Arizona opinion: Vision won't solve Arizona homelessness

Nathan Smith and Catherine Alonzo are right that the "tyranny of urgency" is real. As someone who spent years consulting on homelessness — serving as a policy advisor and consultant with homeless organizations nationally, including CASS here in Phoenix, and advocating for legislation — I read their piece with both recognition and concern; what it doesn’t say matters as much as what it does.

A vision of “a community where everyone has a home” is a fine aspiration. But a vision story, however vivid, doesn’t build affordable housing. It doesn’t reform discharge practices that put patients and inmates on the street. It doesn’t fund mental health infrastructure at scale. Vision is not a strategy. And in homelessness work, confusing the two has real consequences.

The writers cite this year’s point-in-time count as evidence that "coordinated, vision-driven work produces meaningful results." But a single-night snapshot cannot bear that weight, and flatness is not improvement. More people in shelter is good, but shelter is not housing. It is a stabilization tool, not an endpoint.

The piece also acknowledges that only 10% of CASS’s single adult shelter residents exit to permanent housing. That means 90% cycle through without resolution. That’s not a vision problem; it’s a systems problem.

One of the most stubborn drivers of homelessness is institutional discharge. Hospitals, jails, psychiatric facilities and the foster care system release people every day with nowhere to go, sometimes to the street, sometimes with a bus pass and the address of a shelter. According to SAMHSA, roughly 30 percent of people experiencing chronic homelessness have a serious mental illness, and two-thirds have a substance use disorder or other chronic health condition.

Arizona has chronically underfunded its behavioral health system, leaving people in crisis to cycle through emergency rooms, jails and shelters because there is no continuum of care to hold them. They are not failing the system; the system is failing them. Housing First, proven effective across dozens of cities and studies, demonstrates that stable housing is the prerequisite for treatment, sobriety and stability. But it requires both units and political will to implement at scale.

Arizona faces a cumulative housing deficit of more than 110,000 units. You can’t solve homelessness in a market where low-income households compete for a fraction of the units they need. Addressing that requires zoning reform, public land disposition for affordable development, low-income housing tax credit advocacy and sustained pressure on municipalities that resist density.

The writers argue that boards and funders must support strategic clarity. I would go further. Funders must support systems-change work, not just service delivery. Elected officials need to be held accountable for the policy conditions that produce homelessness. And the public must understand that homelessness is not a failure of individual character; it is the predictable outcome of choices about housing, health care, criminal justice and the social safety net. The antidote to reactive crisis management is not a vision story. It is systemic change.

CASS does essential work, and the people who staff its shelters deserve deep respect. But the vision of a community where everyone has a home will remain aspirational until we build the systems that make it achievable. That is not a management challenge. It is a political one.