Despite glowing reports in recent years from the national media, it turns out that Houston's homelessness problem is actually getting worse, not better.
It all began over a decade ago back in 2013, when the 'Housing First' program to deal with homelessness was put in to place by the Obama administration.
"Ten years ago when they rolled this out, and they literally promised it would end homelessness in a decade" said Michele Steeb, a national homelessness consultant, "A decade later, almost 11 years later, we're now at the highest point in our nations history of homelessness."
Here in Houston, the 'Housing First' model is falling apart because the one-size fits all approach doesn't work. A man that is dealing with severe drug addiction is in a completely different situation that a single mom with 3 kids. But the 'Housing First' plan doesn't deal with any of that. It's strictly a 'voucher' program, with federal funding for those vouchers starting to run dry.
"Those in Houston have been told time and time again, for over a decade that they were successfully tackling homelessness" Steeb told KTRH, "But this has clearly been such a massive failure."
She adds that the government's HUD numbers are actually off, and that the real homeless data is double, with roughly 12,000 Houstonian's dealing with homelessness.
But there is hope, and that is why Steeb says ending homelessness is "1,000% possible", and it's why she wrote her new book, 'Answers Behind The RED DOOR: Battling the Homeless Epidemic', which features of 11 incredible women and their stories, who are longer homeless.
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