COMPLEX PROBLEMS can only be solved with COMPLEX SOLUTIONS

Jack Fryer
Jul 20, 2017 · 5 min read

When I was originally thinking about homelessness and how to solve it, I though small and focused on fixing one tiny aspect of their complex lives. As Steve Herbert once said, complex problems require complex solutions, and if the answer was easy someone more intelligent would have thought of it a long time ago.

My original idea to help solve — by no means was I meaning to end it completely — was to provide the homeless with haircuts. It was something I thought I could legitimately accomplish in my time in San Francisco. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make my idea a reality because of my busy schedule with classes and internship work. Providing haircuts alone to the homeless wouldn’t have a great effect on the main problem — ending homelessness..

Patrick Kennedy, Owner of Panoramic Interests

A few weeks ago, our class had the opportunity to meet with Patrick Kennedy, the owner of Panoramic Interests, a development firm that has been building housing, live-work space, and commercial property in the Bay Area since 1990. They have focused on a wide array of housing, including: dense, mixed-use, mixed-income, infill developments. These projects were financed with private funds and all multi-family housing projects include below market rate units.

By no means is Patrick an evangelist for ending homelessness, but his intelligence is no question and his business and himself could contribute to ending this wicked problem. He has developed and designed the CITYSPACES MicroPAD, which is a 160 square foot housing unit that contains everything one needs to live, and can be stackable, creating a compact living complex opportunity.

If Panoramic Interests, part of the business sector, were to collaborate with the city of San Francisco, part of the government sector, we could help solve the wicked problem of homelessness. If you bring the non-profit sector into things, we can provide job placement and mental health services for the homeless. If we take a step further and bring academia into this, we can provide an education to the homeless so they really can thrive. When it comes down to it, no one sector will ever be able to solve a complex problem like homelessness alone. We need cross sector collaboration in order to thrive, and might even need it to survive in the future. A cool company who is using cross sector collaboration is Code for America, you can read more here: https://www.codeforamerica.org/about-us

With funding from the government, and housing units being built by Panoramic Interests, enough housing units could be produced to put every homeless person in a place to live — completely solving homelessness. Now, that doesn’t address the problems of drug addiction and other variable factors, but it solves the base problem, which is providing housing.

New York City has pioneered a couple methods of solving homelessness that are proven to work. The first method is permanent supportive housing. This combines affordable housing assistance with support services for individuals living with mental illness, HIV/AIDS or other serious health problems. Research shows that this method costs less than other forms of emergency and institutional care.

The second method that works is “housing first.” This approach involves moving long-term street homeless individuals directly into subsidized housing and then linking them to support services, either on-site or in the community. Most of these homeless are living with mental illness, substance abuse disorders and other serious health problems. Similar to the permanent supportive housing method, the “housing first” method is much less costly than the emergency and institutional care.

If we take a look at every country in the world, they are all in the midst of a crisis of homelessness and housing exclusion — with only one exception: Finland.

Finland has conquered homelessness by giving homeless people permanent housing as soon as they become homeless, instead of trying to provide services to assist them in getting out of it. They too use the idea of “housing first,” but it really has taken off in their country and the movement has fire throughout the country.

This method has been implemented in Finland since 2008, as a result of cross sector collaboration between the state, municipalities and NGOs. This is a sustainable model because tenants are assisted in getting jobs then pay rent and depending on their income, they may contribute to the cost of the services. The rest of the cost is covered by the municipalities and NGOs.

The new stable living conditions allow the former homeless to use mainstream services instead of using expensive emergency services when there are problems. This will save taxpayer money in the long run.

If Finland’s solution to homelessness worked so well with cross sector collaboration, the United States can do just the same. Although the fix won’t be fast, it would happen if we gave it some effort.

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