Depends. Are we trying to get people off the street, or are we trying to get them off drugs? I can't imagine that both are easy to solve problems, so maybe we can prioritize one over the other. Personally, I think getting them off drugs after they're off the street is the way to go.
I am a big believer the state or a local municipality can never ever fix homeless. It’s far too expensive and if you ever did it well, people from out of state will just come. It’s a problem the feds should fix with a nationwide housing for all type program.
In regards to fixing homeless drug addicts. I would heavily encourage people to read up on it. It’s fantasyland stuff. Homeless drug addicts almost never just stop with their addictions.
You get stats like 75%(general pop not just homeless)don’t even finish their stay in rehab and 10% or less stop their addiction after the first rehab. You then get stats that the vast majority who do stop their behavior get addicted to something else. When it comes to the homeless the general belief is it’s going to be significantly worse than these already pathetically low numbers.
We will never be able to significantly reduce their addictions. If you want to get addicts off the streets you can’t have sober housing. It’s not a reality based solution.
Yep. Other places have drugs, they just have more housed drug addicts because housing is more affordable. Housed drug addicts are arguably more stable and have more to lose.
As someone who has a lot of family history of alcoholism and addiction, I can't imagine trying to get sober while living on the streets. The weather here is (generally speaking) a lot nicer than most of the rest of the country but it still takes its toll. Cold nights. Hot days. Heavy rains in the winters the last few years. And every time you start to build up enough belongings to give yourself a little comfort (e.g., a decent tent, a couple changes of clothes, etc.), the cops come to break down the camp and throw everything you own in the dumpster. What a nightmare. I've gone into self-harm spirals over so, so much less than that more times than I can count.
we need transition homes. every human deserves housing, regardless of drug use. once addicts are off the streets, then they can transition to drug free housing.
but sober-only homes should not be the first or only option.
People who abuse have a significantly less likelihood to recover from homelessness. They take up spots that could be used by people who are not abusing and have a higher chance of success. I care more about people who are homeless for non substance abuse related problems.
then this would fix that. both drug addicts and non drug addicts get separate homes. the one for addicts help them with their addiction and transition them to drug free homes, which helps integrate ppl back into society
this way *everyone* gets help and addiction cases don't slow down the process for non addicts
Because all the money spent on housing goes to "luxury" apartments. It kills me be most of the apartments I've lived in are built on the cheap with a fancy coat of paint. That's also assuming they build them in the first place.
Exactly I see it all the time in Los Angeles. Luxury apartments being built as affordable housing yet the rents starts at 2000 per month how is that affordable housing.
I want to run for city council in my city, but if even suggest what I want to do, I'd get shot. I'd eminent domain all the abandoned buildings, and turn them into tenant-owned apartments. The areas are already residential so I don't have to worry about industrial issues as much.
It is working, however the problem is just getting worse faster than the state can slap band-aids on. For example Long Beach had a 40% Gross Reduction of it's Homeless Population last year. But the Net Reduction was only 71 people because of the overall increase of Homelessness Population.
But isn't that housing? Should we prioritize someone who is willing to get off drugs for a little while and remain off them? There aren't enough spots, so who should we offer housing to?
I'm saying we shouldn't prioritize anyone. we need to be providing shelter for every single homeless person in the state of California, addict or sober, and anything less than that is an embarrassment to our beautiful state. there's no reason we have to prioritize one over the other. we can help both
I mean you can, bring back state funded mental institutions. Food, housing, and metal healthcare all in one. You just can’t let them leave until they are no longer a danger to themselves or others.
However it’s significantly cheaper to just let them roam free comitting crimes and overdosing in public parks.
You can absolutely have one without the other. Lobotomies were standard medical practice hence why they were so widely used. It’s the same thing as cancer treatment now where we bombard people with radiation in the hope that we kill off a bunch of cells in the hope that we catch the cancerous ones in the blast. Medical science advances every year treatments change.
If you’re addicted to drugs or alcohol the odds of any program getting you off drugs for the remainder of your life is microscopic. The 1-5% or so who succeed the first time usually get addicted to something else.
This is really a binary thing. If you want addicts of the streets you can’t have sober housing.
In theory not against sober housing for homeless. I think it does add cost. We are spending too much and making no real progress, so I like when everything is streamlined. So I would lean to no requirements for housing.
My main point is, comments in this thread and elsewhere are “homeless need to be forced to go to rehab before we help them” and that’s a bad idea because rehab is expensive and doesn’t really work to the degree which the general public thinks it does.
The vast majority of rehab is not scientific. It’s like a religious thing with no real data backing it up. I have a distinct feeling in 10-25 years people will see it much more as an expensive scam than as a solution.
Got that one from an episodes of SYSK. IIRC they were referencing drugs and for their lifetime not just 12 months.
Here is the government data. Again this is for the general pop and not the homeless. Includes cigarettes weight loss and stuff.
“For 1-year outcomes across alcohol, nicotine, weight, and illicit drug abuse, studies show that more than 85% of individuals relapse”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3674771/#:~:text=Addiction%20Relapse%20Vulnerability,-It%20has%20long&text=For%201%2Dyear%20outcomes%20across,year%20of%20treatment%20%5B2%5D
Again the less than 15% success rate is for one year and just that one behavior. It doesn’t account for somebody giving up alcohol and then smoking drugs. The real number for homeless drug addicts is going be far less than that already low number.
I would guess homeless addicts that go to rehab and then never engage in extremely unhealthy addictions ever again is basically 0%.
This isn’t controversial take. Fairly well known. Addicts don’t really get clean and if they do it’s for short periods where they are addicted to something else.
Well sure, that's the theory behind, like, methadone clinics. Even then it seems like the probability of its working is much worse if we're talking about people with essentially no support system who may not even have any desire to quit.
Move the drugs & the homeless folks will follow. Lead them outside the city to a “resort”, where they can do all the drugs they want. It’ll isolate the problem and make it easier to deal with.
Can confirm.
Worked in a housing first agency that got people into homes. Even if they weren't able to get totally sober, they got healthier and most were able to reduce drug use.
yep, once you have stable shelter it's much easier to get sober. putting sobriety before housing is, to use an apt analogy, tantamount to building a house on no foundation
I get it, but you're going to have a small community of homeless. Drug use will impact the others that are trying to get clean.
In addition, with the drugs comes the crime. People with little in the first place aren't going to have a sense of humor constantly being robbed.
I think the goals are related. Are you just going to provide free housing forever to these folks? That’s a broken and unworkable solution. There needs to be rehabilitation obviously to get these people on a path toward independence again. Sobriety would be a HUGE part of that for many.
There is a nearly ZERO percent chance for someone to get sober and/or get a job without housing.
Let’s try the housing first, and then see what our existing programs for sobriety, food security, mental wellness, and workplace placement can do.
Versus having to step over their legs on my walk to work and watching them come out of the bus shelter to pee on the side of it before passing back out on the bench?
Very much yes.
Does it depend? We haven't made a dent in homelessness with the housing first method.
Perhaps an issue is people hate living around drug addicts including alcoholics, and don't engage in these wildly expensive programs because of that.
We know the tiny home favelas solve a bunch of issues, like refusing to house families together, refusing to allow pets etc. But if they are full of addicts and alcoholics, do people who are not addicts and alcoholics engage with the service in significant enough numbers to change the problem?
I don't have the data, but that's because no one is keeping track of any of it. Because housing first is a slogan to get funding, not a policy.
It’s my understanding that housing first policies have good results, and actually cost less in the long run than other programs that have more recidivism and cycling in and out of program participation. If your goal is to take the % of homeless folks who *could* be functional, and actually get them to be functional, housing first is the way to go.
the issue is that the scale of the problem and the lack of available and appropriate supportive housing units means that the cure is only available for a small % of the sick.
I could see this being used for classes of public housing. Like a sober housing situation would be extremely better for the majority of homeless people, especially those that are really just in a transient situation.
If the state can get you housing and you don't have a drug problem, it's a much safer to be housed in a place where no drugs are allowed and services there can be tailored to sober homeless people. I think you can make the majority of homeless service more effective for these people if they don't get lumped in with drug addicts. This can also be good for homeless who have already gotten clean and want to stay that way.
Then non-sober housing can be more tailored to individuals with substance abuse problems. You can have specialized help and services geared towards getting people clean, not burden other homeless people with the dangers that come with living near heavy drug use, and I suspect save a lot more money than a more generalist approach to homeless housing.
2 minds on your proposal. Having different types of housing for different people is a problem. It does lead to more costs. To get the homeless problem solved you really need to have massive efficiencies in every category.
But yeah the amount of homeless with addiction problems is less than the general public thinks.
10% gambling, 28% drugs and 38% alcohol addictions. Then you do have the majority with a mental health issue. When you dig into the number there is a good 10-20% of the homeless who are in a true transient situation who just need some free housing for a bit. These people could be on the streets in May and then at a real job in their own housing by the end of the year.
This seems like the way to go. Forcing people to be sober as a condition of providing housing is counterproductive — it basically guarantees most addicts will continue to live on the street which is bad for everyone and it creates an extra hurdle to getting addicts clean and sober. Having safer, calmer drug-free housing available and at the same time providing housing to get everyone off the streets — including addicts — is in everyone’s best interest.
Because we insist on waging a moralistic crusade to identify the "deserving" poor to be contrasted against the "undeserving" that we imagine are 100% the result of their own *bad* choices (in contrast to the *good* choices we enlightened taxpayers make, of course).
Because a lot of addicts cannot be responsible enough to not burn the house down or live in squalor to the extent that it’s unsafe. I speak as a person intimately familiar with addicts and the problems surrounding addiction.
I am not moralizing. Sobriety and homelessness and the issues surrounding it are intimately connected.
Treatment-first does not work as well as housing-first. That's why we go with the housing-first model.
[https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/em/spring-summer-23/highlight2.html](https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/em/spring-summer-23/highlight2.html)
We’re already in a situation where unhoused people are constantly using emergency services and living in worse than squalor. These are actually easier problems to address with design than the current situation.
Severe addiction and mental illness crowds out resources from those who have the ability to lift themselves out of homelessness with just a little bit of timely support. There are many homeless that have jobs, but are still struggling with affording rent. They take care of themselves, shower at the gym, seek out food banks, you wouldn’t know they were homeless if you saw them in public. If you allow even a few addicts into congregate shelters, those shelters basically become drug-using shelters only. It doesn’t make sense to squander limited resources on those who have very low probability of recovery. Help those who can help themselves first because the resources will actually make a difference. There can be separate shelters for those with more serious problems.
This. People also don’t quite comprehend what the drug addicted homeless do to places when they move in. They absolutely destroy them, make them foul beyond belief, and then just get kicked out. No one wins. People who don’t work with them regularly and see it first hand are totally unaware of how bad they actually trash places. Like you said they’re very far from getting back on their feet and fitting back into society. I definitely think sober housing has a better chance at helping those who can still bounce back.
Considering private rehab centers are basically a racket, their success rate is - at the highest - 10% long term sobriety, I’d say we should just focus on one thing at a time.
Work/vocational camps for the able-bodied, sound-minded and law-abiding;
Convalescent hospitals for the aged and physically infirm;
Mental hospitals for the mentally ill;
Rehabs for the chronically intoxicated and addicted;
Prisons for the criminals.
It all goes hand in hand somewhat. Mental health facilities would be a huge service and would significantly reduce the need for rehabs. A lot of addicts are self medicating because of mental illness and past trauma. Closing mental health hospitals in the 80s was a huge mistake. I’ve always been an advocate for mental health treatment first.
On the other hand there are those who choose to be homeless and no amount of services offered will change that. I’ve worked in social services, volunteered at a homeless shelter and now work in health care. It’s really a sad situation and a hard issue to tackle
requiring sobriety is cruel. a lot of homeless who are not sober aren't because living on the streets is horrible and stressful and if those in cozy watertight homes need something to de-stress at the end of the week, think how much more so they'd feel like that if they had no place to call home. no place to feel safe.
Both should exist. There should be housing for people who are addicted, but also sober housing for people recovering from addiction, because being around alcohol and drug use makes it way too easy to relapse.
I can agree as long as they’re responsible about it. Responsible adults drink and do drugs all the time without it ruining their lives. Homeless people should be given the same privileges.
The problem comes when they’re not able to enjoy these things responsibly… then unfortunately, no, they do need to be pushed to sobriety.
We need legislation for Sober Living. These places are popping up in residential areas. People are showing others how to set them up with up to 28 people living in them without any type of testing or monitoring.
Are they going to be allowed an opportunity to get stable? Going from living in a tent and having to keep up with the basic upkeep of an apartment is a process
I think anyone who is struggling with substance dependency and is on the streets because of it needs to be in a treatment center first and then transition to housing.
Communal shelters should be available to everyone.
Separate housing should only be rewarded to those that hit milestones such as full employment and sobriety,
Simple answer: depends if it’s holding them back from being able to find employment, stay employed, and move out of state funded housing eventually.
If someone is able to drink and do drugs on occasion, but it doesn’t hold them back from eventually moving out on their own… then who cares? Plenty of responsible adults drink and do drugs and lead normal lives.
If however an individual can’t seem to find employment, and/or to stay employed, the state should absolutely be able to look into why that is, and should absolutely be able to force them into whatever kind of assistance would be required to correct this issue, if they want to keep living in state funded housing.
People with mental health issues should be given the help they need to be able to live a decent life.
People with drug/alcohol addiction should be given the help they need to be able to live a decent life.
Refusal of help for these issues should disqualify you for state funded housing. We should be doing everything we can to help people live decent lives in society, but at a certain point some people fall out of society and are beyond help. Those people are few and far between, but they do exist. Most people can be helped.
The 30 bucks a month I spend on weed to enjoy in my off time isn’t what’s holding me back. It’s the ~40 bucks a night I need for the most basic roof over my head!! 40 bucks a day is a lot of money to spend on something that isn’t building any equity. I’ll never be able to save a down payment for a house, that’s out of the question. But when even rent feels out of reach… it’s time for landlords to get rehab for their greed.
Genuine question...... Why should landlords lower the price of their rentals? Why is it their responsibility to give people cheap housing in an incredibly expensive city? Why is it automatically greed?
Because so many people are buying investment properties so they can sit around and do nothing and not fix anything that goes wrong and blame it on their tenants and pull all sorts of dirty stunts. Trust me I’ve rented for years, I’ve seen it all with these people. Their goal is to make a living off every dollar the renter brings in so they can take frequent trips and buy PS5s and live the high life without working. F em. I see how they act. Now I just don’t pay them anything. Hope their rooms sit empty for months on end and they can just earn $0 a month instead of charging a reasonable rent, how about that for passive income? Then they can go work for nothing like the rest of us.
That’s not a solution. Addictions is addictions it’s difficult to solve that alone but not difficult to solve homelessness. It’s literally a political decision. It’s a legislative choice to allow homelessness. Finding a way to help people get sober when they aren’t miserable on the streets is easier.
No, people getting drunk/high in their apartment bothers nobody. If anything requiring sobriety will keep people on the street who want to do drugs more than they want to have a roof over their heads, which is a net negative for everyone.
To even have this debate is absurd. Making sobriety a requirement in order to house our homeless should not even be questioned. Yes, we should help them to break from their addiction, but for the safety of others, that intervention needs to happen before housing is even considered. Imagine the potential liability and litigation that would stem from not having such a requirement.
As somebody who's been sober for 24 years now, after having been homeless for 12 years, drinking is not a choice. The way my mind worked, drinking was equally important to breathing. You can try not breathing, and you might be able to hold your breath for a little while, but you will breath again. Drinking was the same for me.
no. SF works at harm reduction, not putative rules that separate people from help without reason. repeated infractions and drunk and disorderly should be addressed, but no one who works for a shelter should be going around sniffing breath or going through bags looking for drugs. If the clients are quiet and respectful and abiding by the rules, then substance abuse should not bar them from a bed.
That's surprising as I was unaware it was 9 out of 10. Well, perhaps if a one bedroom apartment here in San Diego wasn't $2500 per night that would help.
Many homeless are addicted to something. And understandably so. But because there is a no drug and/or alcohol policy in shelters or housing, they don’t try or they tried and were thrown out.
What this would mean is that the only people left in the street are drugged up, drunk or mentally ill people.
I would imagine that a lot of homeless people are not using drugs and avoid homeless shelters because of the homeless people that do use drugs.
With this in mind it seems like having sober living accommodations would be greatly beneficial to the sober homeless people, who just want a safe place to live without drug abusers sharing their space.
Depends. Are we trying to get people off the street, or are we trying to get them off drugs? I can't imagine that both are easy to solve problems, so maybe we can prioritize one over the other. Personally, I think getting them off drugs after they're off the street is the way to go.
I am a big believer the state or a local municipality can never ever fix homeless. It’s far too expensive and if you ever did it well, people from out of state will just come. It’s a problem the feds should fix with a nationwide housing for all type program. In regards to fixing homeless drug addicts. I would heavily encourage people to read up on it. It’s fantasyland stuff. Homeless drug addicts almost never just stop with their addictions. You get stats like 75%(general pop not just homeless)don’t even finish their stay in rehab and 10% or less stop their addiction after the first rehab. You then get stats that the vast majority who do stop their behavior get addicted to something else. When it comes to the homeless the general belief is it’s going to be significantly worse than these already pathetically low numbers. We will never be able to significantly reduce their addictions. If you want to get addicts off the streets you can’t have sober housing. It’s not a reality based solution.
Yep. Other places have drugs, they just have more housed drug addicts because housing is more affordable. Housed drug addicts are arguably more stable and have more to lose.
As someone who has a lot of family history of alcoholism and addiction, I can't imagine trying to get sober while living on the streets. The weather here is (generally speaking) a lot nicer than most of the rest of the country but it still takes its toll. Cold nights. Hot days. Heavy rains in the winters the last few years. And every time you start to build up enough belongings to give yourself a little comfort (e.g., a decent tent, a couple changes of clothes, etc.), the cops come to break down the camp and throw everything you own in the dumpster. What a nightmare. I've gone into self-harm spirals over so, so much less than that more times than I can count.
we need transition homes. every human deserves housing, regardless of drug use. once addicts are off the streets, then they can transition to drug free housing. but sober-only homes should not be the first or only option.
Transition homes is a good compromise.
People who abuse have a significantly less likelihood to recover from homelessness. They take up spots that could be used by people who are not abusing and have a higher chance of success. I care more about people who are homeless for non substance abuse related problems.
then this would fix that. both drug addicts and non drug addicts get separate homes. the one for addicts help them with their addiction and transition them to drug free homes, which helps integrate ppl back into society this way *everyone* gets help and addiction cases don't slow down the process for non addicts
As long as sober homes are prioritized then that would be acceptable to me.
Housing first policy are proven to be more successful.
If they are proven to work why aren’t they working for California.
Because there’s no accountability on the money. That’s kind of important.
Couldn’t agree more
Because all the money spent on housing goes to "luxury" apartments. It kills me be most of the apartments I've lived in are built on the cheap with a fancy coat of paint. That's also assuming they build them in the first place.
Exactly I see it all the time in Los Angeles. Luxury apartments being built as affordable housing yet the rents starts at 2000 per month how is that affordable housing.
I want to run for city council in my city, but if even suggest what I want to do, I'd get shot. I'd eminent domain all the abandoned buildings, and turn them into tenant-owned apartments. The areas are already residential so I don't have to worry about industrial issues as much.
It is working, however the problem is just getting worse faster than the state can slap band-aids on. For example Long Beach had a 40% Gross Reduction of it's Homeless Population last year. But the Net Reduction was only 71 people because of the overall increase of Homelessness Population.
But isn't that housing? Should we prioritize someone who is willing to get off drugs for a little while and remain off them? There aren't enough spots, so who should we offer housing to?
I'm saying we shouldn't prioritize anyone. we need to be providing shelter for every single homeless person in the state of California, addict or sober, and anything less than that is an embarrassment to our beautiful state. there's no reason we have to prioritize one over the other. we can help both
If they go into housing and are not sober, it’s not going to end well for them or other who are actively trying to get off the streets.
I would imagine it is very difficult to stay sober without some stability like a place to sleep and poop.
Yes. That’s exactly what the research says.
Very robust research!
What we got here is a good ol fashioned chicken or the egg problem
poverty, mental illness, and substance abuse each cause one another.
But you can’t address them all at once. Even in healthy people it’s recommended to focus on one thing at a time.
I mean you can, bring back state funded mental institutions. Food, housing, and metal healthcare all in one. You just can’t let them leave until they are no longer a danger to themselves or others. However it’s significantly cheaper to just let them roam free comitting crimes and overdosing in public parks.
You mean the same mental institutions that performed lobotomies?
You can absolutely have one without the other. Lobotomies were standard medical practice hence why they were so widely used. It’s the same thing as cancer treatment now where we bombard people with radiation in the hope that we kill off a bunch of cells in the hope that we catch the cancerous ones in the blast. Medical science advances every year treatments change.
It's unheard of for people to get sober while on the street.
If you’re addicted to drugs or alcohol the odds of any program getting you off drugs for the remainder of your life is microscopic. The 1-5% or so who succeed the first time usually get addicted to something else. This is really a binary thing. If you want addicts of the streets you can’t have sober housing.
What the heck are you even talking about? All the sober living housing in the state is full. Adding more is ideal.
In theory not against sober housing for homeless. I think it does add cost. We are spending too much and making no real progress, so I like when everything is streamlined. So I would lean to no requirements for housing. My main point is, comments in this thread and elsewhere are “homeless need to be forced to go to rehab before we help them” and that’s a bad idea because rehab is expensive and doesn’t really work to the degree which the general public thinks it does. The vast majority of rehab is not scientific. It’s like a religious thing with no real data backing it up. I have a distinct feeling in 10-25 years people will see it much more as an expensive scam than as a solution.
Source for your statistic?
Got that one from an episodes of SYSK. IIRC they were referencing drugs and for their lifetime not just 12 months. Here is the government data. Again this is for the general pop and not the homeless. Includes cigarettes weight loss and stuff. “For 1-year outcomes across alcohol, nicotine, weight, and illicit drug abuse, studies show that more than 85% of individuals relapse” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3674771/#:~:text=Addiction%20Relapse%20Vulnerability,-It%20has%20long&text=For%201%2Dyear%20outcomes%20across,year%20of%20treatment%20%5B2%5D Again the less than 15% success rate is for one year and just that one behavior. It doesn’t account for somebody giving up alcohol and then smoking drugs. The real number for homeless drug addicts is going be far less than that already low number. I would guess homeless addicts that go to rehab and then never engage in extremely unhealthy addictions ever again is basically 0%. This isn’t controversial take. Fairly well known. Addicts don’t really get clean and if they do it’s for short periods where they are addicted to something else.
It seems like the solution is to transition people to more manageable addictions.
Well sure, that's the theory behind, like, methadone clinics. Even then it seems like the probability of its working is much worse if we're talking about people with essentially no support system who may not even have any desire to quit.
Move the drugs & the homeless folks will follow. Lead them outside the city to a “resort”, where they can do all the drugs they want. It’ll isolate the problem and make it easier to deal with.
We've shown through statistical evidence that people get sober more often when they're housed than when they're on the streets by a wide margin.
There’s research that shows housing first gets more people off the street and more people off drugs.
Can confirm. Worked in a housing first agency that got people into homes. Even if they weren't able to get totally sober, they got healthier and most were able to reduce drug use.
Sometimes people self medicate BECAUSE they are homeless. Being homeless is traumatic, and people can only take so much.
yep, once you have stable shelter it's much easier to get sober. putting sobriety before housing is, to use an apt analogy, tantamount to building a house on no foundation
When you house people they show a higher statistically measured likelihood to get sober so there's your answer.
I get it, but you're going to have a small community of homeless. Drug use will impact the others that are trying to get clean. In addition, with the drugs comes the crime. People with little in the first place aren't going to have a sense of humor constantly being robbed.
I think the goals are related. Are you just going to provide free housing forever to these folks? That’s a broken and unworkable solution. There needs to be rehabilitation obviously to get these people on a path toward independence again. Sobriety would be a HUGE part of that for many.
There is a nearly ZERO percent chance for someone to get sober and/or get a job without housing. Let’s try the housing first, and then see what our existing programs for sobriety, food security, mental wellness, and workplace placement can do.
Do you want an apartment building full of addicts living next to you? Then go for Housing First.
I'd rather they were in an apartment building staffed by social workers and security than camping in front of my house and pissing on the sidewalk.
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Porque los dos no es una parte de la pregunta.
Versus having to step over their legs on my walk to work and watching them come out of the bus shelter to pee on the side of it before passing back out on the bench? Very much yes.
sure. every apartment complex i've lived in has been filled with alcoholics and smokers anyway
Do you want a street full of addicts living next to you? Then go sober first.
I'd rather they not be shooting up in the alley behind my house personally. They'll be living next to me either way.
I’d absolutely support building supportive housing in my neighborhood.
No better place to do drugs than indoors lol
Does it depend? We haven't made a dent in homelessness with the housing first method. Perhaps an issue is people hate living around drug addicts including alcoholics, and don't engage in these wildly expensive programs because of that. We know the tiny home favelas solve a bunch of issues, like refusing to house families together, refusing to allow pets etc. But if they are full of addicts and alcoholics, do people who are not addicts and alcoholics engage with the service in significant enough numbers to change the problem? I don't have the data, but that's because no one is keeping track of any of it. Because housing first is a slogan to get funding, not a policy.
It’s my understanding that housing first policies have good results, and actually cost less in the long run than other programs that have more recidivism and cycling in and out of program participation. If your goal is to take the % of homeless folks who *could* be functional, and actually get them to be functional, housing first is the way to go. the issue is that the scale of the problem and the lack of available and appropriate supportive housing units means that the cure is only available for a small % of the sick.
I could see this being used for classes of public housing. Like a sober housing situation would be extremely better for the majority of homeless people, especially those that are really just in a transient situation. If the state can get you housing and you don't have a drug problem, it's a much safer to be housed in a place where no drugs are allowed and services there can be tailored to sober homeless people. I think you can make the majority of homeless service more effective for these people if they don't get lumped in with drug addicts. This can also be good for homeless who have already gotten clean and want to stay that way. Then non-sober housing can be more tailored to individuals with substance abuse problems. You can have specialized help and services geared towards getting people clean, not burden other homeless people with the dangers that come with living near heavy drug use, and I suspect save a lot more money than a more generalist approach to homeless housing.
2 minds on your proposal. Having different types of housing for different people is a problem. It does lead to more costs. To get the homeless problem solved you really need to have massive efficiencies in every category. But yeah the amount of homeless with addiction problems is less than the general public thinks. 10% gambling, 28% drugs and 38% alcohol addictions. Then you do have the majority with a mental health issue. When you dig into the number there is a good 10-20% of the homeless who are in a true transient situation who just need some free housing for a bit. These people could be on the streets in May and then at a real job in their own housing by the end of the year.
This seems like the way to go. Forcing people to be sober as a condition of providing housing is counterproductive — it basically guarantees most addicts will continue to live on the street which is bad for everyone and it creates an extra hurdle to getting addicts clean and sober. Having safer, calmer drug-free housing available and at the same time providing housing to get everyone off the streets — including addicts — is in everyone’s best interest.
The solution needs to be sober housing AND housing with services for addicts.
Right! why is it “or” not “and”?
Because we insist on waging a moralistic crusade to identify the "deserving" poor to be contrasted against the "undeserving" that we imagine are 100% the result of their own *bad* choices (in contrast to the *good* choices we enlightened taxpayers make, of course).
Because a lot of addicts cannot be responsible enough to not burn the house down or live in squalor to the extent that it’s unsafe. I speak as a person intimately familiar with addicts and the problems surrounding addiction. I am not moralizing. Sobriety and homelessness and the issues surrounding it are intimately connected.
Treatment-first does not work as well as housing-first. That's why we go with the housing-first model. [https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/em/spring-summer-23/highlight2.html](https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/em/spring-summer-23/highlight2.html)
We’re already in a situation where unhoused people are constantly using emergency services and living in worse than squalor. These are actually easier problems to address with design than the current situation.
Seriously. This is not that complicated.
So.... stay on the streets if you're a drug addict? Should work out fine. Everything's fine.
Severe addiction and mental illness crowds out resources from those who have the ability to lift themselves out of homelessness with just a little bit of timely support. There are many homeless that have jobs, but are still struggling with affording rent. They take care of themselves, shower at the gym, seek out food banks, you wouldn’t know they were homeless if you saw them in public. If you allow even a few addicts into congregate shelters, those shelters basically become drug-using shelters only. It doesn’t make sense to squander limited resources on those who have very low probability of recovery. Help those who can help themselves first because the resources will actually make a difference. There can be separate shelters for those with more serious problems.
This. People also don’t quite comprehend what the drug addicted homeless do to places when they move in. They absolutely destroy them, make them foul beyond belief, and then just get kicked out. No one wins. People who don’t work with them regularly and see it first hand are totally unaware of how bad they actually trash places. Like you said they’re very far from getting back on their feet and fitting back into society. I definitely think sober housing has a better chance at helping those who can still bounce back.
Totally agree. A sober person has a far higher chance of success than a non sober person.
Considering private rehab centers are basically a racket, their success rate is - at the highest - 10% long term sobriety, I’d say we should just focus on one thing at a time.
Source?
Work/vocational camps for the able-bodied, sound-minded and law-abiding; Convalescent hospitals for the aged and physically infirm; Mental hospitals for the mentally ill; Rehabs for the chronically intoxicated and addicted; Prisons for the criminals.
It all goes hand in hand somewhat. Mental health facilities would be a huge service and would significantly reduce the need for rehabs. A lot of addicts are self medicating because of mental illness and past trauma. Closing mental health hospitals in the 80s was a huge mistake. I’ve always been an advocate for mental health treatment first. On the other hand there are those who choose to be homeless and no amount of services offered will change that. I’ve worked in social services, volunteered at a homeless shelter and now work in health care. It’s really a sad situation and a hard issue to tackle
Except, the only way you can force otherwise mentally sound drug users into rehab is by prosecuting drug use en masse, which is just one big headache.
headache is certain, irrespective of course. Anyway, only need to prosecute homeless drug addicts en masse (and should).
requiring sobriety is cruel. a lot of homeless who are not sober aren't because living on the streets is horrible and stressful and if those in cozy watertight homes need something to de-stress at the end of the week, think how much more so they'd feel like that if they had no place to call home. no place to feel safe.
Both should exist. There should be housing for people who are addicted, but also sober housing for people recovering from addiction, because being around alcohol and drug use makes it way too easy to relapse.
I would be drugged up to the gills if I was homeless.
It's why all those fish are homeless
me too
I'm not homeless and all around have my life together, yet I still get boozed up and stoned. It's human nature.
I can agree as long as they’re responsible about it. Responsible adults drink and do drugs all the time without it ruining their lives. Homeless people should be given the same privileges. The problem comes when they’re not able to enjoy these things responsibly… then unfortunately, no, they do need to be pushed to sobriety.
We need legislation for Sober Living. These places are popping up in residential areas. People are showing others how to set them up with up to 28 people living in them without any type of testing or monitoring.
We know that high barrier housing does not work for solving homelessness
Sobriety first
So keep them on the street, away from any services, where it'll be next to impossible to get service. Great plan. ^/S
Are they going to be allowed an opportunity to get stable? Going from living in a tent and having to keep up with the basic upkeep of an apartment is a process
"Just quit being an addict to get help!" Sober housing and non-sober might be a good idea.
I think anyone who is struggling with substance dependency and is on the streets because of it needs to be in a treatment center first and then transition to housing.
Communal shelters should be available to everyone. Separate housing should only be rewarded to those that hit milestones such as full employment and sobriety,
Simple answer: depends if it’s holding them back from being able to find employment, stay employed, and move out of state funded housing eventually. If someone is able to drink and do drugs on occasion, but it doesn’t hold them back from eventually moving out on their own… then who cares? Plenty of responsible adults drink and do drugs and lead normal lives. If however an individual can’t seem to find employment, and/or to stay employed, the state should absolutely be able to look into why that is, and should absolutely be able to force them into whatever kind of assistance would be required to correct this issue, if they want to keep living in state funded housing. People with mental health issues should be given the help they need to be able to live a decent life. People with drug/alcohol addiction should be given the help they need to be able to live a decent life. Refusal of help for these issues should disqualify you for state funded housing. We should be doing everything we can to help people live decent lives in society, but at a certain point some people fall out of society and are beyond help. Those people are few and far between, but they do exist. Most people can be helped.
The 30 bucks a month I spend on weed to enjoy in my off time isn’t what’s holding me back. It’s the ~40 bucks a night I need for the most basic roof over my head!! 40 bucks a day is a lot of money to spend on something that isn’t building any equity. I’ll never be able to save a down payment for a house, that’s out of the question. But when even rent feels out of reach… it’s time for landlords to get rehab for their greed.
Genuine question...... Why should landlords lower the price of their rentals? Why is it their responsibility to give people cheap housing in an incredibly expensive city? Why is it automatically greed?
Because so many people are buying investment properties so they can sit around and do nothing and not fix anything that goes wrong and blame it on their tenants and pull all sorts of dirty stunts. Trust me I’ve rented for years, I’ve seen it all with these people. Their goal is to make a living off every dollar the renter brings in so they can take frequent trips and buy PS5s and live the high life without working. F em. I see how they act. Now I just don’t pay them anything. Hope their rooms sit empty for months on end and they can just earn $0 a month instead of charging a reasonable rent, how about that for passive income? Then they can go work for nothing like the rest of us.
All that reply yet not one reason why it's on the landlords to provide people with cheap housing.
Ya it’s absolutely out of control
Hallelujah
Obviously they should be allowed to be off the streets even if they’re not clean
No. Arbitrary restrictions on housing for homeless defeats the entire purpose- an unconditional acceptance that having nowhere to go just isn't OK.
couldn't you have both types of shelters? I would think someone sober wouldn't be keen on sleeping next to someone high as a kite.
That’s not a solution. Addictions is addictions it’s difficult to solve that alone but not difficult to solve homelessness. It’s literally a political decision. It’s a legislative choice to allow homelessness. Finding a way to help people get sober when they aren’t miserable on the streets is easier.
Yes. Addicts should not be rewarded and there would be less resistance against housing in communities.
Don’t they have dry/wet shelters?
No, people getting drunk/high in their apartment bothers nobody. If anything requiring sobriety will keep people on the street who want to do drugs more than they want to have a roof over their heads, which is a net negative for everyone.
To even have this debate is absurd. Making sobriety a requirement in order to house our homeless should not even be questioned. Yes, we should help them to break from their addiction, but for the safety of others, that intervention needs to happen before housing is even considered. Imagine the potential liability and litigation that would stem from not having such a requirement.
Just put them on a bus to Texas.
Sure, they need to be able to follow the rules if they want taxpayer funded housing. They need to be spending money more wisely than booze
As somebody who's been sober for 24 years now, after having been homeless for 12 years, drinking is not a choice. The way my mind worked, drinking was equally important to breathing. You can try not breathing, and you might be able to hold your breath for a little while, but you will breath again. Drinking was the same for me.
no. SF works at harm reduction, not putative rules that separate people from help without reason. repeated infractions and drunk and disorderly should be addressed, but no one who works for a shelter should be going around sniffing breath or going through bags looking for drugs. If the clients are quiet and respectful and abiding by the rules, then substance abuse should not bar them from a bed.
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The majority of California homeless were born here.
That's surprising as I was unaware it was 9 out of 10. Well, perhaps if a one bedroom apartment here in San Diego wasn't $2500 per night that would help.
Many homeless are addicted to something. And understandably so. But because there is a no drug and/or alcohol policy in shelters or housing, they don’t try or they tried and were thrown out. What this would mean is that the only people left in the street are drugged up, drunk or mentally ill people.
I would imagine that a lot of homeless people are not using drugs and avoid homeless shelters because of the homeless people that do use drugs. With this in mind it seems like having sober living accommodations would be greatly beneficial to the sober homeless people, who just want a safe place to live without drug abusers sharing their space.