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Mayor Eric: You have a right to sleep on the street. You don't have the right to build a miniature house.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Thanks for joining us on The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and you're listening here to New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Mayor Eric: I'm not going to have an inhumane city that allows people to live in an inhumane dangerous environment.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, since taking office in January, a centerpiece of Mayor Adams' approach to the city's historic crisis of homelessness has been removing those who are most highly visible.

Mayor Eric: We're going to dismantle those encampments, give people wraparound services, voucher their goods so no one's supplies are removed from them.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, Mayor Adams, as you are hearing here has presented his plan to dismantle the temporary public living spaces of the homeless as an act of humanity and a public policy which addresses concerns of both individual and public safety and health. In February, alongside New York Governor, Hochul Adams told the story of one woman seeking shelter in the city's subway system.

Mayor Eric: There's one case where a woman has been living under a stairway in this system for months. Which is not acceptable, not under my administration that is not dignity. That is disgusting and that's not who we are as a city.

Melissa Harris-Perry: The woman Adams was describing, she has a name. She identified herself as a 39-year-old Jennifer Mueller to the New York Post. She had taken shelter in Williamsburg's Bedford Avenue L train station. In the post-interview with her, it was evident she was in need of help. It's not clear that being given 24 to 48 hours to vacate is the help she needs, which is part of why many advocates for the homeless have decried Adams's tactics as both inhumane and ineffective, but the mayor disagrees.

Mayor Eric: I am just so amazed that we believe it is dignified to allow people to live on the streets. That just shocks me it shocks me that we believe it's all right, that someone should live in a tree in the parks.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It's estimated that nearly 1 in every 106 New Yorkers is experiencing homelessness. That's a historic high in this city of more than 8 million people, but only a small fraction of those without housing are sheltering on the city's streets. Yet clearing these highly visible examples of homelessness seems to be a cornerstone of the mayor's approach to the issue. What does this mean for finding permanent sustainable solutions for those who experience homelessness in the city of New York?

Brendan Cheney is the Director of Policy and Communications for the New York Housing Conference. Joel Berg is CEO of Hunger Free America. Brendan, Joel, welcome to the Takeaway.

Brendan Cheney: Thanks for having me.

Joel Berg: Thanks for focusing on this.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Brendan, I want to start with language. Does your organization use the language of homeless people, people experiencing homelessness, unhoused people? What's the language?

Brendan: Well, we talk about helping people who are experiencing homelessness, and in cases like this, people who are unsheltered while they're experiencing homelessness.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Why does it matter for us to shift our language in that way? Help us to understand the value in describing this problem in those particular ways.

Brendan: What we want to do is we want to talk about the fact that we're talking about people. We're not categorizing them. They are people and they're in a situation and they're in a situation where they need help. Really focusing on the language where we are addressing them as people and people that we want to offer support to.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, Joel, in a similar way, as we're thinking about language as our first stop along this pathway here when you hear the mayor talking about people without housing and his policies for addressing these issues, he often uses the word, dignity, the word encampment, to talk about these circumstances of very highly public outdoor living. How do you see that language reflecting something about what's going on with the mayor's policies?

Joel: The problem is his language is mixed and sends mixed messages and thus their policies are mixed and send mixed messages. I know him a bit. I know he cares about disadvantaged people. I know some of the people who work for him he's brought in even better. There's some excellent people who really care about the most perilous in our society and the most low-income people in our society.

When he says people living on the streets, people living in a tree isn't how it should be, people deserve better. I'm like, "Okay, 100% there," but then he's frozen. "Oh, well we found hypodermic needles on their encampment. We don't know if that's true, if it is true we don't know if it's because they're substance abusers or because they have diabetes." His mix of rhetoric, espousing compassion which we love and which is so necessary needed with his mix of language criminalizing people, not having housing.

Implying that they're all criminal, and much of the media including not just the tabloids, but supposed liberal media, like The New York Times, has gone along with that. That's really problematic and that results in mixed policies that combine compassion, trying to help people get housing with punishing people for being homeless not only taking away their encampments but promising to give them vouchers to keep their possessions. It's pretty clear, most of their possessions are just being trashed.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Brendan, one of the things that also seems to do to me is to really focus our attention on the proportion of people experiencing homelessness, who are in fact unsheltered during that experience who are living in these highly easily visible to the public situations. What proportion of people experiencing homelessness is that? Is that about half? Is it much smaller than that?

Brendan: In New York City, we've got the last time they counted or estimated it. There were 2,380 people who were living unsheltered in the city. Advocates say that's probably an undercount. It's safe to say there's several thousand people that are unsheltered in New York City, but that's out of a total population or total estimate of over 68,000 people that were experiencing homelessness on a given night the last time they counted.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Where are most people? Are they in city shelters? Are they doubling up with friends and family and community members?

Brendan: The estimate counts only people that are living in city shelters so if you've got 68,000 people total, 65,000 of those are living in city shelters. It doesn't count the number of people which would be far more that are doubled up or couch surfing or things like that.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, Joel, help me to understand how shelter beds help or don't help for this proportion of the population?

Joel: It's important to note that not only are people living on the streets, a small portion of those people who are homeless, but those people are homeless our small percentage of those people who are poor and hungry in New York City, many people just equate hunger with homeless. When in fact there are more than a million people in New York City who live in households that can't afford enough food.

Homelessness is the most-dire consequence of poverty that when you don't have enough money for food and rent and childcare, you become homeless. We did an April fools press release this year we do one every year. One is requited call for expulsion of illegal immigrants. Another is conservatives' call for housework requirements for WIC infants but this year was shocking new study. When people get more food, they're less hungry and when people get more housing, they're less homeless.

The core of the homelessness problem is that housing isn't affordable and when policymakers rightfully focus on that, and there's at least a little money in the new state budget to deal with this, they succeed in reducing homelessness. When they falsely imply, it's all a behavior or a mental illness problem they fail.

Melissa Harris-Perry: The mayor is saying well, we're offering folks the opportunity to go into a shelter. According to The New York Times, the city cleared 239 encampments in just under two weeks last month, but only five people from those sites agreed to go into shelters. Help us understand some of the reasons why people who are experiencing homelessness might not want to relocate into a shelter?

Brendan: In New York City, there is a right to shelter so that the city has to provide shelter for anyone who is homeless and wants to be in the shelter. They have to have enough shelter, beds, enough shelter rooms for people who are experiencing homelessness and want to be in shelter. This contrasts with a lot of other places nationally somewhere like Los Angeles, where if they've got 63,000 people experiencing homelessness, 46,000 are unsheltered. We've got a different situation and what that means, that the people in New York City that are experiencing homelessness that are unsheltered are choosing not to be in the shelter system.

They're choosing to be unsheltered in a sense. They're saying that they don't want to be in the shelter system. It might be because they feel the shelter system is unsafe. It might be because they want more privacy than the shelter system can provide. It might be because they want a different type of shelter. The city has done a good job in the past and is good at offering shelter types that meet the needs of people who are choosing not to go into the traditional shelter system.

Shelters that have lower thresholds and no curfews and things like that. Ultimately, what people want is housing and if you want people to not be living on the streets, if you feel which we do that it is inhumane to have people who are living unsheltered. Then what we have to do is offer them what they want. That's ultimately housing, whether it's shelter for a short time and then housing, or just going straight from being unsheltered into housing. Housing has to be part of the solution. We've been disappointed in as that the mayor hasn't really made housing a part of this plan.

He hasn't talked about the importance of affordable housing enough. He hasn't really made it a priority and hasn't made it a part of the plan to address homelessness.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Joel, what does that look like? Brendan, I'll ask you this same thing. What does it look like to actually make housing available?

Joel: Let me just add that one of the extra threats to homeless people in shelters has been the COVID-19 pandemic that shelters have had very high rates of COVID. We often say, "Well, it's an irrational decision. Someone living on the street, choosing living on the street, going into a shelter. Well, there is violence, there is privacy, and now you have COVID." Often, it is a very, very rational decision to do so. People getting housing is the most obvious answer.

We do need more supportive housing. There's a little money in the state budget for that. What that means is housing that comes with extra social services. I just say the only people who ask whether housing is an answer to homelessness or whether being able to afford more food is an answer to hunger, are people who never in a million years would experience those things. If you do worry about those things or experience them, you would never even question such a basic premise.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Brendan, let me come to you as well.

Brendan: There's two things. One is messaging and talking about it as part of the plan. Maybe not moving forward on a plan until the housing piece is a part of it. It is really when you're talking about addressing homelessness and helping people who are experiencing homelessness. It's talking about giving them housing and providing housing. Then on the policy side, it is really increasing spending on affordable housing. We've called for the mayor to double spending on affordable housing. He agreed to it during the campaign, we're trying to hold him to that campaign promise.

It also means taking that affordable housing plan and focusing it on homelessness, focusing it on the people who are the lowest income in the city. It means really expanding prevention programs to prevent people from experiencing homelessness. It really means having a plan that increases resources and continues the programs and expands the programs that are really working.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Brendan Cheney is Director of Policy and Communications for the New York Housing Conference. Joel Berg is CEO of Hunger Free America. Thank you both for joining us today.

Brendan: Thank you for having me

Joel: Thank you so much.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, in January of 2020, there were more than 580,000 people experiencing homelessness in the US. Just two months later, the COVID-19 pandemic roared across the country claiming lives and shattering a once robust economy. Now, it's worth noting that those are the most recent complete numbers that are available.

Because in 2021, because of the pandemic, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD waived the requirement to conduct account of unsheltered homeless people. More on that in just a moment, but suffice it to say, in the pandemic's wake many elected leaders are beginning to face the full-scale realities of the crisis of homelessness. With me now is Matthew Doherty. He served as Executive Director of the US Interagency Council on Homelessness from 2015 to 2019. Who is now an independent consultant working with states and cities to address homelessness. Matthew, thank you for being with us today.

Matthew Doherty: Thank you for having me.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Do we know how many people in the US are experiencing homelessness now on the back end of this pandemic?

Matthew: We really don't yet. Communities did do the pointing time counts. You just mentioned in January and February of this year, but we don't have the data yet. I suspect those counts are still going to be impacted by the pandemic and the challenges of performing that kind of account, especially of unsheltered people. We'll get better data, but it probably will not be the perfect data to tell us the impact of the pandemic on homelessness.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, we've been talking about New York City and Mayor Eric Adams. Help me to understand you served from 2015 to 2019 as the nation's top policymaker on homelessness. What is the federal role in this and how did that federal response differ under presidents Obama and Trump?

Matthew: Sure. The federal role is enormous that many of the resources that are needed to mobilize the solutions that your previous guests were speaking about. Housing solutions, services solutions, really depend on robust federal investments into programs that then states and counties, and cities can implement locally. Only the federal government has the scale of resources needed to address those challenges at the scale that's needed.

Under the Obama administration, there were significant scaling up of investments into programs, to address homelessness, especially bipartisan support for investments into addressing veteran homelessness. Even with the Obama administration and Congress, we didn't see at that the scaling up of investments that were needed. Then the Trump administration, homelessness was not a significant priority for that administration and was not a significant focus of policy action or investments.

In response to the pandemic though, we have seen substantial investments coming into communities through the Cares Act, through the American Rescue Plan. Communities have had greater resources to respond during the pandemic.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Talk to me about some of the large cities that you've consulted with and ways that maybe we've seen some innovative or at least early successes relative to addressing this question of the unsheltered homeless?

Matthew: Sure. One of the big innovations that we saw across the country, was trying to address the safety needs of people who were unsheltered or staying in shelters by creating non-congregate shelters where people have private rooms and access to be able to be safe during the pandemic. Many communities, I know New York City did as well, rented out hotels and were able to shelter people within those environments.

That was not only better for during the public health crisis, but it actually was a better option for people. More people were willing to come inside into those environments because of the safety, the privacy, the way that those environments created a better option for them. That was a major innovation. Then we saw communities really try to ramp up their efforts to rehouse people quickly with the resources that were coming in.

Doing that during a very difficult time capacity-wise, many of the programs experience the same challenges that every business has and has had in terms of finding employees. It hasn't been a smooth road to implement those resources, but we have seen the success that trying to turn federal resources into strong local programs, especially focused on getting people out of homelessness altogether and into housing.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, some cities have experimented with guaranteed minimum incomes. I'm wondering if that guaranteed straight cash transfer, is more or less successful relative to addressing homelessness?

Matthew: We still probably need more research and data to demonstrate the effectiveness. What I know works, is putting people in charge of the decisions that are going to end their homelessness and keep them stable and successful. Then trying to respond to their choices about what is going to work for them. The primary cause of homelessness is a mismatch of levels of income with the cost of housing and the ways of stowing up people's income to make it more possible to afford housing within the housing markets we're currently experiencing, is bound to be successful in helping people address that fundamental challenge of finding housing that they can afford.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Say one more bit about this idea of putting people in control of making these choices. How does that work as a policy matter?

Matthew: It starts with listening to people and talking to people and understanding who they are, what their challenges are, what is it that they want in their lives, and what do they think is going to be successful in helping them. Then designing our programs to respond to the range of needs and wants of desires that people have. We can't treat people experiencing homelessness as a uniform block of people.

They are all individuals and families with their own unique circumstances and challenges and understanding them. Then designing our programs to put them at the center, leads us to more successful program design and more successful and more effective use of resources.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Matthew, pause with me for just a moment. We're going to be right back with more on this conversation about addressing homelessness. You're with The Takeaway.

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Hey all, it's MHP back with you on The Takeaway. We're talking with Matthew Doherty, who is former Executive Director of the US Interagency Council on Homelessness. Matthew let's talk about the New York policy, which is one we've seen in other cities. Does forcible removal of homeless encampments work in terms of moving people towards shelters?

Matthew: No forcible removal does not work. It traumatizes people further. It makes it less likely they will trust the people who are trying to help and serve them. It disperses them into other neighborhoods, but it doesn't actually help put people on a path to housing. The solutions to encampments in our communities is finding solutions for the people who are living there. That fundamentally means linking people to opportunities to access housing that they can afford with the services that are going to help them be successful.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You've talked a bit about each family being treated as individuals listening carefully but are there ways that we understand anything about broad demographics? The ways that the experience of homelessness is more likely to affect immigrant communities, African-American communities, women, queer, and transfolk what do we know about those things?

Matthew: There are profound inequities and who experiences homelessness in our country. Profound racial inequities with especially Black and Indigenous populations much more likely to experience homelessness, LGBTQ youth especially much more likely to experience homelessness. While the challenges people face are individual and the solutions they need are individual the causes are truly systemic and result from a wide variety of policies and conditions within our communities that inequitably impact people.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Are there any cities that you hold up as models for example for really addressing youth homelessness among LGBTQ folk?

Matthew: There are some very strong examples of that and San Francisco had some extremely strong programs for serving LGBTQ youth. The federal government that is one area in which the federal government has been scaling up investments through the youth homelessness demonstration program. There are communities across the country right now who have new resources to test and find new solutions for addressing homelessness among young people including LGBTQ young people.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You mentioned safety a bit earlier, often when we hear safety it seems to be about keeping the public safe from those who are experiencing homelessness is that where the broadest safety concern is?

Matthew: No people experiencing homelessness are much more likely to be impacted by crime and violence than people who are housed and are less likely to cause violence than to experience violence themselves. Again, when we think about people who are unsheltered and creating the solution that we all want to see for that challenge we can't focus on the needs of people who are walking by people who are unsheltered.

We have to focus on the needs of the people who are unsheltered themselves and figure out the solutions that are going to help them and then that creates the solution for the entire community.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Are there any market incentives for creating this affordable housing for those with the greatest number of challenges or is this a government-only incentive?

Matthew: The market alone won't create these solutions so that does require public funding to make sure that housing is affordable enough for people who are at risk or experiencing homelessness. I'm hoping we should be hoping to create enough housing that people won't fall into homelessness but we also need to create the dedicated units that people can exit homelessness into and that requires public funding in order to make it affordable enough. We need to wrap around the services that people need and want in order to be successful.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Matthew Doherty is former Executive Director of the US Interagency Council on Homelessness and an independent consultant working to address homelessness. Matthew, thanks so much for your time today.

Matthew: Thank you so much for the conversation.

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