Housing First is the correct way to reduce homelessness. The main cause of homelessness is being priced out of the housing market, because the vast majority of housing in America is entirely privatized. Plus most public housing in America is not done nor funded well, until our European counterparts.

The problem in America is the housing market is nearly entirely private, zoning laws that prevent dense housing from being built, and the lack of public funded (nice) public housing. Housing is first and foremost an investment here, not a fundamental right to shelter like it should be.

Drug addiction is a symptom of late-stage homelessness, not a cause. The cause is almost always the private housing market pricing people out of affording even rent.

Numerous studies show that housing first participants experience higher levels of housing retention and use fewer emergency and criminal justice services, which produces cost savings in emergency department use, inpatient hospitalizations, and criminal justice system use.

https://www.pdx.edu/homelessness/housing-first

This has worked famously in Finland

• Housing is a human right: How Finland is eradicating homelessness - CBC

• Here’s how Finland solved its homelessness problem - WEF

Uh, seems like an obvious right answer to me.

For many homeless, the root cause is undiagnosed and/or untreated mental illness of some sort. That then spirals out of control until they end up on the street. Since we don’t give a shit about healthcare in this country, especially mental healthcare, that’s an inevitable result for many until we actually begin to fix the root causes.

The same is true of many drug users. And there is a large overlap on these populations for that reason. Homelessness is hell, addiction is hell, that fix lets them escape real life for a brief period of time. Their illegal actions like theft to fund that aren’t usually about wanting to do whatever it is so much as it’s needing to do it for the next fix, which is essentially a physical requirement to live at that point.

But again, we don’t give a shit about treatment and rehabilitation for drug dealers, throwing them in a box guaranteed to ruin any future prospects, while paying tens of thousands of dollars for prisons is apparently a better investment than attempting rehabilitation with those same funds.

When you then add that even “normal” members of society with full time jobs can’t afford a place to live, you get a cycle that feeds the homeless issue with new bodies daily as people can no longer keep their heads above the water and slip down.

You have a link or episode number for the podcast? I’ve heard this line before about some of them being homeless by choice but I don’t think I buy that excuse. Sometimes the shelters are more dangerous than the streets. Instead of sleeping 2 blocks away from the crazies they’re in the next bunk. And while I’m sure a few are claustrophobic I’m willing to bet a vast majority want a solid roof over their heads.