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.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldOPM
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    25 days ago

    The fix for this is super simple, you get people healthy BEFORE getting them into housing.

    1. You collect up all the homeless people and evaluate them.

    2. Folks with mental illness are diverted to treatment.

    3. Folks with addiction issues are diverted to treatment.

    4. Folks with outstanding warrants are sent to corrections.

    NOW…

    Once people successfully complete treatment or have served their prison time, there needs to be a re-integration system, this applies also to homeless people who aren’t part of 2-4.

    1. Job and clothing assistance. Resume building, job skills, access to laundry, a mailing address, phone, email and internet.

    There needs to be specialists here specifically to help people with criminal records.

    1. NOW you bring in the housing assistance. You’ve given people the skills they need to get healthy, avoid addiction, and get a job. Now they’re ready for housing. Not before.

    As in step 5, there needs to be housing specialists just for people with criminal records.

    If you put housing first, with no requirements for mental health or addiction services, it fails. Over and over and over again, it fails.

    • Dasus@lemmy.world
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      25 days ago

      If you put housing first, with no requirements for mental health or addiction services, it fails.

      We have housing first in Finland and literally no-one lives on the streets. In tve US, they create new mental illness every day because they have to live on the streets which are covered in human shit.

      You do not understand psychiatry or social policies and you shouldn’t pretend to. You’re some sort of sheltered liberalist who doesn’t get heard in real life so you have to do… this.

      Over and over and over again, it fails.

      I’m a billionaire, I’m a billionaire, I’m a billionaire.

      Wait… just saying things doesn’t make them true? Huh. Well that’s a surprise for both of us, isn’t it?

      Seeing how we literally don’t have anyone living on the street in my country. What country are you from and why do you keep avoiding my question of why do you think NOT being homeless prevents people from getting mental health care?

      https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr-edge-international-philanthropic-071123.html

      • jordanlund@lemmy.worldOPM
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        25 days ago

        Finland also has universal health care which the United States does not have. You guarantee people will get the mental and physical health treatment they need, the US refuses to do that.

        • Dasus@lemmy.world
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          25 days ago

          And again, refusing to answer how you think not being homeless prevents people from mental health care.

          • jordanlund@lemmy.worldOPM
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            25 days ago

            If you can’t pay for housing, you can’t pay for health care, mental or otherwise and in the US, that’s the barrier to entry.

            • Dasus@lemmy.world
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              25 days ago

              The US not having social security doesn’t mean housing first is a bad policy.

              • jordanlund@lemmy.worldOPM
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                24 days ago

                No, concentrating untreated psychotics and addicts into a single location makes it bad policy.

                • Dasus@lemmy.world
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                  24 days ago

                  What does that even mean?

                  Again. We use that policy. You don’t. I have experience. You don’t. None of you’re bullshit makes sense. Mine does.

                  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldOPM
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                    24 days ago

                    Housing first gives people housing without requiring them to enter mental health or addiction treatment.

                    You don’t solve problems that way, you concentrate and amplify them. See all the stories throughout this thread on the continual failure of housing first.

                    TREATMENT first, then housing.