Three Crises, Three Solutions: A Smarter Strategy to End Homelessness
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." By that standard America's approach to homelessness has lost its mind. We spend more every year. The crisis gets worse every year. The problem is not a lack of money and it is not a lack of compassion. It is that we keep applying one solution to three completely different problems.
Homelessness is not one crisis. It is three addiction, severe mental illness and economic hardship. Each one demands a different response. Until our policy matches the cause to the cure nothing will change.
Decades of Failure Billions Spent
For decades agencies from HUD down to county programs have spent billions to fight homelessness. The spending goes up. The promises pile up. The encampments keep growing. Why? Because most of our programs rest on a theory that does not survive contact with reality. That if a thousand people are homeless you build a thousand units of housing and the problem is solved.
It does not work that way. Some people are in active addiction. Some have untreated severe mental illness. Some are simply priced out of an impossible rental market. You cannot put all three groups under one roof and expect stability or safety. A person in the grip of psychosis needs specialized care. Not a studio apartment and a hope. A person in active addiction with no treatment requirement. Will drift back toward the behaviors that put them on the street. And a working family that just needs a few months to recover should not be housed in the middle of all of it.
Look at Bellevue's own Plymouth Crossing. The Eastside's first permanent supportive housing building. By design its model places no abstinence requirement on residents. In a population where the large majority struggle with substance use. Housing people in active addiction with no treatment mandate produces predictable repeated crisis. Overdoses, emergency calls, instability for everyone in the building. The staff are not villains. The model is the problem. And calling that model compassion does not make it compassionate.
A Better Approach: Separate by Cause Not Convenience
We need to sort people by cause not by convenience. And build a real response for each.
For those in addiction
Long term secure rehabilitation. Isolated from the drug supply, where recovery is measured in months, not days. When treatment succeeds. People transition into supportive housing where counseling continues. Recovery first then a stable home to protect it.
For those with severe mental illness
Permanent humane care for the people who cannot safely live on their own. Decades ago we closed the institutions and told ourselves the streets would be kinder. They are not. The answer is not to pretend the old asylums were fine. Many were a disgrace . But today we can build something better and keep it accountable.
For those down on their luck
Short term housing, job training and rental support for up to a year. Aimed squarely at getting people back to work and back on their feet. For someone who just hit a rough patch. A little help at the right moment is all it takes.
Doing It Right This Time
The strongest objection to reopening long term care is history. The overcrowding, the neglect and the abuse. That objection is fair and any honest plan has to answer it. The old institutions failed in the dark with no one watching. This one would operate in the light.
Every facility would be inspected at least every 90 days. By independent oversight bodies that include not only government inspectors but journalists, clergy and community volunteers. Outcomes overdose rates, relapse, employment, discharges . All would be posted on a public dashboard anyone can read. Any case of abuse or neglect would be reported to the Attorney General and made public within 72 hours. Sunlight is the difference between a hospital and a warehouse.
What About the Law?
Critics will raise Olmstead v. L.C., the 1999 Supreme Court decision holding that people with disabilities have the right to live in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs. They are right to raise it and this plan is built to respect it. No one is committed for being poor, unpopular or inconvenient. Long term commitment would require two independent clinical evaluations and a judge's finding. By clear and convincing evidence that a person cannot safely live on their own. Placement would be reviewed every six months medically and every year by a court. And the goal in every case is to move people toward the least restrictive setting they can safely handle. Not to lock anyone away and forget them. Integration is the aim. Care is the floor.
The Human Cost of Doing Nothing
We already know the price of inaction. Because we keep paying it. When a young woman named Iryna Zarutska was killed on a Charlotte train. The homeless man charged had a long history of severe mental illness and a record the system already knew about. With nowhere to go but the street. The failure was not that we lacked a way to punish him afterward. The failure was that a person in obvious crisis was left untreated until tragedy was the only outcome left. Punishment after the fact is not a mental health policy. It is the absence of one.
And the victims are not only strangers on a train. The people we abandon on the street are preyed upon themselves. Homeless women with mental illness are assaulted and trafficked. Often unable to report what is done to them. We cannot call ourselves compassionate while leaving the most vulnerable among us to be hurt and to die in plain sight. You can read more in Streets Are the New Asylums.
The Legislation
To make this real I have drafted two pieces of model legislation. The federal Homeless Recovery and Rehabilitation Act, and a companion State Mental Health Restoration and Oversight Act. Since states control the civil commitment laws this depends on. The core of it. Classify people by primary cause at intake. Addiction, mental illness or economic hardship. And place them accordingly. Set real standards for secure rehabilitation and long term mental health facilities. Sited responsibly and inspected on a fixed schedule. Tie federal dollars to measurable results. Fewer overdoses, more completed treatment, less repeat homelessness. And offer states a construction match to build compliant facilities. Paid substantially by redirecting the HUD and HHS money we are already spending without results. And stand up a national oversight board, with law enforcement, treatment providers. And charities at the table to keep the whole system honest.
Read the full draft legislation here.
The Choice
Homelessness is three crises not one. It will take three honest responses. Real treatment for addiction, real care for mental illness and a real hand up for the people who just need one. Compassion and accountability are not opposites. They are the same thing done right.
As Hubert Humphrey put it, the moral test of a government is how it treats those in the dawn of life, the children, those in the twilight of life, the aged and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped. Right now we are failing that test on a sidewalk near you. I am running to change that.
If you want a serious plan instead of another decade of excuses, support this campaign. Share this with someone who has stopped believing this problem can be solved. It can.
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