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Homelessness: Is Housing First working? California is a case study
‘Housing First’ (without many requirements) doesn’t seem to be very effective as over 60% of the homeless population suffers from either substance abuse and/or mental illness. Addiction and mental illness are treatable diseases with long term care, but there is no cure. Simply providing shelter will not cure a disease. It allows the individual to go untreated,…
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Homelessness in California: Newsom needs Trump to bail him out
To put things in perspective let’s begin with some startling numbers for our entire country. According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), in January of 2024 there were 771,480 people that experienced homelessness in a single winter night in this country when the count was taken. That’s up from 653,104 (18%) from…
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Is ‘Affordable Housing’ possible in California?
It’s a buzzword for politicians and developers: Affordability. According to the California Housing Consortium, housing is affordable if it costs no more than 30% of your monthly income. And most affordable housing developments are designed for people with household incomes of 60% or less than the area median income. But is that realistic? Consider a family with…
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Homelessness: Housing First or Treatment First? Transitional housing is the answer.
What is Housing First? Housing First is an approach that prioritizes providing permanent housing to homeless individuals without any requirements before accessing or retaining such housing. Housing First’s primary goal is to remove homeless people from the streets or shelters to permanent government subsidized housing, while offering certain services to hopefully improve housing stability.…