Homelessness, Housing, and Evictions

As Nomadik starts to explore all of our data streams and our models start to build connections we noticed that the correlation between current housing placement, eviction processes, and homelessness has risen. BASTA Austin, a tenant legal aid NPO, has recently released a report of the top properties pursuing evictions around Austin from 2023. Abelia flats, a property used for housing placement by organizations such as Front Steps, was among the properties listed. Nomadik uses a distinctive data feed to better understand the homeless crisis which involves all surrounding facets of homelessness. This data includes fire and EMS reports, police incident reports, eviction reports, local map data, and more. Our models use these reports to build out robust connections and findings on the causes of homelessness and the relapses of those who had already been placed into housing. In this specific case we explored the APD incident reports to build out more robust connections in our models and what we found is extremely interesting.

Looking at APD incident reports over the first three months of 2024 we found that Abelia flats had a statistically significantly higher rate of assault incidents than the surrounding apartment complexes, around 4:1 ratio on average. For the most part, when looking at incident reports for apartment complexes the reports with the highest frequency are burglary of vehicle, but for Abelia this was not the case, in fact in that period of time there were no reported burglary of vehicle incidents. Extending the time window further shows that the rate of assault in Abelia flats is much higher than surrounding apartment complexes, so why is that? Immediately pointing to the rehousing of clients exiting homelessness as the perpetrators is not fair as we do not have the incidents mapped to individuals, nor do we have the data on which clients were housed at Abelia flats, but we can look at the correlation.

Over the past two decades many studies have discussed the impact of supportive housing and mixed traditional low income housing. This is not to be confused with Section 8 or project housing. It begins with low income apartment complexes being offered housing vouchers from various organizations, the city, and state housing programs. These housing programs offer assured payment of a rental unit whether the client stays or decides to return to the streets. The idea is to hold the unit for a year and if needed, try to fill it with the next individual in need. This presents more benefit to property management and owners as a promised revenue for however long the voucher dictates as dependable rental income. For most, accepting guaranteed income is a no brainer, why deal with tenants that may be late on rent when the government can guarantee the income stream?

The studies mentioned above also point out that individuals under these supportive housing programs tend to bring their lifestyles, habits, and addictions from the streets to these apartment complexes. One common habit for those who have lived on the streets for extensive periods is hoarding. It is a common survival trait from the trauma of loss and always being in need of basic necessities. These factors lead to an increase in crime and adverse living conditions for low income households that are working and paying rent with none of the assistance provided to the housed clients. Furthermore, damage ensues while property and community value declines. This is normally a result of clients with addictions, mental illness, and the visitation of others still living on the streets. While the intention from a client might be genuine to offer friends a shower or a night's sleep in a safe place, it usually ends up with a chaotic situation. The organizations housing these individuals fail to keep up with consistent daily check ups and what is known as "wrap around services" from housing case managers. The ultimate conclusion for these properties is that the value decreases, the normal revenue for rents slows down to a crawl and eventually the property shuts down. Once this occurs the property is now in the flux of a development sale, possible bankruptcy, or a sale to the city where it will be redeveloped for new upper income earning tenants.

Now what do these banks do with the properties they acquire? Generally they shut them down, evicting all of the tenants, either demo and rebuild the property or renovate it and reopen it as a “luxury” apartment complex to attract high paying tenants. The “doom loop” described in the previous paragraph plays out all too often across the United States transferring locally owned properties to banks and conglomerates. What started out as the apartment complex looking for a nice source of guaranteed income, and perhaps wanting to support their local community, turns into a financial catastrophe doing more harm than good to both the apartment complex and the surrounding community.

Now let's try to understand the situation at Abelia Flats. It is evident that the property is not necessarily at fault but more so the "Housing First" HUD mandates and the local/municipal dealings between housing nonprofits, politics, and the inability to keep case managers consistently employed. Therefore failing to provide consistent case management for the clients most in need and the lag of rental payments that also become a warning to other properties not to accept these clients from particular nonprofit organizations. This happens throughout the nation in cities with the highest homeless populations and has been the cycle for at least the past five years running side by side with the rise in homelessness. It almost seems as though the plan is to fail and keep the mindless rotation going.

What is happening is that local nonprofits are taking clients and housing them before addressing the issues that likely drove them into homelessness in the first place. These clients then continue to live as they did before without the required support of mental health care and drug rehabilitation but now are in a community of people who have not experienced homelessness nor are prepared to handle situations that arise from living next to the mentally unwell and drug addicted. This can lead to a higher rate of assault as we have seen in our data among other incidents generally not commonplace among the average population of an area. The combination of the higher potential for incidents as well as any other factors that go into determining if an apartment complex will serve an eviction points towards the reason places like Abelia have higher eviction rates than surrounding complexes, but that isn’t the whole story.

The supportive housing vouchers come in 2 forms:
Permanent Supportive Housing - a program that renews annually and usually works out well for those with real disabilities, elders, and veterans that might not have gotten into a veteran housing program just yet.
Rapid Rehousing Program - a 1-2 yr program designed to help capable clients get back on their feet. The first year is guaranteed, dependent on client behavior. The second year is granted in a situation where a client is making real progress and genuinely needs a little more time with evidence of progress.
Once the program is no longer supporting the client the tenant needs to have found a way to cover the rent themselves. Without mental health care and drug rehabilitation the odds of the tenant acquiring the means to cover the rent is hampered which leads to an observed increase in evictions. For housing to be the life changing solution that “Housing First” works towards, the system needs to be reworked to include the services required to address the needs of a population that has an extremely high rate of mental illness and drug addiction. Without addressing the underlying causes the same cycle of homeless to housed to evicted to homeless will continue for large portions of the homeless population.