Homelessness is not an identity

Column & commentary on an interview with Dr. Roger Marbut

When offered a connection to someone called the “Federal Homelessness Czar” for an interview, of course I said yes. Robert Marbut was unknown to me before our conversation on August 30, so I checked out his bio first:

“Dr. Robert Marbut has worked on issues of homelessness for more than three decades: first as a volunteer, then as chief of staff to San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros, next as a White House Fellow to President H.W. Bush (41, the Father), later as a San Antonio City Councilperson/Mayor-Pro-Term and as the Founding President & CEO of Haven for Hope for five years (the most comprehensive homeless transformational center in the USA). He has also worked in 3 different US Presidential Administrations, including serving as the Executive Director of the US Interagency Council on Homelessness, often called the “Federal Homelessness Czar.”

In 2007, frustrated by the lack of real improvement in reducing homelessness, and as part of the concept development phase for the Haven for Hope Campus, Dr. Marbut conducted a nationwide best practices study. After personally visiting 237 homeless service facilities in 12 states and the District of Columbia, he developed The Seven Guiding Principles of Homeless Transformation which focuses on root causes and recovery, not symptoms nor short-term gimmicks. These Seven Guiding Principles of Transformation are used in all aspects of his work to create holistically transformative environments to reduce homelessness.”

There’s more at the No Address Movie web site, decades of credentials. It made him sound awfully serious, but Robert turned out to be a cheerful fellow who was a realist about the challenges without being driven to cynicism. We had a delightful conversation and it resulted in this column.

As published Friday, September 6, 2024 in the Spokesman-Review

Homelessness is not an identity

When Dr. Robert Marbut first joined the production team for the movie “No Address” it was as a subject matter expert. It wasn’t because of his PhD in international relations and political behavior, it was thirty years’ experience in researching root causes of homelessness in America. Lack of an address is not one of them. Mental health and substance abuse are.

Now the executive producer for both the movie and a documentary due to be released later this year, Marbut made sure it was written into the contracts for major players in the ensemble cast to spend at least 8 hours learning first-hand about homelessness at a rescue mission, on the streets, and in encampments in Sacramento. For three of those actors, that wasn’t enough. William Baldwin, Xander Berkley and Ashanti hung out in encampments over five weeks in between filming.

As Marbut and the man he calls Billy Baldwin talked on set, Marbut expected they’d have differences. “Billy and I are definitely on opposite sides of the political spectrum, and over time we found out how many things we were on the opposite side of, including my Olympic sport - modern pentathlon - kicking his sport of wrestling out of the Olympics. We’re on opposite sides of everything, but on this we are aligned.”

Marbut has served in three presidential administrations including an appointment as executive director of the US Interagency Council on Homelessness in the first Trump administration.

William Baldwin leans left, public disagreeing with younger brother Steven who supports former President Trump.

On the narrow issue of homelessness and the intersection with untreated mental illness and substance abuse, they found themselves in agreement.

In an interview last week, Marbut described the nationwide best practices study he completed out of frustration with a lack of results from so many programs. When he explained to Baldwin that handing out housing vouchers without any requirement for treatment or training was like handing out Pell grants for college but not requiring a student to attend class or make progress, “Billy said that’s nuts,” according to Marbut.

In 2007, Marbut visited 237 operations striving to address homelessness in 12 states and the District of Columbia. From that field work he developed his “Seven Guiding Principles for Transformation – Moving From Enablement to Engagement.” Recognizing homelessness as a protected class is not one of them.

A well-intentioned yet naïve ordinance to do just that was recently deferred by the Spokane City Council indefinitely but may be brought back in an amended version after the November election.

“My view is homelessness should be treated as a clinical issue,” said Marbut in a text exchange when asked his opinion on the temporarily tabled ordinance.

Three-fourths of street level homelessness is tied to mental health and substance abuse according to Marbut, citing research by the California Policy Lab.

Making homelessness into an immutable identity group is one more link in a victim mentality chain. It is the opposite of a positive language shift to “unsheltered” or “unhoused” in a move to draw a line between the person and their living conditions. The root problem is clinical, not housing.

Marbut described an incident after giving a briefing on homelessness response with Baldwin in Seattle. They were barely a few hundred feet from the door afterwards and found a guy doing the “fentanyl fold,” standing bent awkwardly over on the sidewalk and barely breathing. Baldwin completed the Chicago Fire Academy for his role in “Backdraft” and knows what he’s looking at, according to Marbut.

911 was called and the whole parade arrived – a ladder truck with two EMTs, an ambulance and crew, a mental health care team, police officers, Marbut and Baldwin. There was nothing any of them could do, the homeless addict invoked his right to refuse treatment and took another hit. “He’s going to be dead,” said Marbut.

As psychiatrist Dr. Charles Krauthammer used to say, we now let the mentally ill “die with their rights on.”

Marbut pegged the start of the homelessness problem to the mass closing of inpatient mental health facilities in the 1980s. Hopeful theories supported simple outpatient treatment for everyone, like any other chronic medical condition. Now the US inpatient bed capacity is barely 25% of what it was in 1970, without adjusting for population growth. “One side didn’t want to spend money and the other side moved to close down institutions after seeing “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” said Marbut.  Both sides got to the same place, and now he’s not surprised at rising homelessness, violence, mental health – “we got rid of the thing that treated that.”

Marbut will be in Spokane later this month along with Baldwin to speak at a Washington Policy Center dinner with their message on the mental health and substance abuse underpinnings of street-level homelessness. Good timing as the community struggles with what to do next.

“We really think we need treatment in this country and we need to work on it. If Billy and I can agree on this, maybe other groups can get together.”

A few weeks after that column was published, I was able to hear Robert Marbut and Billy Baldwin speaking on the same stage at the Washington Policy Center Eastern Washington dinner. It have me hope that we really can work together to focus on treatment. It was good background for the Hello for Good Fall Symposium with Annise Parker, subject of a column published this week.

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REFERENCE LINKS:

Original column: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2024/sep/05/sue-lani-madsen-homelessness-is-not-an-identity/

The movie: https://www.noaddressmovie.com/robert-m-bio

Marbut’s Seven Guiding Principles: https://www.marbutconsulting.com/seven-guiding-principles.html

Cal Poly study on reasons behind homelessness (see page 5):  https://www.capolicylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Health-Conditions-Among-Unsheltered-Adults-in-the-U.S..pdf

Trends in Inpatient Beds Over Time: (see page 27): https://www.nasmhpd.org/sites/default/files/2023-01/Trends-in-Psychiatric-Inpatient-Capacity_United-States%20_1970-2018_NASMHPD-2.pdf

https://nri-inc.org/our-work/nri-reports/trends-in-psychiatric-inpatient-capacity-united-states-and-each-state-1970-to-2014/#:~:text=Although%20170%2C000%20residents%20in%2024-hour%20treatment%20beds%20every,in%20beds%20is%20an%20even%20greater%2077.4%20percent.

Proposed Spokane ordinance: https://www.inlander.com/news/spokane-city-council-pumps-brakes-on-homeless-anti-discrimination-law-after-pushback-from-business-interests-and-mayor-brown-28493964

Legal definition of protected class:  https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/protected-classes-under-anti-discrimination-laws.html

“A “protected class” refers to people shielded against discrimination under federal, state, or local laws. In the United States, federal anti-discrimination laws, like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act, enumerate certain characteristics that constitute protected classes. These can include race, gender, age, disability, national origin, religion, and more.”

https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-protected-class-4583111

And a few critics of Marbut’s principles:
https://www.texastribune.org/2019/12/06/donald-trumps-new-homeless-czar-robert-marbut-jr-has-deep-texas-roots/

https://democracyforward.org/work/uncovering-trumps-housing-fourth-homelessness-policy-czar/

https://www.npr.org/2019/12/05/785129572/white-house-names-controversial-pick-to-head-homelessness-office