Authored by Dale Todd, Councilmember for District 3, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
I recently attended the National League of Cities Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, where I was invited to take part in a panel discussion with Mayor Erin Mendenhall of Salt Lake City and Alvin Teng, Director of Homeless Strategy and Partnerships for Long Beach, Calif. The session was titled Building a Better System to Respond to Homelessness and was moderated by Jeff Olivet, the former Director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness for the Biden Administration.
Many of the municipalities at the conference are dealing with significant homelessness challenges. Cedar Rapids seems to be in a bit of a different place. That contrast was useful, and it reinforced a lot of what we have been working towards locally.
Key Takeaways
- Homelessness is a systems issue, not just a shelter issue.
- Housing-led, coordinated approaches work.
- Local governments can play a role by bridging gaps the market and nonprofits cannot.
This Didn’t Just Happen
Jeff Olivet provided a great historical perspective on the issue in his opening comments. “Homelessness is often treated as a sudden crisis, but as a country, we have been dealing with it in waves since our nation was formed. During the Great Depression, the scale of homelessness was enormous. The federal government responded on a large scale, leading to Social Security, public housing and welfare programs.”
By the 1950s and 60s, widespread homelessness was largely eliminated. Then, in the 1980s, everything changed. Federal housing programs were cut. Institutions closed without adequate community investment. Rents rose. Wages flattened. From 1980 to today, we have lived through the longest and largest sustained period of homelessness in U.S. history.
That history matters, because cities are now expected to manage the consequences.
Shelter is Not the Answer By Itself
The consensus of the speakers on the panel was that today, we face challenges at every level: federal uncertainty, state gaps and county shortfalls. Yet one of the biggest obstacles cities face is the local perception and belief that shelter alone is the solution.
Homelessness is a flow. People fall into, and exit, homelessness every day. The real questions become how we not only slow inflow and speed up outflow, but, importantly, make changes upstream so fewer of our friends and neighbors fall into homelessness to begin with.
What is Working Today?
You can increase a community’s capacity without building a single new shelter simply by creating housing pathways that help people move through the system faster. Washington, D.C., proved this when it decentralized a massive family shelter, added dedicated support, reduced the average length of stay from about a year to 90 days and did not need to build additional shelter space. They built a system, not just beds.
What We are Seeing in Cedar Rapids
In Cedar Rapids (pop. 137,710), our data paints a clear picture. Overall, homelessness and family homelessness are down. At the same time, chronic homelessness is up. This tells us that many of our system improvements are working for many people who can be helped quickly. Through Coordinated Entry, led by nonprofit partner Waypoint, the City and local agencies are better able to assess needs and connect people to the right response. Diversion programs are resolving short-term housing crises before people enter the shelter system. Expanded rapid rehousing has helped more households stabilize and move back into permanent housing.
It also reveals that our friends and neighbors who remain in the system often have complex, co-occurring mental health and substance-use disorders. These are the hardest cases, and they require targeted resources, stable housing and stronger coordination with state and federal partners.
As conversations continue at state and federal levels about housing and health investments, it is important to understand how those decisions play out locally. Changes that limit access to permanent supportive housing or reduce funding for programs like Medicaid, SNAP and mental health services can increase pressures on local systems, making it harder to sustain progress.
A year in a shelter system can cost roughly $35,000 per person. Permanent supportive housing with wraparound services costs less. Incarceration costs exponentially more. Every dollar that falls on local taxpayers. Committing to investments in proven approaches “upstream” not only improves lives, it also helps cities use taxpayer dollars more efficiently.
Why Step in on Housing?
Here is the hard truth: traditional service providers cannot build the housing their communities need. Nonprofits are mission-driven and do critical work, but building a 25- or 30-unit development requires capital, risk tolerance and technical expertise. Developers, on the other hand, do not provide supportive services or understand the complicated co-occurring disorders that plague many of those who are on the streets.
Working with Landlords, Not Against Them
Most people exiting homelessness rely on the private rental market. That market is difficult to access for anyone with limited income, prior evictions or other barriers. Cedar Rapids’ Landlord–Tenant Success Initiative, a public-private partnership, is one success story that is helping property owners participate in housing programs by offering damage-mitigation funds, landlord support and a single point of contact when issues arise. Combined with case-management support for tenants, the program has increased the number of landlords willing to lease to households with housing barriers.
Even with these efforts, the math can be tight. Housing costs continue to increase for renters and property owners alike, while wages and disability benefits lag far behind. Cities can help bridge gaps, but this is a structural issue that requires broader policy alignment.
Making it Possible
Local governments have to step in on housing: build it and help lease it. And after a defined affordability period is through, turn the housing over to a nonprofit operator. With the right incentives, local governments can build capacity, trust and long-term stability with the service providers on the front lines.
That is what we did in Cedar Rapids. Projects like The Heights and CR Brickstone are examples of the City Government leading — by giving resource providers the tools and confidence to take a leap they could not take alone. Sometimes that means incentives. Sometimes it means expertise. Sometimes it just means reducing risk.
Progress, with Our Eyes Open
There are bright spots and proven strategies. Denver has shown it is possible to dramatically reduce encampments by focusing on coordinated systems and housing pathways. Cities routinely build transportation systems and park systems with long-term planning and sustained investment.
We now need to apply the same mindset, process and resources to build better systems to respond to homelessness. Based on the work already underway in Cedar Rapids — better data, stronger coordination and housing-led solutions — we are moving in the right direction.
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