Homelessness in America is not a crisis of ideas. It is a crisis of follow-through.
Every few years, headlines declare a renewed focus. Tent encampments become election issues. Cities deploy task forces, declare emergencies, and promise action. But if you trace the arc of U.S. homelessness policy over time, one thing becomes painfully clear: we already know what works. We just don’t stay with it long enough to let it work.
Last year, I wrote about Finland’s approach. It is a country that decided, on principle and practicality, that housing should come first. The strategy was clear: provide permanent housing without preconditions, then offer support services tailored to individual needs. Over time, that clarity produced results. Long-term homelessness fell by more than 75 percent. The model became sustainable because it was consistent. It worked because they kept at it.
The U.S. has seen flashes of this. Houston reduced its homeless population by over 60 percent since 2011 using similar Housing First principles. The city coordinated services across public and nonprofit agencies, used shared data, and focused on placing people in permanent housing, not endlessly cycling them through shelters. No magic. Just execution.
But elsewhere, the approach changes with the news cycle. One administration expands housing vouchers. The next emphasizes treatment mandates. Cities experiment with one pilot, then abandon it under public pressure. Visibility becomes the enemy, not the conditions that create it. The result is policy drift. Ideas that could scale are left to expire before they mature.
There is no shortage of research. There is no lack of innovation. What we lack is endurance. We treat housing like a luxury and homelessness like a character flaw. But at its core, this is a systems problem. And systems only change when leadership outlasts optics.
So what would it take to move beyond piecemeal responses?
It starts with five principles, drawn from cities that are making it work:
- Housing is a platform, not a prize. People need stability first.
- Services must follow people, not force them through programs.
- Data must inform funding, not politics. Track what works.
- Public investment must match the scale of the problem.
- Commitments must survive election cycles. Policy needs patience.
None of this is abstract. These ideas are already in motion in places like Houston, and they’ve been proven abroad. This moment does not require reinvention. It requires alignment.
We know how to reduce homelessness. The question is whether we are ready to act like we believe it.