Almost One-Third of Cities Have No Staff
Dedicated to Homelessness; Nearly a Quarter Cite Reliance on
Police
A Minority of Mayors Define Policy “Success” as
Reducing Overall Rates of Homelessness
Findings from the Boston University Initiative
on Cities’ Menino Survey of Mayors
While a strong majority of America’s mayors feel that voters
hold them largely accountable for addressing homelessness, they
don’t believe they have a lot of control over addressing the crisis
in their cities, according to a survey of 126 mayors across the
United States. In fact, aside from a general lack of funding,
mayors cite lack of data, limited staffing, and public opposition
to new housing and shelters as the biggest hindrances to their
ability to address homelessness issues in their cities. These are
some of the findings from the latest report from the 2021 Menino
Survey of Mayors, the only nationally representative survey of
America’s mayors, which is conducted annually by Boston
University’s Initiative on Cities.
Almost three-quarters of mayors (73 percent) believe that voters
hold them accountable either “a great deal” or “a lot” for
addressing homelessness in their communities, while only 19 percent
believe they have either “a great deal” or “a lot” of control over
addressing the issue. Mayors in the Northeast are particularly
pessimistic; just seven percent of them feel they have a lot of
control, while 29 percent of their southern counterparts, in
contrast, see themselves as having a fair amount of influence over
local homelessness.
Though limited funding is by far the biggest barrier cited by
mayors, with 79 percent saying it hinders their ability to address
homelessness at least some, lack of public support matters too: 63
percent of mayors say public opposition to new housing or homeless
shelters keeps them from addressing the issue. Likewise, 78 percent
of mayors indicate that homeless people experience at least a
moderate amount of discrimination in their communities, more than
any other group listed, including Black, Latino, and transgender
people.
“Mayors believe that their constituents care
deeply about how they address homelessness. Yet, they perceive
themselves as having little influence over the broader structural
forces that create homelessness,” said Katherine Levine
Einstein, Menino Survey Co-Author and Associate Professor of
Political Science at Boston University. “Mayors are often
forced to weigh the needs of unhoused people against resident and
business complaints—all while managing a fragmented (and often
underfunded) bureaucracy theoretically designed to manage the
crisis.”
A minority of mayors define policy success in terms of
reducing homelessness, and a surprising number of mayors (10
percent) do not have clear definitions for success. When
asked an open-ended question on how they “define success” in
addressing homelessness, only 40 percent of mayors explicitly
outline a policy goal of reducing homelessness. Forty-two percent
highlight better housing, while 16 percent mention access to better
social services. Eleven percent centered the needs of non-homeless
residents—defining success in terms of reducing their
complaints.
“In our work with more than 90 Built for Zero
communities, mayors have played a critical role in helping
communities reduce the number of people experiencing homelessness,”
said Rosanne Haggerty, president of Community Solutions.
“Mayors in communities from Rockford, IL to the Gulf Coast of
Mississippi have shown that homelessness can be a rare occurrence
when approached with the same discipline that leaders use to
contain public health challenges: measurable, community-wide goals,
and comprehensive real-time data that allows progress to be tracked
and corrective action taken quickly at any point in time.”
Around two-thirds of mayors cite limited human and social
services and the lack of coordination between the many government
and social service agencies involved as significant obstacles to
successfully addressing homelessness in their cities. Improved
coordination is a paramount concern given the wide range of actors
mayors say are involved in setting homelessness policy, with
Continuums of Care, local nonprofits, the police, those
experiencing homelessness and public housing authorities cited by
at least two-thirds of mayors.
“Homelessness is a complex and multifaceted
problem that requires a coordinated and comprehensive response, and
much more funding from the state and national level,” said
Madison, WI Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway. “While we continue to
create and improve shelter options here in Madison, we need
supportive services to address the health, mental health, education
and employment needs of people experiencing homelessness. We need
to help people move into decent and stable housing, while also
working toward effective, long-term solutions—including building
more permanent, affordable housing options and investing in
initiatives that combat underlying inequities in our community.
Ultimately, this requires political will at all levels of
government.”
Many mayors do not have dedicated staff to address
homelessness, while others rely on police departments.
Inadequate staffing likely contributes both to coordination
challenges and limited local social services. Just over a quarter
of mayors say they have no staff exclusively dedicated to serving
people experiencing homelessness. Thirty-eight percent have related
staff in their social services department, while another 14 percent
say their homelessness staff are in their housing department. A
striking 22 percent of mayors place their homelessness staff in
police departments, underscoring the outsized role police may play
in a city’s homeless response.
The Menino Survey of Mayors, named after the late Mayor of
Boston Thomas Menino and supported by Citi and The Rockefeller
Foundation, is an annual project to understand the most pressing
needs and policy priorities of America’s mayors from large and
mid-size (over 75,000 residents) cities. In 2021, Community
Solutions joined Boston University as an additional partner to
field a series of questions related to homelessness. In total, 126
mayors from 39 states were interviewed throughout the summer of
2021, providing a representative sample of mayors and cities
nationally.
Other findings related to homelessness from this year’s Menino
Survey include:
- Mayors have big plans for American Rescue Plan funds, seeing
the direct and flexible support as an opportune moment to pursue
meaningful investments for the future of their cities. Nearly
four-in-five (78 percent) mayors believe that ARPA resources will
allow them to accomplish transformative aims—most notably around
homelessness (21 percent), housing (15 percent) and social
services/programs (15 percent.)
- Mayors struggle to get the data they need to evaluate
homelessness in their communities. While a small number of mayors
(3 percent) collect daily data, most rely on less frequent counts:
38 percent have access to annual data on homelessness and another
35 percent collect monthly data. Ten percent of mayors say that
they had no access to city-level data (8 percent indicate that
their community only had county-level data available.) Several
mayors highlighted city-county coordination problems as obstacles
to acquiring municipal data.
- The police play an important role in shaping homelessness
policy; nearly 80 percent of mayors say that police have at least
some influence over their city’s homelessness policy. Police were
the third most influential group listed by mayors, just above
people at risk of or experiencing homelessness. While majorities of
mayors from both political parties describe the police as having at
least a little influence, Republicans are substantially more likely
to cite police influence: 68 percent of Republican mayors believe
that police have a lot of influence over their homelessness policy,
compared with 29 percent of Democratic mayors.
Additional findings from the 2021 Survey – related to closing
the racial wealth gap – will be released as a separate report next
month.
About the Initiative on Cities The Boston University
Initiative on Cities leads research in, on, and with cities in
pursuit of sustainable, just, and inclusive urban transformation.
We marshal the talents and resources of wide-ranging disciplines
across Boston University spanning the social, natural,
computational, and health sciences. The Menino Survey is named for
the late Mayor Tom Menino, who co-founded the Initiative on Cities
in 2014 following 20 years as mayor of Boston. Additional
information may be found at www.bu.edu/ioc and at
www.surveyofmayors.com.
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About Community Solutions Community Solutions is a
nonprofit committed to creating a lasting end to homelessness that
leaves no one behind. It leads Built for Zero, a movement of more
than 90 communities in the United States working to measurably and
equitably end homelessness. Using a data-driven methodology, these
communities have changed how local systems work and the impact they
can achieve. To date, 14 communities have reached a milestone known
as functional zero, a milestone for ending homelessness for a
population. Learn more at www.community.solutions or follow us at
@CmtySolutions.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220118005393/en/
Stacy Fox, sfox@bu.edu and (617) 358-8086 Stephanie Hyon,
stephanie.hyon@citi.com and (212) 816-3397 Lauren Barnes, Community
Solutions, lbarnes@community.solutions and 425-728-0079
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