Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

AwesomeSaucer9 t1_j702urk wrote

This would imply that, to actually solve homelessness, we should prioritize getting people off the streets into safe housing, without first putting on drug quitting/rehab requirements. Something like putting housing...first?

2

Fresh720 t1_j75ktin wrote

Yea the housing first approach is vastly superior to treatment first.

People's mental state deteriorates once they're on the streets, and they use drugs to cope. Telling them to stop with the substance abuse while not giving them a safe environment is beyond cruel

2

mangolipgloss t1_j7d714i wrote

Seattle and Portland (and now Vancouver) have been trying to do "housing first" for some time and it's been failing miraculously.....like really, absolutely, terribly failing and more people are dying on the streets than ever before despite there being millions and millions of dollars flung at this effort. Unfortunately, people that are committed to killing themselves and everyone around them cannot be bribed into normalcy.

"Safe housing" is a meaningless phrase because the only thing that makes any housing safe or unsafe is who's in and around the housing. If you fill up a "safe housing" apartment block with people that are mentally unstable, on seriously neurotoxic drugs, that have a history of violence and theft, and that have no desire or intention to reintegrate into society, with zero supervision or expectation for the people to utilize rehab services, well....that "safe housing" is gonna turn into a meth lab waiting to explode very quickly. If not that, then the building gets absolutely wrecked with fentanyl contamination, mold, piss, fecal matter, fires being started indoors, people setting each other's stuff on fire, and the structure literally being taken apart and harvested for sellable resources like copper. Nothing to say for the theft, looting, violence, and terror inflicted on the surrounding neighborhood where these housing "solutions" get thrown up. Entire swaths of the region have turned into ghost towns that turn into skid rows, and the cycle of enablement continues. Which is exactly what's happening all over the PNW.

Source: lived for 24 years in NYC and now live in PNW

1

AwesomeSaucer9 t1_j7du3kq wrote

Just living in a place isn't really a good source.

Although you do make a decent point about safe housing. That's the reason why a lot of homeless people would actually prefer sleeping on the streets as opposed to shelters, which are often overcrowded, unsafe, dingy, and burdened with a lot of strict rules. The idea behind the Housing First model is to provide people with a single occupancy room, rather than cramping them together. This makes a bigger difference than you'd think.

1