Agenda Item # 10.2 - Jan Guffey | Received 07/01/2022CAUTION: This email originated from an External Source. Please use proper judgment and caution when opening
attachments, clicking links, or responding to this email.
From:Jan Guffey
To:City Clerk
Subject:EXTERNAL - Response to 10.2. Report on Services for Unhoused Individuals and Enforcement of No-Camping
Ordinances
Date:Friday, July 1, 2022 4:34:00 PM
Response to 10.2. Report on Services for Unhoused Individuals and Enforcement
of No-Camping Ordinances
Hi! People that are unhoused are of course an area-wide, statewide problem for us all to
solve, and I commend Mr. Bracco for continually bringing up the issue and how it affects all
of us. We know that if we clear out one area, people repopulate that area, or move
somewhere else outside close by where they can get some services. It’s a revolving door.
The New York Times on Sunday June 26 had a special section, “Out from the Underpass,”
in which they cited a number of promising paths forward. To get to the point, Houston (I
know it’s a big city) “has been singularly focused on uniting behind a shared mission:
getting its most vulnerable residents into homes…The number of people experiencing
homelessness in Houston has fallen by 63 percent since 2011…” Who is most
vulnerable? Houston has a customized set of assessment questions to ask people.
Houston coordinated all of its homeless services so that each could specialize. They
coordinated city, county resources and landlords so that people leaving homeless
encampments, if they qualified using the customized assessments, could move directly into
apartments. Now landlords are prohibited, for instance, from telling people they do not
accept Section 8 vouchers. “Houston has gotten this far by teaming with county agencies
and persuading scores of local service providers, corporations and charitable nonprofits…to
row together in unison. Together, they’ve gone all in on ‘housing first,’ a practice,
supported by decades of research, that moves the most vulnerable people straight from the
streets into apartments, not shelters…”
I hope that our City staff can facilitate this movement towards coordinating all service
providers to the unhoused, and work on moving our unhoused neighbors into apartments.
If there is anything I can do to help, I would be glad to do so.