> People are comfortable on the streets, they enjoy the freedom
This is the significant distinction between providing crappy shelter and providing a home. A lot of shelter spaces come with a lot of strings, and the first step to fixing the issues is to accept that you need to cut many or most of the strings - if a significant proportion of homeless prefer homelessness to the help you're offering, perhaps the "help" isn't all that helpful.
If you want to get people off the street, you need to provide a similar level of freedom in the housing you provide as what it replaces.
> (3) People are naturally generous/irresponsible with belongings and income that they will spontaneously share the windfall with everyone they know. So your shelter for one man will end up being a flophouse for a rotating cast of shady types
Is it worse having them in a house than on the streets? And how much of a problem is this going to be when everyone involved have their own shelter? It's only a windfall if you provide it to a few rather than everyone who needs housing.
>if a significant proportion of homeless prefer homelessness to the help you're offering, perhaps the "help" isn't all that helpful.
If you want to get people off the street, you need to provide a similar level of freedom in the housing you provide as what it replaces.
Can you elaborate on the the specific rules you’re referring to? That might help guide the discussion.
Because at face value, there seems to be an issue where there isn’t an acknowledgment that with freedom comes responsibility. That responsibility looks an awful lot like rules that many people in these situations struggle to manage. It seems hard to argue for one without necessitating the other but maybe some specific examples could clarify your point.
Many/most shelters will not let you bring in a pet. If you've never had any hard times in your life and had a dog companion at the same time you might not understand, but for many people having that pet is the only thing sustaining their will to live day to day.
Many/most shelters will not let you sleep with your companion, even if you're married. The comfort of another human is an easy thing to get used to, and can be devastating to go without. Generally though if you're running a shelter and taking in people with MH issues or other challenges this one makes some sense, you are always at risk bringing of in folks who can't respect boundaries and will want to have inappropriate intimacy in the open (for instance).
All shelters have a strict limit on how many personal belongings you can bring in. If you have no house, but you do have a shopping cart full of possessions, what are you supposed to do with them?
I think these are good examples and there are probably viable solutions to them. I’ve heard of the purple leash program that is looking to expand the number of shelters that allow pets for example. Thanks for elaborating!
I can go see the the homeless. Pets are not keeping the masses of homeless out of shelters.
Not being able to take drugs when ever the hell they feel like it is what keeps them out.
The only thing that will fix this is if we change the laws. And those laws are going to feel weird at first. But we need to classify people who are homeless for more than 6 weeks as mentally ill. And at that point we force them into rehab facilities.
We haven’t been able to involuntarily house the mentally ill for decades in the US, though. I fear this approach would just exacerbated a stigma around mental illness
The asylum/institution model was abandoned largely because there appeared to be widespread abuse, neglect, and poor outcomes, which were typified by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
The trouble is that people apparently decided that the abuse, neglect, and poor outcomes were due to inpatient status and not anything inherent to the treatments themselves, so in the 40+ years since asylums all closed, we've basically reinvented invisible asylums with a massive apparatus of voluntary, inefficient outpatient programs which are rife with abuse, neglect, and poor outcomes.
Case in point: there's a huge Medicaid scandal in Arizona right now regarding Native Americans. What happened is that there were dudes in vans going to New Mexico, and basically kidnapping natives (mostly Navajo who were off the reservation) and promising them addiction recovery services, mental health treatment, and stuff, if they would only get in the van and cross state lines.
The homes they took them to were unlicensed, mismanaged, and committing fraud, and often dumped the natives out on the street with no resources or way home.
Talk about abusing a doubly-vulnerable population; it's appalling. And to think that there is little stopping someone like me from being caught in that.
One of the understandings behind "housing first" policies is that when you treat chronic homelessness as a public health problem, you need to attack the big symptoms first (being unhoused) before you can see the outcomes you want (being a productive member of society).
Housing isn't a reward, it's a basic human need. And it's the baseline for treating people - because you cannot treat people if you cannot find them.
> One of the understandings behind "housing first" policies is that when you treat chronic homelessness as a public health problem, you need to attack the big symptoms first (being unhoused) before you can see the outcomes you want (being a productive member of society).
That’s somewhat inaccurate; housing is attacked not because it is a big symptom, but because it (1) grratly complicates addressing the other problems, and (2) admits of a fairly direct solution.
If we could just simply give people thr absence of addiction or mental health problems, that’d be a stronger contender for a first intervention where the problems are cooccurring, but factually we can’t so its not an option.
(Devils advocate bc I don’t actually believe this but think it illustrates an important point):
Why don’t we just give them money? Because, ultimately, housing need is there largely because they can’t afford housing right? So the deeper cause is a financial one.
I suspect most people exist be onboard with this because they know it won’t solve the underlying problems. It’s also the same with simply giving “free” housing.
Most people who deal in processes understand treating the root cause it paramount and should be their priority. Getting sidetracked by proximate causes is a good way to squander resources that can also tend to make things worse.
> Most people who deal in processes understand treating the root cause it paramount
I think that over-simplifies this type of wicked problem where consequences become causes. For example, poverty and under-housing causes abusive childhoods, mental health and substance use issues.
The challenge is not to identify a leaky pipe to stop a flood but to intervene in a complex dynamical system and convert doom cycles into virtuous upward spirals of improvement.
I'm familiar with GiveDirectly. It seems like a good organization on the whole, but I've only seen a few studies related to it and (due to modifications in evaluation criteria) it's no longer recommended by GiveWell.
>I think that over-simplifies this type of wicked problem
I disagree. It's acknowledging it's a very complicated problem. As such, we shouldn't get fooled by thinking that if we just focus on this aspect (housing), it will lead to a sustainable solution. You may have to address proximate causes, but you absolutely have to focus on the root cause if you want to make a lasting improvement. Otherwise, it is likely to just turn into a bottomless pit to dump resources. This is like practically any other complex system that needs improvement. There are rarely simple "hacks" to solve the problem, and they take an understanding of the entire system dynamics. But that's not to say the focus shouldn't still be on the root cause.
One benefit of meeting basic needs (like housing, food, utilities) directly is that it's easier for the people who need it. Some others here have pointed out that many homeless people have something that keeps them from managing a household, and taking as much of that off their shoulders is helpful in that it allows them to build a life step-by-step, for example by focusing on mental and physical health first and at some point education, instead of having to adjust to a lot of stuff at once.
Also, yeah, addictions are a thing. And I don't mean that as in "Oh, those people are so irresponsible! We can't trust them to spend their money right!". Addiction fucks you up (and/or is a result of the world fucking you up), and if what has been your only way to feel not-completely-terrible for a while is the other option, I don't think I can personally blame anyone who isn't able to take steps along a long and difficult road with uncertain outcomes, with their basic needs still not met.
In short: Money is a tool that can be used to meet basic needs, but by itself it does not meet basic needs. Using it to do that is not easy, especially if you're not used to that, and double-especially if you're addicted to something as a result of your shitty living conditions.
(I should note that I'm _not_ speaking from experience here. If someone who has some, ideally someone who has second-hand experience with many people, please correct me!)
Don’t you think it makes sense to attack the root problem (addiction) as well as the “big symptoms”? Wouldn’t that look like a rule to be in a treatment program or be otherwise clean?
I can get on board with housing being a basic human need that society helps supply. But that’s subtly different than the OP’s claim of housing with virtually the same freedom from rules. I’m not sure “unfettered housing” is a human right.
Addiction is the problem homeless is a symptom. Homelessness is a temporary state that one can move in and out of based on access to economic resources but addiction is a permanent state that though great willpower some can occasionally be suppressed.
I have worked with addicts from a range of backgrounds. The causal arrow does not point simply in either direction.
Addiction is a complex result of genetics and circumstance.
A background of poverty makes addiction much more likely. It is unquestionably harder to get clean if you do not have basic social security, let alone no secure shelter. Of course it is. The best indicator of whether you’ll successfully get clean is socio-economic background.
Once you are homeless (people generally prefer “unhoused” these days), being an addict makes it more difficult to get off the street if most state-provided shelter is contingent on getting clean.
So much state-provided shelter is completely inadequate as a secure base for turning your life around- look at the literal human warehouse that Vegas has just built.
A joined-up, personalised, and evidence-based system of care is required that does not exist where I live in the UK or in the US. Frustratingly, all evidence suggests that providing that system is cheaper than not doing so, whilst also relieving astonishing human suffering.
Providing an easy path off the street will help with addiction rates. Providing addiction treatment services will get people off the street. Do both at the same time as part of the same system of care and things really start working.
A google search will readily provide studies that confirm this.
Addiction is termed “persistent” rather than “permanent” by the NIDA. With respect for the net positive effect of abstinence-only programs, I have seen plenty of addicts stay clean long enough to create a stable life for themselves and then go on to safely use alcohol or drugs recreationally. Although, of course, plenty who have attempted that and then spiralled back down. Every individual is different, and tailored care works best.
I think what they're saying is that addiction is itself a symptom of some other trauma, where substance abuse is a way to fill some void or distract from some hurt.
True in some cases, but for some it's simply that addiction is genetic. It is almost physically/mentally impossible for them to say no to something once they experienced a high or euphoria from it, unless they are dogged about avoiding it at all costs. An alcoholic addiction can easily become an opiate/stimulant addiction or gambling addiction, they have to somehow manage to stay away from all of it. Being on the street makes that even harder because now you also have the stress of not having any shelter.
But they also framed it as simply a means to an end: "finding people so you can treat them."
I can sympathize with the "baseline for treating people" argument, but that, by itself, doesn't address the fact that there is a fundamental symmetry missing. If people want "freedom" they also need to demonstrate "responsibility" for a society to work. There is no free lunch, unfortunately. Literally every "baseline" right guaranteed by the US Constitution can be framed in this same give/take dynamic.
The OP was conflating the issue IMO. They are saying basic shelter isn't enough; people have a right to free housing with no strings attached. I think those are two very different mental frameworks to view this problem.
Ah, ok. I think I see the confusion. I think you're applying a false dichotomy here. It's not an "either you are clean or you don't get housing" in most places. But, if a therapist sees that addiction is a contributing factor, they will often make the free housing contingent on being part of a drug rehab program. So it's not "clean or else you're back on the street" but it's looking at it as part of the overall problem that's keeping a person from being self-sufficient. They aren't even generally piss tested as part of that. The cases where they are forced to be clean prior is when they are referred to housing services by a probation or parole officer. But that "remain clean" condition is more a function of the probation/parole than the housing program.
For me it boils down to this, which is more successful: treating addiction without houselessness as a factor or treating it with houselessness as a factor?
If it's the former, then you provide the home to increase efficacy.
I understand this point; I think where most people take issue is that it doesn't seem very effective. (or maybe it is, and people are just ignorant of the impact). And once you give people a benefit, it's exceedingly hard to take it away, potentially leaving society worse off than before.
Where other than Finland is it being tried? What is systematically failing is to expect people to get clean before providing housing. It doesn't get people clean and it doesn't get people off the streets.
See my response to your comment below. It's the general case (where I live, at least) that people aren't required to be clean to get housing. But they are required to be part of a rehab program is a therapist/counselor/case worker has deemed addiction to be a contributing factor to their circumstances. They don't have to be clean in those cases, but working toward being cured of their addiction.
> Don’t you think it makes sense to attack the root problem (addiction) as well as the “big symptoms”?
Addiction very often isn’t the root problem, there may not even be a unique root problem. Addiction is a difficult to manage persistent condition that complicates, is conplicated by, reinforces, and co-occurs with other problems, which may be caused by it, may cause it, or may be linked by more distant causal connections or not, at root, commonly caused despite interacting and reinforcing each other once present.
You need to deal with the complex situation presented, not try to solve a tricky and generally unsolvable chicken-and-egg problem that is usually irrelevant to the path forward.
Let me be clear: I’m not advocating an either-or solution. My point is that the complex problem must be treated as exactly that. To me, just focusing on giving people housing is the antithesis of treating it as a complex problem.
Don’t expect much. They give “no strings attached” housing in SF and not only does it not help people get off drugs, it results in millions of dollars a year in expenses to pay for damages caused by the newly housed.
I have been on the streets and an an opioid addict in medication assisted treatment. I have yet to meet a single addict who returned to normalcy without taking some stock of the damage they’ve caused and making amends to change their life. People who are given unearned housing with no restrictions continue to live their life in a way that harms not only themselves, but those around them.
There’s a reason that the only countries where safe supply/legalization have worked (Portugal, Estonia, Switzerland, etc) continued to attack drug markets and sellers and set expectations around public assistance and behaviour from those receiving it. You cannot just give an addict a home and drugs and suddenly expect them to become upstanding, contributing members of society.
(I won’t even delve into how the current California/West Coast paradigm is exceptionally dehumanizing as it presumes these people are only able to do one thing - consume money and drugs.)
I’m probably going to be homeless soon and based on the research I’ve done on the shelters near me, I’m going to try like hell not to forced into a shelter.
For one, from what I’ve read, the conditions are squalid. So many reports of bed bugs, old moldy food, etc. I’ve heard family shelters and shelters for women are nicer, but I’m a single male. If I want to sleep with bugs and eat shit, I can do that myself while keeping away from volatile people and situations.
And then there’s theft. Some of the rules regarding property and just the general environment seem to lead to a lot of theft. If I catch someone stealing my shit, I’m going to defend myself and my property, which I imagine a shelter won’t take too kindly to.
Then there’s the fact that they seemed staffed with jaded, underpaid individuals who don’t give a shit about you and want to force their believes down your throat while the owners continuously suck down government money. They also seem to be very much first come first serve, some even charge you money to stay, so it’s not like it’s even a stable position.
In other forums, I’ve heard homeless complain they can’t bring their pets and would rather stay on the street than lose their best friend. From a public perspective, cleaning up and repairing pet damage seems an extra unnecessary cost that may hurt the next person that wants to live in the unit who may have allergies.
In seattle, I’ve seen people in low income housing units complain their neighbors use drugs like marijuana, which they are extremely sensitive to. If you’re trying to get sober, having a neighbor using drugs makes it that much harder.
Imho, most of these rules are normal “be nice to your neighbor”
There's reasons why homeless members of society have dogs. And well, it ain't pretty.
First, it's a deterrent to cops who fuck around. If they harass or arrest a homeless person with a dog, it's a whole lot more work that involves animal control.... So dogs are cop deterrent.
Secondly, it's defense in some of the homeless camps. Dogs will defend their human.
I get it, but if they had housing, the excuses fall apart. Cops won’t bother them if they are in a shelter not causing issues. The housing would provide its own protections via securely locked doors and shelter staff.
I’ve also seen enough police killing dog videos to question the first point.
This is a terrible strawman. I haven't seen anyone here make a claim that homeless have no moral worth or being unworthy of respect. I think there's a case made for the opposite: expecting someone to be actively working towards self-sufficiency (if they're capable) is treating them with a modicum of decency and respect by not infantilizing them.
People are actively arguing that they don't deserve to have the right to keep pets. People are also arguing that they should be forcibly housed and their agency takes from them. How are those not saying that they don't deserve basic human decency?
Because in the current situation, they can’t be forcibly housed unless they prove to be a danger. They can’t just be swept up and incarcerated. Nobody is taking away their pets unless they are trying to go to a shelter that has a no-pets policy (often for good reason).
Hell, I know a behavioral health supervisor who has an angry patient wielding a machete come to their office and the police didn’t think it warranted taking them in. I feel like this is a made up false dichotomy that society either needs to create homeless internment camps or give away free housing, no questions asked. It’s a bad faith narrative.
Those strings are for the safety and even comfort of other people who use the shelter. Let’s put it this way, one reason often used by unhoused why they avoid shelters is because they don’t feel safe around the other people in the shelters, especially the addicts. So you have strings, because even addicts don’t want to be in a shelter with other addicts. Yes, it excludes, but not having the strings also excludes. You cut most of those strings, you lose even more people who are willing to use those shelters.
This is why tiny homes are touted as solutions (you get private space that isn’t shared), but even in that case they try to form stable communities by again, applying strings (having a neighbor burn down their house in the middle of the night affects other residents of the community).
If you don’t have strings attached you end up with tiny brothels, tiny drug dens and tiny Arms depots. So you still have to have rules and enforcement.
A lot of activities are hard to do in a tent. And it’s not really binary, yes they will happen, no they won’t happen as much.
Recently a few people were murdered at a squatted property near where I live that the police left alone for far too long. Things just get out of hand too quickly at a property taken over by addicts (regardless of their housing status), and yes, that still happens in tents on the street, just to a lesser degree (although we did have a fight for drug turf recently at one encampment that involved IEDs, so maybe that’s changing?).
I’m currently involved in a project to develop a tech intervention to support outreach workers in providing emergency shelter to unhoused individuals[1].
Part of the goal is to get data on why people don’t accept available shelter and how to address those blockers by creating more shelter spaces that meet more people’s needs. We know we will see the ability to keep companion animals, safe storage for personal items, and the ability to stay with family members as reasons people don’t take shelter. It’s easy to empathize with that. If I were a woman on the street with my mid-sized dog (companionship and protection) with all the possessions I had left (after months at least of hard decisions about what I couldn’t take) and a 13-year-old son (we are likely to get separated in shelter placement) I would be resistant to most of the options available to me. And that doesn’t even begin to address what led me to the streets in the first place (job loss, family support system loss, domestic violence, health expenses).
This is my opinion, but based on some observational experience, the only people for whom living on the streets is “easier” are those who are young, healthy, and have a family support system to return to.
Which will be an issue in convincing those who wants to engage in those behaviors to take up the offers. So what?
You address what you can, and start by treating them as you would others. We're not talking about letting them get away with more, but about not treating them as second class people with restrictions no non-homeless people would put up with.
The environment of shelters without drugs is exactly why they’re so appealing for the type of person they’re successful for. Most of these shelters have shockingly high success rates and shockingly low occupancy.
Other than age limitations, I can’t think of any other real restrictions.
Are we just talking about allowing drug use in shelters here?
The actual restrictions of real world shelters - you must leave the place in the morning and can go back only in the evening. You can not lock your things, so you have to be constantly on guard. You cant come after certain hour, meaning making quite a lot of low paid jobs impossible to even get. Also, cramped unsanitary or otherwise unsafe conditions, frequently making a good place on street (tent or old building) actually better.
That is from top of head, when I last time looked into it.
It can be as simple as availability of workers. Or the space not being suitable for 24/7 occupation. Shelters are not exactly rich institutions. Likewise, the cramped and unsanitary conditions are frequently result of "well that is what we can afford" situation.
But also, a bit off topic, many real world rules do not have good reasons. Plenty of rules are arbitrary, just because someone had power to make them.
Individual rules can be a result of one freak occurrence but if many different shelters systematically converge on a similar set of rules then there must be a reason.
You can Google a lot of the answers to your questions in this thread.
Housing ongoing drug users costs more per person. Services do not have the budget. You also don’t want active users around other vulnerable clients.
Usually specialist “Wet houses” are set up, following a harm reduction approach. It is a messy business and as a result politically difficult. That is not rational- as far as we know from research, the additional stability and access to harm reduction programs are effective in moderating clients’ patterns of using. Wet houses also cost less than leaving addicts on the streets.
I specifically did not said "freak occurence". Overly punitive rules for low classes are not freak occurrence, they are normal.
Second, I gave you pretty strong reason - low funds. These institutions are super underfunded and very disliked by middle and upper classes. Being open during day means you have to have worker in place. Workers cost money. Being open means water and heating runs. Both cost money. Lockers for property cost money. They are not cheap. They need to maintained.
A political distaste for homeless people would be high on my list. You can see the number of people in the comments here wanting them treated close to criminals.
It’s because the homeless activists intentionally mix the two populations in the conversation. When people talk about homeless in Seattle they typically are taking about the criminals that form the illegal encampments. Activists will lump all the people who are sleeping on couches and in cars and pretend those are the same group.
Because, they are all homeless. The coach and car is something that any of the people can loose very easily. The difference is really just the "has sleeping bag or not" kind.
The difference you claim here is just really between the poorer and slightly less poor homeless.
Most shelters also have a in and out time. It's not your home, or a place to stay during the day. It's a place to sleep then your out again in the AM. Seems like a huge restriction.
1) should actually be “some people just want to be homeless.” Including people who could already return to a nice, clean home, but do not. So that remains unexplained.
However it should at least allow us to prioritize. Someone who just doesn't want to get off the street should be lower priority than someone who doesn't want to be there and for whatever reason can't make it work.
> If you want to get people off the street, you need to provide a similar level of freedom in the housing you provide as what it replaces.
Having a home at all significantly restricts freedom. Let alone all the maintenance it requires. If it's an apartment is it too restrictive to their freedom? Should they be exempt from lease terms (no pets/no smoking/no drugs etc.)? Should they have a free housekeeper on top?
At which point is it acceptable to expect some level of responsibility from an adult receiving so much in entitlements? I'd argue that an excess of no-strings-attached programs makes homelessness more attractive than hard work to people who are on the edge.
The problem with American treatments of homeless, drug addiction, even public health is the idea that EVERYONE has some level of personal responsibility – that there is a minimum threshold to "earn" something that you have to do and if you don't, you deserve your fate. And this transforms into public resentment because "if they aren't willing to do the bare minimum, why should my tax dollars support them?"
We need to get away from thinking about these problems as a way to force people to "earn" the relief, and instead think about the resolutions as a way of making everyone else's life better. I don't like that there is homelessness. I don't like seeing drug addicts poop in the street. I want folks in that situation to be taken care of for MY sake – to make my city better, to relieve me of the moral burden of thinking about people suffering, etc.
Because here's the thing: Some people are NEVER going to be able to maintain responsibility. Some people are NEVER going to be upstanding adults. NO MATTER WHAT we put them through, the worst prisons, the worst homelessness, the most outrageous policing, they're just never going to change. There is no remedy that solves this problem with a burden on the unhoused individual. It's society deciding to solve the problem REGARDLESS of whether the individual has "earned" the resolution.
>think about the resolutions as a way of making everyone else's life better.
I think most people are willing to chip in to solve the problem. Not just for the transactional benefit of making their own life better, but also just for moralistic purposes of not wanting to see others suffer. I think what you're referring to is more of a political one, where people see their tax dollars consistently being spent without any discernable improvement in the problem. And it's natural for people to balk at the idea that the way out of the mess is to continually throw more money at it.
The second issue seems much more difficult. Again, I think most people want a society that takes care of the infirm, or those just genuinely unable to take care of themselves. But when that population gets relatively high, we need to take stock of why that's occurring. Is it because society has just changed so much that it's incompatible with so many people's constitution and ability? If so, that implies we need to restructure a lot of societal aspects or take a second look at whether all those changes were really for the better, given the blowback. As an example, was the revamping of mental health services in the 1980s under the guise of increasing personal liberty really a net benefit?
The problem you run into is that your solution is unwanted by the person you offer it to. You need the dysfunctional person to stop stealing your shit, pooing on the sidewalk and assaulting but they want to continue their current lifestyle. You would have to offer very large carrot to get them to stop and even then it doesn’t always work
It’s the problem with righteous stances. They don’t actually consider the consequences of their demands. As if it hadn’t been considered by many before and they are the first people to see the light.
Not only will the homes become dilapidated they’ll become a drug den immediately. The interiors will be unkept and stripped of useful components to flip for drugs.
You provide 2 options - they can accept treatment (drug addiction rehab, mental health, etc) and she’s the thing that makes them a dysfunctional person or they can go the jail.
When the homeless in Finland are given a home, it is state housing. Someone who is more knowledgeable than me can tell you whether there are units that permit pets, but I suspect homeless in Finland are much less likely to keep a pet than in the USA.
With regard to smoking, this has become rare in Finnish housing both public and private. People know they shouldn't even smoke on their balconies any more but find somewhere outside the building. Tobacco has gradually been taxed higher and higher to the point where much of the population feels it is unaffordable, and the state already has its sights on a complete tobacco ban in the coming years.
This is the significant distinction between providing crappy shelter and providing a home. A lot of shelter spaces come with a lot of strings, and the first step to fixing the issues is to accept that you need to cut many or most of the strings - if a significant proportion of homeless prefer homelessness to the help you're offering, perhaps the "help" isn't all that helpful.
If you want to get people off the street, you need to provide a similar level of freedom in the housing you provide as what it replaces.
> (3) People are naturally generous/irresponsible with belongings and income that they will spontaneously share the windfall with everyone they know. So your shelter for one man will end up being a flophouse for a rotating cast of shady types
Is it worse having them in a house than on the streets? And how much of a problem is this going to be when everyone involved have their own shelter? It's only a windfall if you provide it to a few rather than everyone who needs housing.