KC Voices: Unhoused Kansans were failed by decades of misunderstood metrics
File photo
In the KC Voices column, we ask members of the KC community to submit stories about their thoughts and experiences in all walks of life. If you’ve got a story you’d like to share with our readers, please send it to brock@thepitchkc.com for consideration. Today, combat veteran and executive director of Manhattan Housing Authority, Aaron Estabrook, examines how multiple administrations have ignored or actively contributed to the rising houselessness epidemic, and how poorly defined policies continue to make it worse.
Illustration by Jack Raybuck
KC Voices local submissions
I’ve been holding on to this unfortunate truth for over a decade.
I worked as a northern Kansas case manager in the Supportive Services for Veteran Families program from 2011 to 2013, right in the middle of a major federal shift in how homelessness was defined, measured, and reported in America. I went to Washington, D.C. and met with our Congressman, who served on a Veterans subcommittee; I pleaded for him to address it, but he did nothing instead. [Actually, he invested his energy in shutting down the entire government, but that’s another story.]
A lot of people today do not realize how significant that policy shift was. Homelessness was redefined.
During the Barack Obama administration, Congress passed the HEARTH Act and HUD implemented new regulations and data standards that fundamentally changed how homelessness was categorized across federally funded systems. They changed the definition of homelessness.
Before this period, homelessness was often understood more broadly by frontline workers, schools, nonprofits, and local communities. Families who were doubled up, couch surfing, cycling through motels, or temporarily staying with relatives because they had nowhere else to go were commonly recognized as part of the homelessness crisis, and therefore eligible for federal and state assistance. If they didn’t have a home, they were homeless. Makes sense right?
After HUD operationalized the HEARTH Act, the federal system increasingly centered around what they cleverly called “literal homelessness” as the primary category for eligibility, reporting, and ‘Point in Time’ counts. These numbers are how we decide funding for shelters and programs. Definition changed… numbers go down… funding goes down.
That meant the emphasis shifted toward people:
-living on the street
-staying in shelters
-exiting institutions with nowhere to go
At the same time, “doubled up” households became harder to count and harder to qualify for our help under HUD definitions, even though it was obvious they were homeless or had no home of their own.
And in Kansas, this created a major disconnect between federal definitions and reality on the ground.
Kansas does not have a large shelter infrastructure compared to many states with major cities. In a lot of communities, there simply are not enough emergency shelter beds for people to enter, even if they want to. Most Kansas towns flat out don’t have emergency shelters.
At the same time, Kansans tend to be incredibly kind and practical people. Friends, family members, coworkers, church members, teachers and neighbors often step in before someone ends up literally sleeping outside. Their kindness meant the person in crisis was not eligible for assistance because they opened their home to a person without one.
Especially during winter.
People do not always understand how much cold weather changes homelessness dynamics in the Midwest. Employers will let someone sleep in a back room. A relative will clear space on a couch. A friend will allow someone to stay “for a few days.” People rotate between temporary arrangements because the alternative could literally be freezing outside.
But under the increasingly narrow federal framework, many of those people stopped counting as homeless in official HUD metrics even though they had no stable housing whatsoever.
I watched this happen in real time while working with veterans across Kansas.
A veteran sleeping on his cousin’s couch for three days because he lost housing was still in crisis. A mother moving her children from house to house every few nights was still homeless in any practical sense. But under the increasingly compliance-driven federal framework, many of these people became statistically invisible unless they crossed into “literal” homelessness. Sleeping on a couch didn’t count, but sleeping on the driveway outside did.
This is one reason why federal homelessness numbers and public school homelessness numbers began diverging so dramatically. Manhattan-Ogden Public Schools reported 225 homeless students but our HUD Point in Time counted a fraction of that. Schools operating under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act still counted doubled-up families and couch-surfing students as homeless, while HUD’s reporting system became much narrower. The politicians were able to claim a drop in homelessness happened under their watch, but in reality, only the definition changed.
To be clear, the Obama administration did not invent homelessness or fabricate the issue. There were legitimate goals behind the changes:
-creating standardized national reporting
-targeting limited resources (remember sequestration)
-prioritizing chronic homelessness
-improving federal performance measurement
-and building coordinated entry systems
But there was also an unintended consequence.
By narrowing the operational definition of homelessness around literal homelessness, the federal government reduced the number of people who were officially counted in HUD metrics without actually resolving the broader housing instability crisis underneath it.
A lot of us who worked inside these systems saw it firsthand.
The spreadsheet improved faster than reality did, and politicians from all directions sold you a false narrative that they reduced homelessness.
It opened my eyes to politics and still makes my blood boil.
