The state of housing justice and public health is nothing short of a political polycrisis. A term defined as a “cluster of distinct crises that interact in ways that they and/or their effects tend to reinforce each other.” Michael D. Durham of Funders Together for Housing Justice used this term to describe the intersection of homelessness, overdose, and unmet mental health needs, because lawmakers are each crisis to exacerbate the other. This was made even more clear by the administration’s decision to deploy the national guard to displace unhoused communities and divert funding towards carceral punishment instead of proven, housing-first strategies for housing justice.

Movement leaders on May 2025 webinar hosted by Funders Together for Housing Justice and Democratizing Development Program offered a warning call for housing justice funders to resource integrated powerbuilding, narrative, legal, and policy strategies. Speakers from National Homelessness Law Center, VOCAL-US, and Drug Policy Alliance offered a sobering assessment: infotainment media outlets  and lawmakers are leading a coordinated campaign to fuel public perceptions of chaotic, unchecked urban communities to profit off of the erosion of democratic institutions and discard proven community-based solutions that address public health and housing precarity.

Between 2020 and 2024, funding for homelessness and housing development rose to about $19.2 billion, and funding specifically for anti-homelessness programming reached $9.4billion. Housing justice movement groups have questioned how accessible and effective resources are in addressing the root causes of homelessness and housing precarity. Program strategies of funders often focus on single-issue strategies such as policy to protect, produce, or preserve housing; but rarely do strategies address the implications and concrete human impact of housing precarity. The decades-long, and geographically pervasive lack of deeply affordable housing, has created the conditions for the overdose and public health polycrisis we’re seeing across the country. Funders looking to support solutions need to commit multi-year resources that fully fund groups to tackle both housing precarity and public health. Otherwise, they’ll mutually exacerbate one another and galvanize punishment and incarceration instead of care and housing justice.

Read the full article about the harms of criminalizing homelessness at Neighborhood Funders Group.