As promised, this week I continue my mission to write columns where I make suggestions as to how we can best manage and turn the tide on the homelessness crisis in Cape Town.
This week sees me addressing the importance of us not only dealing with the challenges faced by those living on the street, but as importantly, the need to start emphasising the benefits of policy approaches that move to the prevention of homelessness.
We need to lobby for policies that address the structural causes of homelessness. This may be the most important factor in eradicating homelessness.
We as a society need to make an urgent call for the creative use of data and better co-ordination with institutions and systems that may be able to identify the antecedents to homelessness.
The current homeless shelter system, is strained and on the whole ineffective, so we should be rethinking its role, with a shift of resources to efforts that will help in sustainably and with dignity moving people off the streets.
The existing racial disparities in both pathways to and incidence of homelessness bring urgency to making more than marginal policy changes.
Homelessness is a traumatic event for individuals and families who experience it. It can lead to disruption in relationships, health, work, and getting education.
According to the organisation, Outsider, which is currently counting and assessing those living on the streets in Cape Town, homelessness touches all regions and demographic groups and that not all people bear equal risks: research shows that people of colour are disproportionately at risk of both eviction and homelessness.
In the CBD, out of the 3 014 people living on the streets and interviewed by Outsider, 52% are coloured, 41% are black and 7% are white.
Building a just and equitable society requires developing policies that help to prevent households from becoming homeless and shorten their spells if they do.
While there is no single policy that will eliminate homelessness, there are many useful steps that governments can take to address homelessness.
The high cost of delivering emergency shelter and other services suggests the benefits of intervening at prevention level, when we can, before an episode of homelessness even begins. One also has to take into consideration that the longer someone lives on the streets, the more problematic behavioural patterns develop, making it progressively more difficult to re-integrate that individual.
These are also no “bad choices” being made but rather the choices available in order to exist and survive on the streets.
Over the next couple of weeks I will focus on areas that will give policy makers opportunities to improve the delivery and targeting of services.
I will be commenting specifically on four categories of policy responses, which align with the stages of a trajectory of homelessness: addressing root causes, preventing homelessness, providing services, and facilitating sustained exits from homelessness.
* Carlos Mesquita.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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