Subsidize anything, and you’ll get more of it – especially if it’s something you don’t want. It’s an old truism that long has served to expose the foibles of bad public policy.

Welfare rolls were once a prime example.

Until landmark, bipartisan welfare reform was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996, the federal government was assured of ever more people living out unproductive lives on the public dole. The old Aid to Families with Dependent Children program essentially guaranteed welfare payments indefinitely with no incentive to move ahead in life.

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act changed that by returning a lot of flexibility to the states in redesigning their welfare programs – and by setting a five-year lifetime limit on benefits. After passage, the number of people on welfare dropped substantially. It seems beneficiaries simply needed some carrots and sticks.

The same fundamental rethinking is needed in the way we deliver services to the homeless.

The Gazette reported this week that Colorado’s homeless population grew again this year, continuing a yearslong trajectory. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report counted 10,397 homeless in Colorado in early 2022, an increase of nearly 2,000 since 2021.

That’s troubling and even alarming. But before Colorado’s state and local policymakers call for one more dollar’s worth of funding for the homeless, some perspective is in order.

In a watershed study last year, Colorado’s Common Sense Institute found that in the metro Denver area alone, just under half a billion – billion, with a “b” – dollars a year was being spent on serving the homeless through public as well as private, nonprofit programs.

Common Sense updated that data with follow-up research released in October. The amount of annual spending on homelessness now is expected to rise to an estimated $660 million in 2023 – yes, two thirds of a billion dollars, and a 42% increase over two years ago.

And yet, the ranks of the homeless keep growing. Go figure.

So long as those who pilot public policy on homelessness keep throwing more money at the issue without assessing efficacy, Coloradans can expect more of the same. And to the extent the “housing first” ideology takes hold of policymaking – assuring housing without regard to why beneficiaries are homeless to begin with – it only will make matters worse.

To truly reinvent our approach to solving – not subsidizing – homelessness, some basic guardrails must be built in. Most notably:

Focus efforts such as transitional housing and job placement on the truly homeless – i.e., victims of circumstance like unemployment, evictions or domestic violence.

Require treatment first – not housing first – for the mentally ill and the substance-addicted who dominate the theoretically “homeless” population on our streets.

Pursue such programs as regional solutions that tie together resources and enforcement in multiple cities and counties – so as not to simply redistribute the homeless population.

Commendably, Aurora, Colorado’s No. 3 city, is making some progress down this path after having researched how some other U.S. metro areas approach the problem.

It will require a new level of resolve – political as well as legal. Municipal bans on “camping” by street dwellers must be enforced with zero tolerance. And cities will have to gird for court challenges from interest groups with a stake in the status quo.

None of this will be easy, of course. But what we’re doing right now clearly isn’t working – unless our goal is to create even more homelessness.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board