By Alli Spiegel
Housing is a fundamental human right, and yet California leads the nation in homelessness with upwards of 170,000 unhoused people —30 percent of the nation’s total, a UC Santa Barbara audience was told.
“When we don’t have adequate housing for people who are living on the streets, communities end up criminalizing them,” said Eric Tars, senior policy director at the National Homelessness Law Center. He said thousands of dollars that the public spends each week putting homeless people in jail “could be paying for a month’s worth of rent.”
Tars was one of four panelists who spoke at The 2024 Arthur N. Rupe Great Debate: Is Housing a Human Right?, which was moderated by Larry Mantle, host of AirTalk on NPR member station LAist 89.3. The Rupe Great Debate is part of an annual series presented by the UCSB College of Letters and Science and co-hosted by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center and UCSB Arts & Lectures.
(Left to right) Moderator Larry Mantle, host of AirTalk on NPR, and the four housing experts, Eric Tars, Rasheedah Phillips, David Garcia, and Andy Bales, discussed and educated the audience about the complexities of homelessness.
The event brought the issue home to Santa Barbara, opening with a discussion between UCSB student Jessica Castillo-Tapia and Mantle.
Castillo, a fourth-year sociology major and science communication minor, is coordinator for the UCSB Rapid Rehousing Program, and serves on Santa Barbara County’s Youth Action Board.
Having experienced housing insecurity, Castillo works to support other students in similar situations. She described resources available to students, including laptop grants, CalFresh food aid, transitional housing, and security deposit grants—a recently launched program.
“I am grateful UCSB is a great institution where people can get involved and get resources [that] are accessible,” said Castillo.
At the Arthur N. Rupe Great Debate: Is Housing a Human Right? held at UCSB’s Campbell Hall, moderator Larry Mantle and fourth-year student and coordinator of the UCSB Rapid Rehousing Program Jessica Castillo-Tapia discussed this humanitarian crisis on the local level. Photo by Katherine Wetterau.
Panelists agreed that humans possess the right to permanent housing, regardless of one’s ability to pay for it, then delved further into what that right means.
If half of an individual’s income goes towards rent, it puts them one medical emergency away from homelessness, said Tars. This places a financial limitation on people’s ability to invest in themselves and in their family, kids, and community.
Fellow panelist Rasheedah Phillips reiterated that homelessness goes beyond shelter. “[It’s] not about having a roof over one’s head [or] the physical location, but being able to provide a stable base for which people can pursue all the opportunities they need in life,” said Phillips, director of housing at PolicyLink, a national research institute that advances racial, economic and social equity.
Andy Bales, former president and CEO of Union Rescue Mission, used LA as a case study. He said LA promised eight years ago to build 10,000 units to house the 50,000 people then living on the city’s streets. But today, only 8,900 of those units are underway in some way, and only 14% are move-in ready. More than half are still in construction, and more than a third are still in the pre-development phase, Bales said, leaving tens of thousands still on the streets.
Phillips said that the solutions are not just about developing housing opportunities, but about preventing people from falling into homelessness in the first place. Tackling alcoholism, mental illness and other challenges must go hand in hand with providing shelter.
Housing First, for for example, is an approach now increasingly employed across the nation, which seeks to provide people a safe place to live with no preconditions, off the streets and away from the vulnerabilities there, so they can commit to sobriety or mental health services.
Phillips emphasized the commitment people have to make. “You can’t pressure people to do it and get positive results,” she added.
David Garcia, Policy Director of Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley, said research has shown programs such as Housing First are effective in alleviating the stress of housing insecurity for individuals. “When done correctly, [it reflects] a significant reduction in people falling back into homelessness,” he said.
The panel stressed the need to incorporate racial and economic equity into discussion, with Phillips noting that Black, Indigenous and other people of color are disproportionately impacted by homelessness, eviction, and housing instability. She urged that these groups be included in conversations about finding solutions.
“In America, we’re seeing over $10 billion in total rent debt, nearly 5 million households are behind on rent…and 66 percent of those folks are people of color,” Phillips said.
Though homelessness has long vexed lawmakers, government officials, and organizations that are actively working to solve it, experts on the UCSB panel reminded the audience that the complexity of each individual and their external circumstances must be considered on a case-by-case basis in order to be effective.
Alli Spiegel is a a third-year UCSB student majoring in Communication, as well as Psychological and Brain Sciences. She wrote this article for her Digital Journalism course.