Most Cities’ Responses to Homelessness Actually Enable Even More Homelessness
. . .Housing First is the philosophy that every unhoused person has a right to subsidized, permanent housing without any participation requirements such as treatment for or recovery from a severe mental illness or a substance use disorder. In contrast, a treatment-and-recovery approach would seek to shelter those suffering from homelessness while providing them the individualized treatment they need in order to one day maintain a home of their own.
Utah is in a similar situation to L.A. In recent years, Utah and specifically Salt Lake City were lauded by the media for dramatically reducing their chronically homeless population by implementing a Housing First policy.
But a 2021 state audit reveals that the city and the entire state continue to struggle with growing homelessness. “Although the state’s funding for homeless services has increased, the number of homeless individuals in Utah has also continued to grow,” reads the report. Unsheltered homelessness in Utah has tripled since 2016.
The audit reports that Salt Lake County needs $525 million to provide housing to people experiencing homelessness, and taxpayers’ costs will only grow since most people never move out of subsidized housing into more independent living: “Because few residents move on to more independent forms of housing, few new spaces are made available in the existing facilities.” The top reason the audit lists for residents not moving on is because they “choose not to address the mental illness or substance abuse issues that led them to homelessness.”
We’ll never be able to house 40,000 people in this city if we are spending nearly one million dollars to build one unit of housing.https://t.co/ByqOXVwlWL
— Karen Bass (@KarenBassLA) February 26, 2022
Here we get to the crux of the matter: Housing First fails because it does not address the typical root causes of homelessness – namely, severe mental illness and substance use disorders that go unaddressed. Money dedicated to Housing First initiatives is making an already bad problem worse. (Read more from “Most Cities’ Responses to Homelessness Actually Enable Even More Homelessness” HERE)
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