This was probably all in the phrasing or maybe people just don’t understand the reality of the situation?
I worked for several years doing mobile therapy that included a significant amount of homeless outreach and crisis management. Everyone deserves to be housed, bottom line, but what it takes for that to happen is a complex situation
There’s the “xxx,xxx amount of homeless but xx,xxx,xxx amount of empty homes in america” statistic that people throw around. I forget the exact numbers but I’m pretty sure thats the scale, if not the take away is that you could literally give each homeless person a free house and still have millions of empty houses. But this would not solve homelessness, at least in the current system. The overwhelming majority would be back on the street fairly quickly. Even if you eliminate the need for mortgage there’s still the need for property taxation; if you eliminate that then communities start to get real shitty. Even if you eliminate that there’s still utility and food costs. Even if you eliminate that there’s still maintenance and not actively destroying the place.
Institutionalization isn’t necessarily the answer although in extreme cases it can be. We had supported rehabilitation programs that were pretty successful, basically apartments with staff that would keep tabs on you, help you budget, do resumes, help you get to drs appointments, make sure you took medications (but didn’t force you to unless there was a court order/probation situation and even then it wasn’t like a “force” situation although there was inherent coercion as not taking meds would be reported to po/court), apply for section 8, etc. you would stay there for a year or two and then move to a more independent placement once supports were in place.
There were also longer term programs for people who genuinely struggled and just couldn’t get that step down to work. These were similar but had less focus on connecting to services and were more akin to nursing homes with more psychiatric care
But then there were also more intensive residential programs we referred to for people with more serious mental illness or addiction issues
The issue, of course, was funding. We had like 32 beds in the short term and 11 in the long term. Funding was like 50% state funding, 20% grants, 30% donations and fundraising and the budgets were tight. Meanwhile the town probably had 30-50 actively homeless at any given point on top of whoever wasn’t in the program and another 50-100 with insecure housing. Even the intense programs, which generally had more secure state funding, still had an overall lack of beds and would have very long wait lists. Sad stuff.
That was about a decade ago now, I feel like it has to be worse now post Covid and trump. I can only imagine what the next 4 years will do to their funding
This was probably all in the phrasing or maybe people just don’t understand the reality of the situation?
I worked for several years doing mobile therapy that included a significant amount of homeless outreach and crisis management. Everyone deserves to be housed, bottom line, but what it takes for that to happen is a complex situation
There’s the “xxx,xxx amount of homeless but xx,xxx,xxx amount of empty homes in america” statistic that people throw around. I forget the exact numbers but I’m pretty sure thats the scale, if not the take away is that you could literally give each homeless person a free house and still have millions of empty houses. But this would not solve homelessness, at least in the current system. The overwhelming majority would be back on the street fairly quickly. Even if you eliminate the need for mortgage there’s still the need for property taxation; if you eliminate that then communities start to get real shitty. Even if you eliminate that there’s still utility and food costs. Even if you eliminate that there’s still maintenance and not actively destroying the place.
Institutionalization isn’t necessarily the answer although in extreme cases it can be. We had supported rehabilitation programs that were pretty successful, basically apartments with staff that would keep tabs on you, help you budget, do resumes, help you get to drs appointments, make sure you took medications (but didn’t force you to unless there was a court order/probation situation and even then it wasn’t like a “force” situation although there was inherent coercion as not taking meds would be reported to po/court), apply for section 8, etc. you would stay there for a year or two and then move to a more independent placement once supports were in place.
There were also longer term programs for people who genuinely struggled and just couldn’t get that step down to work. These were similar but had less focus on connecting to services and were more akin to nursing homes with more psychiatric care
But then there were also more intensive residential programs we referred to for people with more serious mental illness or addiction issues
The issue, of course, was funding. We had like 32 beds in the short term and 11 in the long term. Funding was like 50% state funding, 20% grants, 30% donations and fundraising and the budgets were tight. Meanwhile the town probably had 30-50 actively homeless at any given point on top of whoever wasn’t in the program and another 50-100 with insecure housing. Even the intense programs, which generally had more secure state funding, still had an overall lack of beds and would have very long wait lists. Sad stuff.
That was about a decade ago now, I feel like it has to be worse now post Covid and trump. I can only imagine what the next 4 years will do to their funding