>"Tenant screening and selection practices promote accepting applicants regardless of their sobriety
or use of substances, completion of treatment, or participation in services"
This is such an important piece of a complex puzzle. It easy to see from the outside that substance abuse is self-destructive behavior. The problem is that these abusers, consciously or not, feel that the substance is the only thing that helps them and keeps them from totally losing their shit. The authoritarian approach of "quit abusing substances or no housing for you" has failed spectacularly.
Getting these people on the path of recovery requires the lower tiers of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (like safety, food, shelter, etc...) to be securely in place first.
Substance abuse contributes to homelessness AND homelessness contributes to substance abuse. It's a downward spiral.
(When living rough, a lot of people turn to self medication. Someone already suffering (eg chronic pain) loses access to proper meds will then use whatever's available. Etc.)
Expecting people to be clean and sober before getting housing is imposing inappropriate morals and standards onto an already terrible situation.
Ok, it’s been 5 years. At this point the state should be able to point to quantitative and qualitative improvements in the homeless population. Can they? If so, where are those studies?
They can't, it continues to get worse with each idea they come up with. It will continue this way, but they will keep moving the goalposts and changing the plan, more expensively each time.
The bad life choices are not going to stop based on having a roof instead of a tent. The idea that all of the services that have been offered, and not taken up, are suddenly going to now be carefully considered and accepted because they are in an apartment, is some serious wishful thinking.
This is a collection of loosely-assembled hopes, labeled and prettied-up as social "science". It's more of an escape plan for politicians than anything else.
Unconditional housing is the only way. Its cheaper than having them live on the streets for the city. Its also morally imperative to have a safety net for our most vulnerable. They are our friends & family of this country and deserve better.
What if you offer a homeless person free housing and they decline? If there is housing available but they still choose to camp on the sidewalk, should the police then move them away?
If they decline, you can't force them. The goal is not to reduce the metric to 0 homeless on the streets. The whole attempt is to help people who are homeless get back on their feet. When you have food, a place to stay, and support then you can start thinking about improving your situation.
There will be a number that will reject any help. But the overwhelming majority will want to improve their lives and programs like this will give them an opportunity.
I think there's multiple sides of the argument that getting everyone off the streets is the goal:
From one angle, if someone's in such a bad state that they refuse shelter, is it really better from a "help them get back on their feet" to leave them there?
From another angle, we treat very few other civic obligations as "optional." If you don't want to pay sales tax, you still have to, for instance.
FWIW, while buying them food I’ve met a few homeless people in Seattle.
What I learned from those conversations was that while “enough beds” exist and are provided, not enough of them are in “sober shelters” and it’s apparently very very hard to get into sober shelters.
Right now we talk about it all as “all housing is the same”. We probably need more housing for the homeless that exist for the ones who want/can’t help but to use, the ones who are validated as sober but also the ones who want to be sober but aren’t verified as sober yet. I’m sure all of these exist, but we definitely need to be a better job tracking those buckets differently, allocating resources better, and talking about them as separate things.
You also pretty commonly hear the opposite, too, though -- that there are too many sobriety/no on premise consumption rules that people are unwilling or unable to comply with so won't even consider shelters assuming that to be the case.
I think you're right that tracking those better and better communication of what's available are both needed.
What helps is continued outreach and trust-building. Homeless people can experience traumatic conditions in shelters that can cause them to avoid social programs.
You would be mistaken. I'm no expert. But, I've been in SF long enough to talk to many homeless people there and read a bit on the subject.
Paranoia, drug dependence, coping self-delusion, self-destructive pride and sometimes genuine personal need cause a huge number of homeless people to outright refuse housing when offered.
Having worked with the homeless, declining free housing may be the most sane thing to do depending on the offer.
An example from the past year in the bay area: A woman was offered a free room in a house with other homeless people. The doors did not have locks, and a someone who had raped her was living there. Some of the beds had bedbugs.
I know this sounds over the top but there's basically no oversight for a lot of these programs. Many are run by people just looking to get homeless people out of the way. A shocking number of free housing offerings are worse than a good camping setup.
Don't want to get into an argument, but it may be worth some caution to consider it insane to just want to exist in the world as most other animals do. The film Leave No Trace and to some extent Nomadland touch on this concept pretty well.
Readit News
This is such an important piece of a complex puzzle. It easy to see from the outside that substance abuse is self-destructive behavior. The problem is that these abusers, consciously or not, feel that the substance is the only thing that helps them and keeps them from totally losing their shit. The authoritarian approach of "quit abusing substances or no housing for you" has failed spectacularly.
Getting these people on the path of recovery requires the lower tiers of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (like safety, food, shelter, etc...) to be securely in place first.
Emphatically agree with you.
Substance abuse contributes to homelessness AND homelessness contributes to substance abuse. It's a downward spiral.
(When living rough, a lot of people turn to self medication. Someone already suffering (eg chronic pain) loses access to proper meds will then use whatever's available. Etc.)
Expecting people to be clean and sober before getting housing is imposing inappropriate morals and standards onto an already terrible situation.
https://web.archive.org/web/20171219035611/https://www.hcd.c...
The bad life choices are not going to stop based on having a roof instead of a tent. The idea that all of the services that have been offered, and not taken up, are suddenly going to now be carefully considered and accepted because they are in an apartment, is some serious wishful thinking. This is a collection of loosely-assembled hopes, labeled and prettied-up as social "science". It's more of an escape plan for politicians than anything else.
There will be a number that will reject any help. But the overwhelming majority will want to improve their lives and programs like this will give them an opportunity.
I think there's multiple sides of the argument that getting everyone off the streets is the goal:
From one angle, if someone's in such a bad state that they refuse shelter, is it really better from a "help them get back on their feet" to leave them there?
From another angle, we treat very few other civic obligations as "optional." If you don't want to pay sales tax, you still have to, for instance.
https://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/our-programs/advocac...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callahan_v._Carey
This is a legal judgement, not a moral one
What I learned from those conversations was that while “enough beds” exist and are provided, not enough of them are in “sober shelters” and it’s apparently very very hard to get into sober shelters.
Right now we talk about it all as “all housing is the same”. We probably need more housing for the homeless that exist for the ones who want/can’t help but to use, the ones who are validated as sober but also the ones who want to be sober but aren’t verified as sober yet. I’m sure all of these exist, but we definitely need to be a better job tracking those buckets differently, allocating resources better, and talking about them as separate things.
I think you're right that tracking those better and better communication of what's available are both needed.
What helps is continued outreach and trust-building. Homeless people can experience traumatic conditions in shelters that can cause them to avoid social programs.
Paranoia, drug dependence, coping self-delusion, self-destructive pride and sometimes genuine personal need cause a huge number of homeless people to outright refuse housing when offered.
Far from the worst uptake and outcomes, but also far from great.
An example from the past year in the bay area: A woman was offered a free room in a house with other homeless people. The doors did not have locks, and a someone who had raped her was living there. Some of the beds had bedbugs.
I know this sounds over the top but there's basically no oversight for a lot of these programs. Many are run by people just looking to get homeless people out of the way. A shocking number of free housing offerings are worse than a good camping setup.