2024/2025 Social Justice Debates

Topic:

To achieve housing justice, the United States should focus on the root causes of homelessness rather than focusing on providing immediate permanent housing and supportive services.

Topic Statement:

“The American housing crisis is severe. It must be addressed through policy and public political discourse . . . for the sake of informing the public and expanding social support for the reforms that are needed to meet the challenge.” ~ Ronald Sundstrom, Just Shelter: Gentrification, Integration, Race, and Reconstruction, p. 1.

The issue of homelessness in the United States has reached a critical point, with a recent 2023 HUD Fact Sheet revealing that 653,104 people—approximately 20 out of every 10,000 — experienced homelessness in a single night at the end of January, the highest number recorded since reporting began in 2007. This alarming increase spans all demographics, with the number of people entering emergency shelters for the first time rising by over 23 percent between 2019 and 2023. These statistics highlight the urgency of finding a solution to this crisis, prompting an important and timely debate about the best approach to achieving housing justice for the millions of Americans facing housing insecurity. Thus, this year’s Social Justice Debates topic takes up philosopher Ronald Sundstrom’s challenge. Debates this year will ask a central question: Should the United States focus on addressing the root causes of homelessness, such as poverty, systemic inequality, inadequate mental health care, and the organization of the housing system itself? Or, should we, as we have and continue to do, prioritize providing immediate housing to those suffering from homelessness? This debate gets to the heart of the nation’s struggle to resolve homelessness and offers a platform for considering how to achieve lasting and equitable housing solutions.

Over the past thirty years, “Housing First” has become the leading strategy in government efforts to address homelessness. This policy is built on two primary principles: (1) permanent housing is the most effective solution to homelessness, and (2) housing should be provided without preconditions, such as sobriety or participation in treatment programs. The nationwide “end homelessness” movement, involving hundreds of communities, has largely centered its efforts on the widespread adoption of the Housing First model. Recently, social justice advocates have criticized the Housing First strategy as not addressing the root causes of homelessness and some seek a shift in the general approach to the homeless problem to achieve housing justice. Scholars also disagree on the current effectiveness of the Housing First model.

Focusing on the root causes of homelessness to achieve housing justice represents a fundamentally different approach from providing immediate permanent housing, with or without preconditions. The root causes approach addresses homelessness as a systemic issue rooted in broader societal inequities such as poverty, racism, inadequate healthcare, mental illness, and a lack of affordable housing. Advocates for this approach argue that homelessness can only be truly resolved by The issue of homelessness in the United States has reached a critical point, with a recent 2023 HUD Fact Sheet revealing that 653,104 people—approximately 20 out of every 10,000 — experienced homelessness in a single night at the end of January, the highest number recorded since reporting began in 2007. This alarming increase spans all demographics, with the number of people entering emergency shelters for the first time rising by over 23 percent between 2019 and 2023. These statistics highlight the urgency of finding a solution to this crisis, prompting an important and timely debate about the best approach to achieving housing justice for the millions of Americans facing housing insecurity. Thus, this year’s Social Justice Debates topic takes up philosopher Ronald Sundstrom’s challenge. Debates this year will ask a central question: Should the United States focus on addressing the root causes of homelessness, such as poverty, systemic inequality, inadequate mental health care, and the organization of the housing system itself? Or, should we, as we have and continue to do, prioritize providing immediate housing to those suffering from homelessness? This debate gets to the heart of the nation’s struggle to resolve homelessness and offers a platform for considering how to achieve lasting and equitable housing solutions.

Focusing on the root causes of homelessness to achieve housing justice represents a fundamentally different approach from providing immediate permanent housing, with or without preconditions. The root causes approach addresses homelessness as a systemic issue rooted in broader societal inequities such as poverty, racism, inadequate healthcare, mental illness, and a lack of affordable housing. Advocates for this approach argue that homelessness can only be truly resolved by confronting and dismantling these structural barriers, ensuring that marginalized populations have access to equitable opportunities and resources. This perspective emphasizes long-term, justice-oriented reforms aimed at creating a fairer housing system overall. Ronald Sundstrom, in Just Shelter: Gentrification, Integration, Race, and Reconstruction, emphasizes the need for a deep “reconstruction” of the housing system as a critical precondition for solving homelessness. Central to Sundstrom’s approach to such a reconstruction is the concept of spatial justice, which involves creating equitable access to housing and reconfiguring urban, suburban, and rural spaces to ensure that marginalized communities are not unjustly segregated or displaced. In this view, without a comprehensive overhaul of our housing system any other efforts to end homelessness will remain incomplete and inadequate.

In contrast, providing immediate permanent housing without preconditions, as in the Housing First model, prioritizes quickly placing individuals into stable housing as a first step to addressing other personal challenges more effectively. This model focuses on immediate relief over systemic change, seeking to mitigate the impacts of homelessness rather than resolve the underlying societal problems that contribute to it. Consequently, while the Housing First approach provides critical short-term solutions, the root causes approach seeks deeper, long-term transformation in the housing and social systems to prevent homelessness from occurring in the first place.

Debating these divergent approaches—focusing on root causes versus providing immediate permanent housing—generates an important dialogue for social justice advocates because it raises critical questions about the most effective and equitable ways to address systemic inequality. This debate forces advocates to confront whether housing justice can truly be achieved through immediate interventions alone or whether and to what extent broader societal changes are necessary to dismantle the structures that perpetuate homelessness. On the Affirmative side of the debate, teams will be encouraged to explore the ways in which the experience of homelessness and housing insecurity are inherently connected to many other social and economic injustices; on the Negative side, teams are encouraged to focus on discovering the best ways to immediately address homelessness and housing insecurity as problems in need of urgent action irrespective of such structural considerations.

What “housing justice” means for this debate can be broadly understood as the equitable distribution of housing resources and opportunities, ensuring that all individuals—regardless of race, income, gender, or background—have access to safe, stable, and affordable housing. The goal of housing justice is to create a fair and inclusive housing system that provides long-term security and remedies past and present inequities. This is not to say different concepts of justice cannot be debated; the provided definition of housing justice still leaves room to debate varying concepts of justice because it encompasses multiple dimensions of equity and fairness, which can be interpreted in various ways. While it emphasizes the equitable distribution of housing resources, the definition does not prescribe a singular pathway to achieving these goals. This allows for differing interpretations of what justice means in practice—whether it should prioritize immediate access to housing (as in the Housing First model) or focus on rectifying deeper social inequalities through long-term reforms and, for example, seek to create spatial justice as Sundstrom argues. For some, justice may involve the prompt fulfillment of the basic right to housing, ensuring everyone has a stable home, regardless of other factors. For others, justice may involve addressing the root causes of homelessness, such as racial discrimination and economic disenfranchisement, to prevent housing instability from occurring in the first place. Thus, the definition opens a space for debate over whether justice is best served by addressing immediate needs or by pursuing systemic changes that target the underlying drivers of homelessness.

In this debate, those advocating for addressing root causes emphasize that homelessness is the product of systemic failures that perpetuate housing insecurity. This perspective shifts culpability away from individuals and places it on societal structures, arguing that true housing justice can only be achieved through reforms that dismantle these underlying inequities. On the other side, proponents of providing immediate permanent housing will focus on alleviating the immediate crisis of homelessness through individual service delivery on a case-by-case basis to account for each person’s specific situation and struggles. This clash inherently involves a discussion of responsibility as it relates to the efficacy of different strategies for ending homelessness and housing insecurity: on one side of the debate, society is made responsible for preventing and solving homelessness by confronting structural inequalities and fundamentally rethinking the housing system; on the other side, individuals are empowered to better their own lives after achieving housing stability and security. While individual empowerment and case management continues to be the predominant method of solving homelessness in the U.S., an approach that considers root causes would likely move beyond such individual responsibility and look to broader societal changes that can create conditions for housing justice.

By engaging in this dialogue, social justice advocates can explore the complexities of housing policies, consider the impact on marginalized communities, and weigh the trade-offs between urgent needs and deeper reforms. It also fosters a critical examination of how resources are allocated and whether current strategies are adequately addressing the racial, economic, and social inequities that fuel homelessness. Ultimately, this debate enriches the discourse within the social justice movement, pushing for a more comprehensive and inclusive understanding of how to achieve housing justice that goes beyond just providing shelter and addresses the root causes of housing insecurity.

Topic Scholar:

Ronald R. Sundstrom is Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Francisco. He is also a member of USF’s African American Studies program, teaches for the university’s Honors College, and is the Humanities Advisor for the SF Urban Film Festival. His research focuses on the philosophy of race and the related areas of racism, xenophobia, and mixed-race identity; political philosophy and urban policy; and figures in African American political theory, especially Frederick Douglass. He published several essays and two books in these areas, The Browning of America and The Evasion of Social Justice (SUNY 2008) and Just Shelter: Integration, Gentrification, and Race and Reconstruction (Oxford 2023).

Fall Opener Schedule:

The Fall opener will be a one day competition on Sunday, September 15. The details/invite shall be forthcoming soon along with a link for registration. However, I expect we will follow the same one day schedule as last year.

Sunday

8:30am Breakfast and Check-In (Engelhard 100)

9am Round 1

11am Round 2

12:30pm Lunch (Engelhard 100)

1:30pm Round 3

3:30pm Round 4

5:30pm Final and Novice Breakout Final

Lodging:

Hampton Inn & Suites Newark-Harrison Hotel (recommendation is nearby, no official “tournament hotel”)

100 Passaic Avenue

Harrison NJ 07029 (973) 483-1900

Parking:

School is out and all the gates to the staff lots are up and are free to park in on the weekend if you do decide to drive. I would recommend the lot near the CPS building on Bleeker street right next to Engelhard Hall which is most of the tournament will take place. The hotel also has parking available for free. Main Competition Site Engelhard Hall 190 University Avenue Newark, NJ 07102 Parking lot near SPAA is at 111 Washington Street if you turn onto Bleeker street right after SPAA you can’t miss it.

Registration:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZmREVUu4VdRP-5jke6eeZU6y0z272IKa9qBVGN8Mk20/edit?gid=0#gid=0