Seems like they are over complicating it…
“Evan’s younger brother had experienced some serious mental health issues and he was awaiting news of a diagnosis.”
“his mother was a schizophrenic and a heroin addict who often paid for her drug habit with sex. They were homeless, moving constantly. Often she would head off for days at a time, leaving Evan with friends or relatives, or sometimes on his own, without food. When he was 11, she took her own life”
“Evan’s father began to suffer with mental health issues. By the time the pandemic arrived, he was in full crisis, using drugs and worried enough about Covid that he had locked himself inside his house. For a week, Evan stayed with him, and they shuttled back and forth to hospital as his father experienced mounting phobias and suicidal thoughts, but refused treatment. At the end of that week, his father took his own life.”
Dude literally had the deck stacked against him.
“The real problem came when Evan inherited his share of his father’s estate – $170,000. He used some of the money to rent an apartment. “But I had extreme schizophrenia and I just filled it with trash because I was so out of my mind,” he says. “I was seeing faces dripping down the walls, I couldn’t even be in there.””
And this, kids, is why the “Housing First” model won’t work. Mental Health and addiction treatment have to come first THEN housing.
It’s not an assumption to say someone who is mentally ill or has substance abuse issues WILL NOT get better on their own. They need help to do it and they are no longer competent to make that decision on their own.
Shuffling them off to “Housing First” makes them sicker, not healthier. They need treatment first, not housing, if you want a permanent solution to the problem.
Otherwise what you end up with is what we see repeated over and over… an endless spiral of declining health and homelessness.
What I’m saying, repeatedly, is break the cycle. Get them the treatment they need FIRST, then, and only then, get them into housing.
If they can’t ever be treated? House them permanently in institutions where they can’t continue harming themselves or others.
But the real question is why are you so dead set against getting these people the help that they need?