My understanding of the housing first model is that first, we get someone stabilized in housing, and then, we provide the other services, addressing mental health, addiction, and jobs etc. The idea is that in the stress and chaos of the streets, people can’t be expected to deal with these things successfully. Am I mistaken? Aren’t these services offered in the housing first model?
These services aren’t offered as a part of the Housing First model, and that’s the problem. In a sense the homeless are given a place without any accountability with respect to the deeper issues around addiction and mental health.
Michele is arguing that the model is broken and hasn’t proven to work. This as opposed to the center she ran in California that in addition to temporary onsite housing focused first and foremost on these issues.
Hi, Lavonne! You are correct about the original intent of Housing First. However, when they rolled out Housing First as a one-size-fits-all approach in 2013, they defunded those services. In addition, those services became optional, meaning the housed individual could choose whether or not to engage in such services. Below is the only long-term study done to date under this approach. Over a 14-year-long period, the chronically homeless placed in non-sober housing, and the choice of whether to engage in services such as mental health counseling and/or drug and alcohol counseling, is hardly a success.
By year five, only 36% of the housing recipients remained sheltered. Nearly half of the cohort died due to a “trimorbidity” combination of medical, psychiatric, and substance-use disorder: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33710091/
My understanding of the housing first model is that first, we get someone stabilized in housing, and then, we provide the other services, addressing mental health, addiction, and jobs etc. The idea is that in the stress and chaos of the streets, people can’t be expected to deal with these things successfully. Am I mistaken? Aren’t these services offered in the housing first model?
These services aren’t offered as a part of the Housing First model, and that’s the problem. In a sense the homeless are given a place without any accountability with respect to the deeper issues around addiction and mental health.
Michele is arguing that the model is broken and hasn’t proven to work. This as opposed to the center she ran in California that in addition to temporary onsite housing focused first and foremost on these issues.
Hi, Lavonne! You are correct about the original intent of Housing First. However, when they rolled out Housing First as a one-size-fits-all approach in 2013, they defunded those services. In addition, those services became optional, meaning the housed individual could choose whether or not to engage in such services. Below is the only long-term study done to date under this approach. Over a 14-year-long period, the chronically homeless placed in non-sober housing, and the choice of whether to engage in services such as mental health counseling and/or drug and alcohol counseling, is hardly a success.
By year five, only 36% of the housing recipients remained sheltered. Nearly half of the cohort died due to a “trimorbidity” combination of medical, psychiatric, and substance-use disorder: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33710091/
Thanks for the clarification. I’m shocked that those vital services were defunded.