this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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It's far more complicated than that for many of the homeless. A really high proportion have chronic mental health problems like schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder. These people cannot maintain even a basic apartment. Fires are common. As are faeces smeared on the walls, major structural damage, dead animals, bullet holes and use of firearms inside the premises. Throwing a mentally unwell person into a home to fend for themselves doesn't work. The mental health treatment has to come first. It can take months, if not years, to help them out of their hole.
Another significant portion of the homeless have chronic addiction. In addiction treatment, we say that "a locking door is a death sentence" because the LAST thing you want is to give a junky unsupervised privacy to shoot up as often as they like. Apartments often turn into local hubs for dealing and sex work. This attracts all kinds of unsavory characters and crime - especially violent crime. You don't want to know what a junky would be willing to do to get a fix. A major part of this problem is called "destigmatization." This is a great documentary on how it has so thoroughly failed in Vancouver, specifically.
Both groups require intensive support before being given housing. Not after and not at the same time.
No. Housing comes first. You cannot treat mental health or addiction while the patient is experiencing the inhumane conditions of homelessness.
So you think the streets are better? Believe it or not, all this still happens on the street, except now there is no guarantee of food, shelter, safety, or property. I'm sure the constant threat of starvation, death by exposure, getting robbed, or being sexually assaulted is really beneficial to mental health. Do you really think being on the street stops addicts from using as much as they want? No privacy on the street? These people are already invisible. And no, if you don't have a door that locks, you don't become immune to overdosing.
Shameful.