In the past few years, National City has identified homelessness as a phenomenon with high costs for local government, particularly in regard to police and emergency services, fire services, and homeless encampment clean-ups. The city’s goal is to find long–term solutions that proactively address local homelessness in ways that help reduce these costs. This report was developed by a group of students enrolled in a graduate course on Public Policy Analysis at San Diego State University, in partnership with city staff. Draw-ing from the kinds of interventions other cities have adopted and from students’ original research in National City and surrounding areas, this report presents and evaluates the three most common forms of homeless intervention: policing, services, and empower-ment. The report is organized as answers to a series of questions about each approach.
Our findings suggest that National City’s current policing approach to homelessness is not effective, costly, and can at times be contradictory to stated goals. We recom-mend that the city not rely primarily on policing as a solution, but instead explore other approaches that more effectively reduce the unsheltered population and offer ways to reintegrate homeless individuals into the local community.
As a first step, it would be very helpful to collect more systematic information about the individuals living without regular shelter in National City, in order to evaluate the range of resources that are most needed in this context. Thereafter, we recommend developing targeted service and empowerment programs that are appropriate to the needs of local homeless populations. For instance, a “housing first” approach has been successful getting chronically homeless individuals who make the greatest demands on emergency services off the streets. In contrast, transitional or rapid rehousing programs may be more appropriate for those who more recently became homeless, or whose needs are largely economic. In addition, we advise the city to consider adopting programs that empower homeless individuals to become self-supporting and socially reintegrated into the local community. Such programs would help reduce the social distance between the housed and unhoused residents of National City and simultaneously help ensure that the solutions here are sustainable.
In most cases, National City could reduce the costs and improve the effectiveness of these programs by working in collaboration with nonprofit partners and by coordinating their data and homeless intervention efforts with those already existing in San Diego County. The costs of service and empowerment programs should also be offset by the substantial cost savings that will follow as the city reduces the demands on public works, police, fire, and emergency services.
This issue presents an opportunity for National City to further develop its reputation for progressive problem–solving. National City already has an effective community policing model in place, and the number of homeless individuals in the city is small enough that the city could be among the first in the region to devise sustainable solutions.Political Science
Read the final student report delivered to the local gov/community partner.
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