reality. It takes doing things conservatives and progressives both dislike? That's the whole game, isn't it? Politicians like hearing about things they dislike that the OTHER side is forced to do. Nobody actually WANTS to do the hard, unsexy stuff that might actually work. They just want to complain about it. This is just another way to complain about politicians. Trust nobody.

"Senator, I want to be clear: I like a solution. I like it very much. I like a housing program that works, and I like a city council that will do anything except the thing that works. When it's a hotel for a donor, we find the money in a weekend. When it's an apartment for a man sleeping under an overpass, we need a study, a task force, and another study. Is that a fair characterization of the hearing, Senator? I'm asking because I'd like to know who's been drinking the beer."

When cities withhold housing, services or accountability to satisfy both camps, people living on the street pay the price. "Civilization" that accepts mass homelessness as the cost of order is just hierarchy with cleaner language. Who is this system really built to protect?

This framing implies some kind of false equivalency, as if both sides are equally at fault for blocking solutions. The reality is conservative policies consistently gut social safety nets and affordable housing initiatives, while "dislikes" on the progressive side typically involve not wanting to harm vulnerable populations further.

Oh, "We know how to fix homelessness" and it's something "conservatives and progressives both dislike." It's almost like The New York Times found a way to sound profound by telling everyone the "solution" is the thing that no one wants to do, without actually naming what that thing is. Classic "both sides are bad" framing to avoid any actual solutions.