HOUSTON, Texas — Homelessness is one of the top issues the city of Spokane is facing.
In the last three years, the city has spent millions of dollars on clean up, increased policing and services for the unhoused. In that same three years, however, Spokane's unhoused population has only increased. It's why city leaders, including Mayor Nadine Woodward, are looking to Houston, Texas, to find solutions.
Houston has permanently housed more than 30,000 individuals in the past 10 years. That move reduced homelessness in the city by more than 60%, according to March Eichenbaum, a member of the Houston Mayor's administration focused on homeless initiatives.
"We were tired of spending tens of millions of dollars every single year," Eichenbaum said . "So local government said we need to come together. And we need to invest in whatever's going to move the needle on homelessness."
Eichenbaum said the turning point in Houston's homeless crisis was when the city launched a "Housing First" policy in 2012. At that time, the city transitioned from being a shelter-based system to being a housing-based system.
"Shelters are no longer the answer to homelessness," he explained.
Instead of pouring millions of dollars every year into temporary solutions, like overnight shelters, Houston's multi-agency homeless coalition finds independent housing for individuals and pays their monthly rent with housing vouchers. Once that person is in stable housing, they are offered wrap-around services, like job training and mental health or addiction treatment.
In addition to being the most effective solution the city has ever seen, Eichenbaum said it's also cheaper.
"It is more expensive to walk by somebody experiencing homelessness on the streets than to put them into housing," he explained. " The reality is, responding to homelessness is now a core service that all cities have to respond to. It is just like making sure that clean water is running through the pipes, toilets are flushing and the streets are being repaired."
According to Houston's Point-in-Time County, the city's homeless population was 8,471 in 2011, the year before "Housing First" launched. The city's unhoused population started decreasing dramatically as the program gained momentum, dropping to 4,609 in 2016 and 3,270 in 2023.
In that same time frame, Spokane's Point-in-Time count shows the unhoused population here has nearly doubled.
In 2011, the unhoused population sat at 1,272. In 2023, that number has jumped to 2,390.
When comparing Spokane's metro population of 521,000 to Houston's total population of 6.2 million, the numbers are truly eye-opening. It's why leaders from the cities of Spokane and Spokane Valley and Spokane County made the trip to Houston last year, hoping to learn from its success.
Mike Nichols is the CEO and President of Houston's Coalition for the Homeless, the collective agency made up of all the non-profits, businesses, philanthropists and government agencies that feed into the city's centralized system. Nichols has also spent time in Spokane and has seen the city's growing homeless crisis. To duplicate Houston's progress, Nichols said Spokane will have to think beyond traditional homeless shelters.
"The idea of having one place for all the people experiencing homeless to go live is going to be problematic," he said. "It's expensive, it's the cleanup costs. So how can you focus on getting those folks into housing?"
It's also important to note Houston has no city-wide zoning, meaning more affordable housing, like apartment buildings, can be built just about anywhere.
"We are pro-apartment community," Nichols said.
Perhaps most importantly, homeless advocates in Houston said outside funding is critical. The city pays for its homeless initiatives almost entirely with federal funding, according to Eichenbaum. He said it's the same federal funding Spokane has access to.
"Homelessness is increasing because of the lack of housing, and if we don't seize the opportunity and respond right now, it's only going to become too big of a crisis, too deep of a hole to try to dig out," Eichenbaum said. "But that window of opportunity is there right now, and Spokane can definitely seize upon it."
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