During the two and a half years that I reported on housing and hunger in Denver, I read studies and books on poverty; interviewed policy makers, academics and developers about why we are falling behind on building housing; and sat on sidewalks to talk to the experts – people experiencing homelessness.
I still have a lot to learn about this crisis. That was brought vividly home to me when I read “When We Walk By: Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness in America,” a new book co-authored by Don Burnes, who founded a think tank on poverty at the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work.
For the first time in this book, I read of a study by two Princeton psychologists who used magnetic resonance imaging to see how our brains react when we encounter different groups of people.
When the dozen Princeton students who were subjects of the study were shown photographs of people identified as addicts or experiencing homelessness, no activity was seen in the parts of their brains that are activated when we encounter fellow humans. Instead, according to the study published in 2006, what lit up were the parts of the brain that are activated when we see objects, particularly objects that disgust us.
In other words, Burnes and his co-author Kevin Adler concluded: “our brains perceive extreme out-groups – including people experiencing homelessness – as nonhuman.”
Adler had an uncle who lived on and off the streets for 30 years before dying in transitional housing at the age of 50. Adler asks readers to see his Uncle Mark not just as someone who suffered from homelessness and schizophrenia, but as a beloved relative who “was easy to talk to, remembered every birthday, and always sent a card.”
“When We Walk By” does not dwell on the possibility that the very sight of the unhoused brings out the sociopath in some of those who are housed. The Princeton psychologists, after all, studied a small group of subjects. And follow-up research I hunted down by the same psychologists offered a glimmer of hope, showing that when subjects were encouraged to think of the people in the photographs as individuals, the “I see a human” parts of their brains could be activated.
Burnes and Adler want readers to question their assumptions, especially those that stand in the way of solutions to the web of crises that is homelessness. Here I’m thinking, for example, of how organized opposition to subsidized housing projects slows and adds to the expense of building homes.
If we lose sight of humanity, we can also lose sight of the possibility of progress. And progress is possible. Houston in 2011 had the fifth-highest homeless population in the nation, with close to 9,000 people without housing. After a decade of focus on getting people into permanent housing, in 2022, the figure was about 3,000.
Marc Eichenbaum, homelessness advisor to the mayor of Houston, was quoted recently in Denverite – the publication for whom I wrote about housing and hunger from 2018 to 2021. Eichenbaum described “housed people” who think that unhoused people are like a broken water pipe, “or it’s like the electricity going off, or trash that needs to be picked up – that they should just be able to call and this situation would be fixed. These are people, and by nature, people are very complex. It’s just not patience. It’s support, too. Constituents should be supporting, if not demanding that government work together, and that government is coordinated and government is focused on endemic, systemic problems. And government is using best practices and investing in solutions that are going to get the biggest bang for the buck.”
I discussed Eichenbaum’s observations with Burnes, who said he admired Houston’s approach. Burnes also pointed to progress getting military veterans into homes, success the federal government attributes to the approach known as housing first, which prioritizes getting people housed, often by subsidizing rents, and then working to provide services such as health care and job training. The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates the number of veterans experiencing homelessness declined by 52 percent since 2010.
Many of the people I’ve met who are living on the streets are ashamed at their situation. Their response is deeply American: They believe they should get themselves out of their predicament. But the systemic and structural issues that have created homelessness, which include rising housing costs and stagnant wages, make bootstrapping Quixotic. So, frustrated and weighed down by a self-disgust that mirrors the disgust they see in others’ eyes, many withdraw further and further from society.
Adler, who was spurred to address homelessness by his uncle’s death, uses social media to help people experiencing homelessness reconnect with relatives and friends. He’s also matched people experiencing homelessness with volunteers who check in with weekly texts and calls. Both measures help those on the streets feel part of society again, and reduce some of the stress that can make it difficult to navigate a way out of a tough situation. Kevin also has launched a basic income pilot that gives people experiencing homelessness a few hundred dollars a month to spend as they choose. The trust implicit in no-strings-attached payments likely has as much to do with the success of such programs as the cash. Time and again, research in the United States and around the world has shown that people who receive such support spend it on food, utilities and other basic needs, and that basic income programs increase employment because they give recipients time and resources to better prepare to seek jobs.
Adler has helped a few hundred people, which may not seem like much when you consider the scale of the problem. But as he and Burnes sum up in “When We Walk By,” while none of us can solve homelessness on our own, “we can do our part to help the people we meet and improve the systems we are part of. Together, we can move our country forward on this human rights crisis of our time.
“And as a first step, it all begins with how we show up for another.”
And how we see one another.