Policy Brief: The Role of Sanitation and Waste Management in Local Responses to Homelessness

Authors: Katherine Levine Einstein (Associate Professor of Political Science, Boston University), Charley E. Willison (Assistant Professor of Public and Ecosystem Health, Cornell University)

In this brief, the Boston University Initiative on Cities, Cornell University, and Community Solutions investigate the involvement of sanitation agencies in response to homelessness in cities across the country.

Unsheltered homelessness is highly visible and presents social, political, health, and safety challenges. This reality creates a conundrum: housing — access to stable, affordable housing and necessary social and medical services — is the only successful way to end homelessness.

Yet, in the face of rising unsheltered homelessness, local leaders often experience pressure to respond to health and safety concerns related to unsheltered homelessness through alternative city agencies, like sanitation departments. They may deploy more enforcement strategies such as:

• encampment clearance without adequate notice or housing being available
• property confiscation
• relocation of unhoused people
• and waste removal.

While unsheltered homelessness presents many distinct challenges, including threats to public and individual health and safety, encampment clearance without providing housing options for residents does not end homelessness.

This policy brief investigates sanitation agencies’ involvement in response to nationwide homelessness in cities. We amass a wide array of data, including details of the roles of Departments of Public Works, Sanitation, and/or Waste Management Departments in response to homelessness from the nation’s 100 largest cities. The authors find that sanitation agencies are frequently involved in implementing city responses to homelessness, and such responses are most often distinct or isolated from primary municipal homeless policies such as homeless plans:

• Seventy-two percent of municipalities enlist sanitation institutions as a part of their response to homelessness.
• Fifty percent of sanitation policies involve the police. In America’s 50 largest cities, 68 percent of sanitation responses involve police.
• Of the 100 largest cities, the majority of sanitation strategies (63 percent) target encampment abatement, including property confiscation and physical removal of unhoused individuals from areas. Ninety percent of the 50 largest cities describe encampment abatement as the primary goal of sanitation responses to homelessness.
• Nearly half (41 percent) of sanitation strategies in the 100 largest cities include coordinating referrals to social or medical services. However, efforts where sanitation strategies link back to any type of shelter — permanent or temporary — occur in just one in 10 municipalities’ sanitation responses.

Better coordination between sanitation agencies, homeless services, and housing departments is needed to address this issue effectively. The federal government should also incentivize cities to adopt policies that emphasize long-term housing solutions over short-term punitive measures.