Opinion: Chronic homelessness is a behavior problem
Through my work at The Other Side Village and The Other Side Academy, I have met hundreds of people like Connor. Connor is 54 years old. He first became homeless when he lapsed on his schizophrenia meds and broke every window and dish in his last sympathetic sibling’s apartment.
That was 14 years ago.
Since then, he has slept primarily in building entrances and under overpasses. He’s been beaten up five times after screaming profanities at fellow campers. He has avoided homeless shelters after being robbed for the third time in one. Heroin brings him relief from the stress and trauma of the streets, but he uses whatever he can get when that’s not available. He’s had short stretches of employment doing cleanup at construction sites. Abscesses covering his feet reduce his mobility and the ones in his mouth frequently deter him from eating.
Einstein once said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.” We can’t help Connor unless we first correctly define his root problem. The reason so much effort to help the chronically homeless is producing so little improvement is because we’re solving the wrong problem.
Let me be clear that I’m not addressing all homelessness. My focus is those sleeping on streets for years. I’m not addressing Gwen who landed in a shelter with her three children because rising rents forced her to choose between paying her lease and taking her 4-year-old to an ear specialist. Gwen needs help. But Gwen has a more straightforward problem than Connor.
If we care about Connor, what should we do? Get him to a doctor? Give him a housing voucher? Offer him soft food? Or perhaps provide him with clean needles so he doesn’t get a transmissible disease by sharing syringes?
When helping human beings, it’s critical to differentiate between asset problems and behavior problems.
Asset problems are those that can be solved through gifts. Someone is cold so you give them a coat. Gwen was evicted from her apartment, so you arrange temporary housing. A friend’s car breaks down, so you loan him yours. A promising student can’t afford college, so you give a scholarship. An asset problem is a clean one. The roof of your cousin’s house was crushed by a tree in a recent windstorm. He needs a place to stay while the roof gets repaired. So, you let him move in for a month. Problem solved.
Most government and nonprofit organizations act as though Connor’s primary challenge is assets: he needs services and stuff. But over the last 14 years he has received countless assets. He’s been given health care, housing, food, counseling, meds, coats, hygiene kits, tents and over 80 pairs of socks. And Connor is still on the streets. Why? Because his root problem is not one of his myriad asset issues, it’s his behavior.
A behavior problem is one where a person’s choices create or contribute to their pain. If you try to solve a behavior problem by giving assets, you often perpetuate the very problem you’re trying to solve. Rather than influencing change, you foster relapse and entitlement.
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The wrong kind of help leads to relapse
Let’s say your drug-addicted nephew gets in a wreck and no longer has transportation to work. You don’t want him to lose his job, so you loan him your car. Two weeks later he wrecks your car. You help him get his own car repaired so he can stay employed. This time it’s a full month before he drives while high and wrecks it again.
Your nephew’s most important problem is not transportation, it’s behavior. He is choosing to use drugs. You can transfer assets all day long, but the behavior will create a new asset problem in short order.
Unfortunately, behavior problems often disguise themselves as asset problems. The tree that fell on your cousin’s house was teetering for years. He knew he should remove it, but he neglects maintenance tasks because he’d rather spend his time dirt biking on weekends. His life is a constant string of disasters because he does nothing to prevent them. If health problems, money problems or education problems are about over-eating, poor work ethic or bad study habits, the assets you transfer will do little good. The more you treat your nephew’s problem as an asset problem, the worse his behavior problem will get. And now you are part of the problem.
The wrong kind of help creates entitlement
One cold winter day a group of kindly folks jumped out of a van at Connor’s encampment and began passing out coats. He accepted a thick warm one and gushed with tender gratitude. Later that day he traded it for a flimsy one and a shot of heroin from a street companion.
Two days later the van pulled up again. One of the visitors recognized him and said, “Where’s the coat I already gave you?” Connor reported sadly, “It was stolen.” The visitor scowled and handed him another. He snatched it from their hand and walked away muttering under his breath. By the third time Connor saw the van he simply yelled, “I’m freezing out here! Give me a coat!”
Entitlement is an infection that helpers give to those they help. In the early stages of the disease, it numbs its victims from the pain of personal responsibility. Suffered for too long, the muscles of agency wither, leaving nothing but a conviction of one’s own impotence. The streets of America’s signature cities are evidence of a pandemic of learned helplessness spread through toxic forms of help.
The most important capacity human beings possess is self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is the belief that I can solve my own problems. The way you and I attempt to help either strengthens or weakens self-efficacy. When we rush in with assets, we assume the role of savior and place the “other” in the role of supplicant. When the problem is solved, the recipient feels grateful but not capable. Repeated rescuing from responsibility produces helplessness. Over time gratitude rots into entitlement. Entitlement is an indictment of the Helper as much as the Helped.
The dominant paradigm in government services is an “asset” definition of human problems. It sets up a destructive psychological contract between “providers” and “clients” that nurtures entitlement more than efficacy.
Pain is part of behavior change
Change is painful. Most people with behavior problems don’t change until they connect the dots between their pain and their choices. Growth can’t be gifted. If you want to influence people to change, you must be willing to let them experience pain. Influence is not heartlessness. It is not about inaction. It does not justify withholding help. It means allowing for conditions that motivate growth.
Anytime you hear someone who has turned their life around tell their story, it begins with a decision, not a gift.
The pain of natural consequences is the common motivator of all humanity. White hot dental pain can motivate flossing. Fear of a second heart attack can motivate better nutrition. A lengthy separation from a spouse can motivate you to decide to enter couples counseling. Anytime you hear someone who has turned their life around tell their story, it begins with a decision, not a gift.
Connor decided to ask for help to get off the street after he woke up naked next to a dead person and had no clue what had happened. He suspected he was involved. His subsequent incarceration gave him time to kick heroin, stabilize on medication and develop a plan to change his life.
Today he is employed, housed and happier than he ever thought possible. He would not have succeeded had he not been arrested and been committed to the hard work of changing his life.
On leaving jail he joined a program that held him strictly accountable to learning honesty, integrity, hard work, and self-reliance. The pain of the previous few months motivated him to persevere in the program.
Through my work at The Other Side Academy and The Other Side Village, I have witnessed hundreds of personal transformations. The one thing they all have in common is that something painful happened that motivated someone to begin deep personal change.
We will continue to hurt more people than we help until we do the following three things.
Stop trying to make street life comfortable
Should we give services to people who are starving, freezing cold or deathly ill?
Of course!
And if we truly care about them, we should never do so in a way that reduces their motivation to change the behavior that got them there to begin with. Good citizens are responsible to preserve life. But beyond that basic commitment, mature compassion means allowing the misery of the streets to motivate change.
A sanctioned campground with enforced standards of civility and clear expectations of engaging in services to successfully transition to permanent housing is a good balance of moral duty and wise influence.
Stop excusing those with mental health problems for committing crimes
Accountability motivates change.
Street camping is illegal. Theft, destruction of others’ property and aggressive public behavior are illegal. We are complicit in perpetuating misery when we fail to use the coercive power of the law to influence change. Graduates of The Other Side Academy universally attest that getting arrested saved their lives.
Start supporting programs that support behavior change and self-reliance
We are spending enormous sums to address chronic homelessness and have little evidence to tell us if our resources are truly helping. We should stop public funding (or even private donations) to programs that do not track and publicly report the percentage of their clients that transition successfully to permanent housing and self-reliance.
The hundreds of “Connors” I know will tell you that better days began only when new depths of loss, degradation or incarceration motivated them to do the hard work of change; and when a program was available that helped them do that hard work.
Joseph Grenny is a New York Times bestselling author of multiple books on influence, human change and communication. In 2015, Grenny and his colleagues founded The Other Side Academy, a free, 2- to 4-year residential life skills program for those with long histories of crime, addiction and homelessness. In 2023 his team broke ground on The Other Side Village, a 430-home permanent supportive housing community focused on helping the chronically homeless reinvent their lives.
