In early August, clergy from various faith denominations gathered at Brunswick City Hall to call on the City of Brunswick to halt a lawsuit against the homeless day shelter, The Well. The press conference brought to mind a series that my colleagues at the Murphy Center and I did in late 2021 around the causes and issues related to homelessness. Two years later, those issues remain complicated and grave.
During the press conference, Drew Thompson, pastor of Union City Church stated, “This community is expending precious energy on trying to rid our city of homeless people instead of learning ways to combat homelessness.”
Indeed, the lawsuit filed by the city cites public nuisance as its main basis. Given the challenges that business owners and residents have reported, largely around public safety concerns, it may not be a surprise to those who frequent downtown that the city is trying to do something in response. As Pastor Thompson suggests, the “something” they are trying is to use the court system to reduce the presence of homeless people around neighborhoods and local businesses rather than develop policies aimed at reducing the conditions of homelessness.
What would a shift in that policy approach look like if the city were to address the causes of homelessness instead? There are a few central areas where they might focus, but I want to highlight one, in particular. A common misconception is that homelessness is typically the result of personal failures, addiction, or mental illness. The root causes of homelessness, however, are deeply intertwined with economic disparities, inequalities among certain populations, and a severe shortage of affordable housing.
Housing is an area I see hope for policy redirection and an area the Mayor of Brunswick has publicly stated he wants to focus energy.
At the heart of this issue is a crisis of affordability. As Brunswick news reporter, Taylor Cooper wrote earlier this year, “the city of Brunswick has a “staggering” challenge when it comes to affordable housing… close to 85% of Brunswick’s total housing stock, 4,800 dwelling units, was built before 1970 and 20% of houses are ‘almost uninhabitable’.” Likewise, my Murphy Center colleague, Don Mathews, explained in a 2022 article (How Did Affordable Housing Become Unaffordable?) that “we’ve been digging the housing hole we’re in for decades. It’s deep.” That hole comes from a combination of minimum lot size restrictions, single-family-only zoning, a slow rate of new housing starts, and limited small home construction. In short, growing demand and sharply restricted supply have made affordable housing unaffordable.
According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, in Georgia a full-time worker would need to make $19.42/hour (working 40 hrs/wk and 52 weks/yr) to afford fair market rent for a two-bedroom rental home, a figure far beyond the reach of many low-income families. In the Brunswick metropolitan area, for instance, the median renter household income is $28,560 or approximately $14.88/hr. This leaves 44% (6749) of renter households in Brunswick with cost burdens (spending more than 30% of their income on housing costs) and 21.9% with severe cost burdens (spending more than 50% of their income on housing costs). With such high rates of cost burden, a single emergency or loss of work hours can lead to eviction and homelessness.
Addressing these root causes requires a concerted effort from policymakers, community organizations, and individuals. But homelessness is not an insurmountable problem.
Over the past decade, meaningful progress has been made in our community and our state to reduce homelessness. For instance, 60 new tiny homes are now ready for move-in at the Grove at Correll Commons. These fully furnished units are built and maintained by Hand in Hand of Glynn as permanent housing solutions for Glynn county’s unhoused citizens. The Atlanta BeltLine, Inc. has a goal to create or preserve 5,600 units of affordable and workforce housing by 2030. As of June of this year, they have achieved 3,177 affordable units through partnerships, affordable housing dashboards, and renters resources. Other methods of prevention have also been successful in the state. The Georgia Legal Services Program offers eviction prevention services outside of metro Atlanta and has served thousands of Georgians facing homelessness. Rapid rehousing programs have been largely successful in the state as well.
As for The Well, they are a piece of the puzzle required to secure the root cause of income insecurity by offering a way for those who are unhoused to eat, get laundry done, secure personal documents, and look for work and housing as a means of exiting homelessness. Closure is not the only solution to the concerns “downtowners” have expressed.
The problem is real. The city’s remedy may help but only in the short term, at best. If we really want to fix this problem, it will take collaboration between local government agencies, nonprofits, and the private sector that create solutions that address the needs of our homeless community.
Dr. Heather Farley is Chair of the Department of Business and Public Administration and Associate Professor of Public Management at the College of Coastal Georgia. She is an associate of the College’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies and an environmental policy scholar. The opinions found in this article do not represent those of the College of Coastal Georgia.
Reg Murphy Center