The Homeless Problem

For John, BLUF:  We know there is a homeless issue, but many don't understand it, and the different factors that have gone into creating it, from mental health to drug addiction to domestic violence to lack of affordable housing.  We need a broader look and ore comprehensive solution.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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It’s mental health, stupid:  How Team Biden misunderstands homeless crisis

Here is the sub-headline:

From The New York Post, by Howard Husock September 20, 2021, 6:48pm.

Here is the lede plus four:

Team Biden is asking mayors, governors and tribal leaders to pledge to reduce homelessness in exchange for new federal rental assistance and support for new housing construction.  The initiative is called House America, but it should be dubbed Misunderstand America.

Yes, housing prices are up post-pandemic: Demand is growing, supply stalled.  But that isn’t why there are massive homeless encampments plaguing cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle — and even New York, where the de Blasio administration is forced to play whack-a-mole with tent encampments.

Some rough-sleepers would relish permanent housing, yes.  But many would also choose to stay on the streets.  That’s because untreated mental illness, not a housing shortage, is the real source of the problem for a significant share of the homeless.

In 2015 (the most recent such survey), the Department of Housing and Urban Development found that at least 25 percent of the US homeless, or 140,000 people, were seriously mentally ill; 45 percent suffered from mental illness of some kind.  Serious mental illness isn’t garden-variety anxiety or melancholy.  It’s the sort of paranoid schizophrenia that can involve voices instructing the patient to push a young woman toward an oncoming subway train.

Others are haunted by the demon of addiction.  As the Substance Abuse and Treatment Center has reported, “tragically, homelessness and substance abuse go hand-in-hand.  The end result of homelessness is often substance abuse, and substance abuse often contributes to homelessness.”  The National Coalition for the Homeless has found that 38 percent of homeless people are alcohol-dependent, while 26 percent are dependent on other harmful chemicals.

Across the nation our homeless programs are, by and large, a mess.  Yes, San Francisco is much worse than Lowell, but we all have problems, both in understand the breadth and depth of the proble and in executing solutions.

And here is a key point:

What links all these troubled populations is a desperate need for treatment.  There was a time not long ago when we understood this — and every state maintained an extensive network of residential psychiatric hospitals to provide care, or at least try to do so.

So, going for the dollar quote:

Now tent encampments (and jails and prisons) have replaced those inpatient facilities.

We need to bring back mental hospitals.  We need to train more mental health workers.  We can't build our way out of the homeless crisis.

That said, some current COVID-19 fighting economic policies will make affordable shelter less available and action will be neeeded in that direction as well.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff