Today I published a story about the Trump admin moving away from Housing First, and I wanted to offer a few additional thoughts. I’ve been covering homelessness for a long time, and I do think HF advocates need to reconsider some aspects of their advocacy /1 🧵 - ThreadSky

rachelmcohen.bsky.social • 22 days ago

Today I published a story about the Trump admin moving away from Housing First, and I wanted to offer a few additional thoughts.

I’ve been covering homelessness for a long time, and I do think HF advocates need to reconsider some aspects of their advocacy /1 🧵

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rachelmcohen.bsky.social•22 days ago

In 2022, I looked into rise of conservative attacks on Housing First — an approach first embraced by George W. Bush that focuses on getting people into permanent housing with support services, rather than requiring treatment for mental health, drugs, or job training first /2

rachelmcohen.bsky.social•22 days ago

There’s been strong research over the years showing HF is more successful in keeping people housed than alternative approaches that essentially ask people to earn their housing with things like reaching sobriety or job training first /3

I cite the major studies here: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23504323/housing-first-homelessness-houston-homes

rachelmcohen.bsky.social•22 days ago

“Housing First” when properly executed is not “Housing Only” — it’s meant to come with robust and voluntary social services. This is partly because researchers, advocates and practitioners believe that forced treatment doesn’t work as well, and isn’t ethical /4

rachelmcohen.bsky.social•22 days ago

Resistance to forced treatment comes from a deep concern for civil liberties and fear of returning to the ghoulish days of mass institutionalization. /5

rachelmcohen.bsky.social•22 days ago

There’s basically been two concurrent problems that have made HF more vulnerable to attacks.

One is a lack of housing. I literally wrote this ten years ago, and this was _before_ the rise of tent encampments have have been so politically disastrous https://prospect.org/economy/housing-first-policy-addressing-homelessness-hamstrung-funding-issues/ /6

rachelmcohen.bsky.social•22 days ago

It can't really be overstated how the rise of encampments (largely a result of Democratic-led states and cities making the cost of housing too expensive) fueled backlash against time-tested approaches like Housing First, even though it wasn't Housing First causing the problem /7

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