Housing Won’t Cure Broken Lives : Homeless: Framing the issue in terms of shelter alone diverts resources from the biggest need--rehabilitation.

Mitch Snyder has found a new way to distort the homeless issue.

Snyder, a homeless activist and head of the Washington-based Community for Creative Non-Violence, is urging the homeless to boycott the 1990 Census. His argument: Only a fraction of the homeless will be counted, yielding a number that the Bush Administration will use to prove that the problem of housing isn’t as serious as thought.

To some, Snyder’s boycott may seem strategic, almost rational in calling the Administration to task on cuts in federal housing assistance. In reality, it’s just another tactic aimed at persuading the public that homelessness is a housing issue and that more government funding (which would depend, of course, on higher estimates of the homeless population) will solve the problem.

In truth, homelessness is a symptom of many complex problems: mental illness, emotional instability, chronic substance abuse, illiteracy, unemployment (largely due to a lack of job skills) and, most basic of all, breakdown of the family structure.

The vast majority of homeless in the United States are individuals who are unable to function successfully in society and who require intensive rehabilitation. And while they may not fit the stereotypes of the older, alcoholic male, neither are they mostly young families thrust out onto the streets by a soured economy and a stingy Administration.

More than a lack of housing, the crack-cocaine epidemic is the single biggest cause of the great leap in the numbers of homeless people on the streets. And it is why the average age of the homeless has fallen from around 40 to under 28 in less than 10 years.

Unfortunately, too many “homeless activists” would prefer that the whole story go untold, largely for fear that it would result in a decline in public sympathy for the homeless. And while they may have cause for that concern, the tragic result of continuing to frame homelessness as a housing issue is that resources are continually channeled into construction of more shelters and low-income housing instead of the rehabilitation services that the homeless so desperately need.

By framing the issue in terms of housing, and attempting to manipulate the homeless through his boycott, Snyder may succeed in advancing his personal brand of social activism but will do little to advance the needs of those he supposedly represents.

After 25 years of working with the homeless--day in, day out as the director of the Los Angeles Mission and with similar organizations in Northern California--I know that shelter and housing alone will do little more than warehouse the homeless in their own misery.

What’s more, the majority of the chronically homeless would be hard pressed to keep a home if they received one. Because of emotional problems, substance abuse and low self-esteem--which is more the cause of their plight than the result of it--they generally do not have the wherewithal to manage their lives successfully.

Snyder or others cannot be allowed to frame the issue in such a way that the numbers become more important than the real needs of the people. While the census is a positive first step--a commendable effort to count a segment of the population that has been overlooked in the past--we must resist the urge to fixate on how many people are homeless. The numbers simply give us a body count of people with no fixed addresses. They tell us nothing about their pain, their desperation or their needs.

At the Los Angeles Mission, we will do everything we can to assist the Census Bureau on the night of the count. Gaining some sense of the size of the problem is important, even though everyone agrees that the census count will be far from totally accurate. And frankly, we believe the estimates, which range from 250,000 to 3 million, have often been inflated to attract more government funding.

The important point is that whatever the count of the homeless population, whatever estimate any group gives, defining the scope of the problem will never mean that the solution is simply to pump more federal funds into more housing.

We do not receive government money, so perhaps that’s why we are concerned less about counting the homeless and more about rehabilitating them through intensive counseling, job training and re-creating a sense of family and love that they have lost or never had.