A new announcement came out today from the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. Considering how out of control the homelessness problem is in so many American cities, I suppose it’s good that they’re trying to do something. Unfortunately, the USICH managed to turn the announcement into a campaign advertisement for the Biden administration and they credit him with coming up with a plan that will supposedly cut the number of homeless people in the country by 25% in the next three years. That would be great to see, but the plan is based on “the success of previous plans” and everything in the document has been tried before. The title of the document immediately reveals the political nature of the announcement. It reads, “After halting rapid rise in homelessness, Biden-Harris administration announces plan to reduce homelessness 25% by 2025.”

Today, the Biden-Harris administration released a federal plan for ending homelessness in America that starts with the ambitious goal of reducing homelessness 25% by 2025. All In: The Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness builds on the success of previous plans and will do more than any previous federal effort to systemically prevent homelessness and combat the systemic racism that has created racial and ethnic disparities in homelessness.

“My plan offers a roadmap for not only getting people into housing but also ensuring that they have access to the support, services, and income that allow them to thrive,” said President Biden. “It is a plan that is grounded in the best evidence and aims to improve equity and strengthen collaboration at all levels.”

President Biden encourages state and local governments to use All In, which was developed by the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), as a blueprint for creating their own plans to prevent and end homelessness and setting their own ambitious goals for 2025.

Right at the top of the page, the announcement claims that “the Biden-Harris administration halted the rapid rise in homelessness.” The document goes on to repeat that claim twice more in the following text. That’s simply an absurd claim to try to make. The number of homeless rose more rapidly than usual after the pandemic hit and the lockdowns began for obvious reasons. When the pandemic eased and employers began reopening, the growth slowed. Neither Biden nor Harris put any new plans in place that would have resulted in lower homeless rates.

Biden attempts to take credit for this by pointing to the eviction moratorium and the federal payments sent out to people under the CARES Act and its follow-on programs. Those two factors no doubt did keep some additional people off the streets, but they were both Trump-era programs that began in March of 2020 (when Biden was still hiding in his basement) that Biden simply continued after taking office. But now Uncle Joe wants to take all the credit.

So what are the details of this miraculous program that will slash homelessness in three years? Here are the main bullet points.

• Expand the supply of and access to affordable housing and high-quality support;
• Build better systems to prevent people from losing their home in the first place;
• Collaborate across sectors, systems, and jurisdictions;
• Rely on data and evidence that show what works; and
• Include people who have experienced homelessness in the policymaking process to dismantle systems that create disparities.

In other words, create more housing for the homeless and offer support services to help them transition back into working society while providing healthcare and vocational assistance. That’s all absolutely on the mark, but cities have been doing that all around the country for quite a while. Such plans clearly help some people, at least among those who are willing to accept the help. But they’ve never really driven down the numbers.

The only truly novel plan that anyone has come up with lately is New York City’s proposal to start locking up the mentally ill among the homeless in mental health facilities even if they don’t want to go. But they’re already facing lawsuits over the idea and they likely won’t be allowed to do it.

I sincerely wish the Biden administration the best in attempting to tackle the homelessness crisis and I will applaud them if they make any measurable improvements. But this is an intractable problem that has frustrated public officials everywhere. And the ideas in this proposal are really nothing new, so I won’t be getting my hopes up.