Community members discuss if government should provide free housing

CHEYENNE — As part of the Wyoming State Museum’s 2024 Civic Season program, community members gathered Tuesday evening to debate and discuss whether the government should provide shelter/housing to everyone who needs it.

The event was hosted by Braver Angels Laramie County Alliance, a nonprofit group that hosts civil debates with the goal of depolarization, and all community members were welcome to share their opinion.

During the event, conversations centered around financing, safety and morality.

Cheyenne City Council member Michelle Aldrich began the debate by speaking in opposition to the idea that the government is responsible to provide housing for all. She acknowledged the importance of affordable housing, but said it is not the government’s role.

Her first contention was that such a program would be too large and potentially mismanaged. She stated that the needs are different everywhere across the country, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Aldrich also highlighted the values of exercising a limited government.

Her next point was that of fiscal responsibility. Aldrich said this would place an enormous burden on taxpayers, and necessitate the reallocation of funds that currently support other services, such as education, health care and national defense.

“The free market, when properly regulated, has historically been the most effective mechanism for addressing housing needs,” she said. “Encouraging private sector investment and innovation can lead to more creative and diverse housing solutions. By providing incentives for developers to build affordable housing, streamlining zoning laws and reducing unnecessary regulation, we can unleash the power of the market to meet the demand for affordable housing in a sustainable way.”

She also cautioned participants about the potential dependency created by a housing program like this, stating that people would lose incentive to work and contribute to the economy if they are guaranteed housing by the government.

Another attendee echoed these concerns. They said that by multiplying the number of people currently experiencing homelessness — 653,104 according to 2023 estimates from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — by the average annual cost to live in an American home, which the speaker cited as $37,000, taxpayers would have to pay over $24 billion annually to support this program.

The speaker then contended that this number would increase exponentially as people lose initiative to continue to work to pay for their own housing.

“The only real initiative that homeless people have is housing. They’re able to afford water, they’re able to find food; if they’re unable to find housing, that’s what requires them to get jobs and change their lifestyles,” they said. “But when we say that housing is now free, that is going to change, we are going to see an influx of homeless individuals banking on free housing.”

Other community members countered this point, saying that it is not as simple as one math equation, and there is more to this discussion than seeing people as numbers and their productiveness in society.

One speaker noted that the United States has one of the largest air forces of any country. For the upcoming fiscal year, the U.S. Air Force is requesting a budget of $217.5 billion. In fiscal year 2024, the U.S. Department of Defense was allocated a budget of $2.08 trillion, about 87 times larger than $24 billion. He said that the U.S. has the funds available, and that this is not an issue of resources, but an issue of morality.

“We know that we can take care of these people. What we say when you say they need incentive is that people are not worth anything unless they are productive, unless they are adding to our GDP. I don’t think that’s right. I think humans have value simply by being,” the community member said.

Another attendee noted that people experiencing homelessness often do work. She cited a 2021 study from the University of Chicago, which estimates that 53% of people living in homeless shelters and 40% of unsheltered people were employed, either full or part-time, in the time that people were observed homeless between 2011 and 2018.

This contributed to the ongoing discussion around the theory of Housing First. This has been the predominant homeless assistance program for the past three decades, prioritizing providing permanent housing before attending to other matters such as getting a job or budgeting.

Some community members said there should be stipulations associated with free housing to assist people to learn how to own a home and how to manage their finances, while others said there should be no stipulations and that having a shelter is a basic human right that does not need to be regulated.

After the debate concluded, some attendees stuck around to visit with each other and continue conversations about addressing homelessness nationally and locally.