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Look up the Skid Row Housing Trust's collapse for a detailed look at why housing first is doomed to failure. In a nutshell: homelessness is a symptom, not a ca

Look up the Skid Row Housing Trust's collapse for a detailed look at why housing first is doomed to failure. In a nutshell: homelessness is a symptom, not a cause, and housing doesn't address the reasons that individuals are homeless. The SRHT focused on housing first, but now has hundreds of unoccupiable units that were damaged by drug-addicted and mentally-ill individuals and rendered inhospitable (and this ultimately led to the SRHT's financial collapse). For the 90+% of homeless that are homeless due to mental illness or drug abuse, treatment first is the only viable solution, but we're not legally allowed to force someone into treatment until and unless they're an immediate physical danger to themselves or others.

bombcar 3y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-people.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-... There are homeless and there are homeless; the vast majority of homeless are transiently homeless - "homeless for six weeks or fewer; 40 percent have a job". It's the "chronic homelessness" that is hard to fight, and those have a large percentage of mental illness and drug abuse. Those have to be handled differently and delicately because anything that is heavy handed will likely catch up others in the net.
thereisnospork 3y ago
It really seems like we ought to be forcibly funneling everyone either into a shelter or into a jail[0]/rehab-diversion. Persons incompatible with housing should be arrested, tried, and sent to jail or diverted to a rehab-type program for violating the laws that make them incompatible. Not so much a "housing first" policy as a 'housing mandatory' policy, coupled with enforcement of laws against things like property damage and illegal drug use. [0]For illegally camping, if nothing else. This of course would require adequate production of shelter beds for legal and ethical reasons.
abeppu 3y ago
> For the 90+% of homeless that are homeless due to mental illness or drug abuse Where did you get this number? Do you think that number is a constant, and doesn't vary with the cost of housing?
- abeppu 3y ago
  The Skid Row Housing Trust situation does sound bleak, but insofar as "housing first" is meant to provide a safe and stable environment that can enable other kinds of life improvements, I dunno that the housing they were providing fits the bill. > its portfolio is heavily weighted with early 20th century hotels with tiny living spaces, communal bathrooms and kitchens > Residents complain that lax security allows intruders to have easy access to the building and that one resident disrupts the entire building. > While giving a tour of the building to a Times reporter, a tenant pushed open the disruptive man’s door > Residents of the Hart alleged they frequently had to use buckets in their rooms as toilets. > Los Angeles County departments of health services and mental health warned the trust of habitability and safety issues that were causing clients to decline housing in its buildings Suppose you live in one of these, and every time you go to the bathroom or the kitchen, you feel unsafe (anyone could be in the building), or are going to encounter various triggers (how much harder is it to get clean if there's drug use still all around you?), and are still subject to a lot of stress, disruption and uncertainty caused by your living situation. It seems like this organization was ambitious in the number of people it could house, but took real compromises in the quality of that housing. And it depended on very high occupancy to be financially even close to viable. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-26/skid-row-housing-trust-collapse-los-angeles-homeless-housing https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-26/skid-row...
- gamblor956 3y ago
  I used to be a public defender in the LA area, and I used to work with LAHSA. My 90+% number refers to the chronic homeless, not the temporary homeless for whom financial issues or fleeing domestic violence are the primary causes of their short-term homelessness.

bombcar 3y ago

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-people.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-... There are homeless and there are homeless; the vast majority of homeless are transiently homeless - "homeless for six weeks or fewer; 40 percent have a job". It's the "chronic homelessness" that is hard to fight, and those have a large percentage of mental illness and drug abuse. Those have to be handled differently and delicately because anything that is heavy handed will likely catch up others in the net.

thereisnospork 3y ago

It really seems like we ought to be forcibly funneling everyone either into a shelter or into a jail[0]/rehab-diversion. Persons incompatible with housing should be arrested, tried, and sent to jail or diverted to a rehab-type program for violating the laws that make them incompatible. Not so much a "housing first" policy as a 'housing mandatory' policy, coupled with enforcement of laws against things like property damage and illegal drug use. [0]For illegally camping, if nothing else. This of course would require adequate production of shelter beds for legal and ethical reasons.

abeppu 3y ago

> For the 90+% of homeless that are homeless due to mental illness or drug abuse Where did you get this number? Do you think that number is a constant, and doesn't vary with the cost of housing?

abeppu 3y ago
The Skid Row Housing Trust situation does sound bleak, but insofar as "housing first" is meant to provide a safe and stable environment that can enable other kinds of life improvements, I dunno that the housing they were providing fits the bill. > its portfolio is heavily weighted with early 20th century hotels with tiny living spaces, communal bathrooms and kitchens > Residents complain that lax security allows intruders to have easy access to the building and that one resident disrupts the entire building. > While giving a tour of the building to a Times reporter, a tenant pushed open the disruptive man’s door > Residents of the Hart alleged they frequently had to use buckets in their rooms as toilets. > Los Angeles County departments of health services and mental health warned the trust of habitability and safety issues that were causing clients to decline housing in its buildings Suppose you live in one of these, and every time you go to the bathroom or the kitchen, you feel unsafe (anyone could be in the building), or are going to encounter various triggers (how much harder is it to get clean if there's drug use still all around you?), and are still subject to a lot of stress, disruption and uncertainty caused by your living situation. It seems like this organization was ambitious in the number of people it could house, but took real compromises in the quality of that housing. And it depended on very high occupancy to be financially even close to viable. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-26/skid-row-housing-trust-collapse-los-angeles-homeless-housing https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-26/skid-row...
gamblor956 3y ago
I used to be a public defender in the LA area, and I used to work with LAHSA. My 90+% number refers to the chronic homeless, not the temporary homeless for whom financial issues or fleeing domestic violence are the primary causes of their short-term homelessness.