Nearly every major U.S. city grapples with homelessness, addiction and street safety. Cities remain constrained by limited knowledge, stubborn habits and inert cultures of bureaucracy. As a psychologist with over a decade experience in the field, I find it troubling that we are not implementing a systematic, scientific approach to these pressing issues.

Workers on the front lines of addressing these crises are exhausted, disillusioned and demoralized. They are doing some of the most psychologically demanding work in America — work that is urgently needed yet often underpaid, under-respected and misunderstood. If cities want different outcomes, they must begin by taking this work, and the people who do it, far more seriously.

Fund What Works, Not What’s Familiar

Most shelter and social service models are more than 50 years old, built before synthetic street drugs and widening wealth inequality. Our models and services must keep up with the reality we’re living, backing services that are relevant, effective and measurable.

Providers should be required to use evidence-based models with statistically significant outcomes. We should hold homelessness and social services to the same rigor we expect in cancer research or air pollution policy. Models should be tested through peer-reviewed research and best practices, and city contracts should reflect those standards.

Urban Alchemy has invited universities, elected officials and public health departments to formally study our methods, program models and outcomes. Despite the scarcity of this kind of research, there have been few takers. One exception is Forrest Stuart, a Stanford University sociology professor whose anthropological study of work to reduce crime became the basis for his book dissecting the policing of poverty on Skid Row.

Shelters and social service providers with consistently weak outcomes should receive support to improve, but if they fail to meet baseline standards, they should lose funding. Cities can no longer afford a charitable model that centers the nobility of the provider rather than the results achieved for the people served.

Read the full article about demanding results from homelessness services by Lena Miller at Smart Cities Dive.