When Mayor Newsom opened the door for gay marriages, progressives lauded the move despite their differences with the mayor on other issues. Yet when it comes to Care not Cash, many progressives continue to ignore or downplay the program’s success while reinventing an imaginary “good old days” for city welfare recipients. But it is no longer credible to argue that such recipients are not much better off with housing rather than with an all-cash grant.
When Gavin Newsom put Care not Cash on the ballot, progressives were understandably suspicious. The measure was seen as a strategy to vault Newsom into the Mayor’s office, and the then-Supervisor’s alliance with downtown and landlord interests undermined claims that he was serious about housing homeless persons.
But after a year, 803 welfare recipients have gained permanent housing through Care not Cash. The program has enabled San Francisco to dramatically increase its affordable housing stock at a time when the state government is broke and the Bush Administration is slashing housing aid to the poor.
The ongoing criticism of Care not Cash ignores a very important historic reality about the relationship between welfare grants and housing costs.
During the 1970’s and 1980’s, a welfare recipient in San Francisco received a large enough grant to pay rent. The amount left over was typically less than the $59 remaining to those now housed under Care not Cash.
Starting in 1995, rents in residential hotels began rising above the total amount of a city welfare grant. This virtually guaranteed homelessness for thousands of recipients, and meant that the city’s welfare grant was at best subsidizing a pattern of two weeks in a hotel followed by time in shelters or on the streets.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors would never have enacted a welfare law that paid recipients less than the cost of the cheapest SRO unit in the city. Yet that was the new reality starting in 1995 (and the rise in SRO rents preceded the dot-com boom, which rose rents further).
Until a 1989 court decision, state law required county grant levels to be linked to housing costs. But once that connection was severed, all of San Francisco’s neighboring counties sharply reduced their grants.
San Francisco could have doubled its welfare grant to enable recipients to obtain housing, but no Supervisor ever proposed such a step. In fact, there was never a push on the Board to raise welfare rates beyond the annual inflation increase.
San Francisco’s progressive Supervisors have consistently supported expanding services to low-income people, and have never endorsed diverting millions from health care, public transit, or even police and fire budgets to fund sharply increased welfare grants. Once progressives refused to raise grants, it made no sense for San Francisco to spend millions on a welfare program that kept people homeless.
In retrospect, Care not Cash should have been enacted years earlier. This would have enabled San Francisco to have at least double the number of supportive housing units currently in its portfolio.
Progressives correctly point out that Care not Cash has failed to end homelessness. As noted in a Tuesday press release from the Coalition on Homelessness, numerous groups-including families with children, youth, undocumented immigrants—have not been helped by Care not Cash.
But this argument simply echoes Republican claims that we should not “throw money” at housing, education, and health care because the additional spending requested will not “solve” these problems. Ironically, the reason homelessness among the above sub-groups is not declining is that the $14 million in funding created by the allegedly evil Care not Cash is not available to them.
Like any government program, people in Care not Cash fall between the cracks, get bad advice, or have individual needs ignored by those supposed to help them. But if progressive critics of Care not Cash want to start subjecting all social welfare programs to such scrutiny—including non-profit run programs—they will find little perfection anywhere. Let us not join Republicans in using anecdotes and unintentional mistakes to attack large-scale social programs.
Progressives have no shortage of differences with the Mayor. But in pushing for “housing first,” for then matching his rhetoric with millions in new housing and service funding, and in becoming the first San Francisco Mayor to call for an end to longterm shelters, Mayor Newsom has adopted the longtime progressive agenda on homelessness.
