By Shereen Siewert | Wausau Pilot & Review

The Wausau Police Department is requesting an additional two officers as part of a team approach to working with homeless residents, as the number of people without permanent housing surged considerably over the past three months.

During the Feb. 26 Police and Fire Commission meeting, Police Chief Matt Barnes said he “refuse(s) to turn the city into Portland,” does not want tents lining the sidewalks, and does not want our parks to look like La Crosse, which as recently as January had significant homeless encampments in some areas.

“The speed at which unhoused individuals are coming into our community scares me,” he said.

Barnes, during the same meeting, said about 100 more homeless people are in the Wausau community compared to just a few months ago. During that meeting, he said he would advocate for and help develop “common sense supports” for the unhoused community but does not support resources that “enable people to stay homeless.”

Barnes said communities that have been successful in that philosophy have been able to manage the homeless population in a way that “does not devalue the community or reduce quality of life.”

He went on to describe a harder-line approach to homelessness than what some homeless advocates see as best practice in dealing with the issue, emphasizing enforcement and de-emphasizing what he described as “enabling” people to remain unhoused.

“What that balance looks like is resources that work, we do not support resources that enable homelessness, and we need enforcement of our ordinances and statutes to balance the resources that we have,” Barnes said.

Barnes, though not specifically advocating for the approach, pointed to unnamed municipalities in California that require homeless people to prove their residency or prove they went to school in the community in order to receive services.

For those who cannot prove their connection, he said, departments “arrange for transportation to return you to the community that you’re in.”

In his February presentation, Barnes said city workers are shoveling human fecal material from downtown parking ramps on a regular basis. Wausau in 2019 created an ordinance that would fine homeless people who sleep in the ramps, citing concerns by downtown business owners.

Some communities, including Appleton and Milwaukee, have installed portable bathrooms in some ramps and other areas to avoid the type of restroom situation described by Barnes. Wausau has not done so.

Barnes said the homeless situation in Wausau is making policing complicated and reducing the amount of policing that the rest of our community “that pay taxes to have a quality police force” is getting.

Housing First approach

Homeless advocates, however, urge a “Housing First” model that immediately houses clients with no preconditions, encouraging them to create an implement their own goal. Research has shown that such programs can increase housing stability for clients served, are cost effective compared to traditional services that impose sobriety perquisites to housing and increase client use of other services.

Housing First was a revolutionary idea when it was introduced in the 1990s because it didn’t require homeless people to fix their problems before getting permanent housing. Instead, its premise — since confirmed by years of research — was that people are better able to address their individual problems when basic needs, such as food and a place to live, are met.

“It was a change in direction from how the initial response to homelessness was thought about and structured,” said Matthew Doherty, the nation’s former homelessness czar. “It puts a lot of responsibility on communities and on organizations to really understand what their clients need and want, and to really center people in the processes for deciding how to help.”

Housing First became the guiding principle for homeless programs led by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which created financial incentives for communities that followed that approach. It was not, however, without criticism and controversy, which is why Congress included wording in the CARES act that barred any of the $4 billion in pandemic homeless aid from being used to require homeless people to receive treatment or perform any other prerequisite activity as a condition for receiving shelter or other services.

Houston is often cited as a success story in the Housing First model. The city successfully decreased its homeless population by about 55 percent in a nine-year span and virtually ended its U.S. veteran homelessness by combining local, state and federal resources to house 3,650 veterans over a three-year period, according to government data.

Experts attribute the success to a system wide effort to coordinate homelessness responses across the Houston area, following the Housing First principles of providing housing and services for people without mandatory prerequisites.

But Wausau already has a housing shortage, particularly for low-income residents. As for adding more beds to Wausau’s nighttime shelter, Barnes said he prefers a pathway to enabling people to leave homelessness.”We would have more homeless,” he said, of the notion of adding capacity. “Those beds will fill up.”

Sam Tsemberis, a clinical psychologist who first developed the Housing First strategy as a mental health program in New York City in the 1990s, said “it’s housing first, but not housing only.” The approach, he said, is not one-size-fits-all, nor will it solve the problem altogether.

“If you run the program well,” he said, “you will have an 80 or even 90% success in ending homelessness. You still have 10 or 20% of the people who don’t make it in Housing First, and for this group we need a different approach.”

Barnes acknowledged that some of the ideas discussed in February are controversial, but said some controversial ideas work. He is also eyeing technology that will assist in making policy decisions moving forward.

In a memo to the Public Health and Safety Committee, Barnes is proposing two officers that would be part of a team working with unhoused people, working to build trust and encourage use of resources. The department will rely on the Crisis Assessment Response Team model, which has relieved workload from the patrol bureau and delivered better and less restrictive care for people in crisis.

But there will be an enforcement component as well.

“The officers will also ensure we have appropriate enforcement of our laws, ordinances and social norms,” he wrote. “This team will work daily to ensure our parks, library, parking ramps, new developments and downtown are protected and a safe place to be.”

In his memo Barnes said he is confident this program is necessary.

“The consequences of waiting to implement additional police resources could be catastrophic,” he said.