Housing First

Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley

by Jacob Silverman  · 9 Oct 2025  · 312pp  · 103,645 words

tried-and-failed punitive strategies to address homelessness (bans on outdoor camping) and drug use (arrests, incarceration, forced treatment). The left tended to emphasize a housing-first policy that prioritized finding shelter for homeless people. Tech elites thought this rewarded drug use and irresponsible personal behavior. The two sides were not quite irreconcilable

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on public homelessness, which he said was being worsened by the “homeless-industrial complex.” In public writings, Lonsdale and the Cicero Institute derided homeless groups’ “housing first” policy, which prioritized finding stable housing for the person (without imposing conditions). Lonsdale said that housing first was “lucrative for many activists” but ineffective, despite a

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, activists, and homeless people themselves emphasized that the precondition for addressing homelessness was providing people with stable, safe, permanent shelter—hence the importance placed on housing-first policy. Existing homeless shelters could be dangerous, overcrowded, or impose conditions—ranging from religious worship to sobriety—that didn’t work for people struggling on the

Tenants: The People on the Frontline of Britain's Housing Emergency

by Vicky Spratt  · 18 May 2022  · 371pp  · 122,273 words

’t happen, it just needs to be defined properly. Of course, a properly defined right to housing in Britain, underpinned by a commitment to the Housing First philosophy, would not necessarily be a silver bullet, but it would be a foundation on which legislation could be worked out; one that could bring the

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and if we had enough affordable homes for everyone. But, as Scotland’s homelessness laws and changes to private tenancies in recent years show, a Housing First approach which encapsulates the right to housing is completely doable. No Going Back If this all sounds Pollyanna-ish, consider what happened in response to the

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for debate? Food safety standards are not, for instance. Nor is access to fresh, clean, drinkable water. If there was a unilateral commitment to a Housing First approach and the human right to housing, perhaps the political landscape would look very different. It is important to note at this point that not all

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the pandemic, but says that it ‘wasn’t enough’ and ‘shouldn’t have taken a pandemic to trigger the policy change’. If we apply the Housing First philosophy, then it forces an obvious question: why are we knowingly capping Housing Benefit below the cost of rent and pushing people into poverty? The Local

Automating Inequality

by Virginia Eubanks  · 294pp  · 77,356 words

homeless got resources most appropriate for the chronically homeless; the chronically homeless got nothing at all. The other conceptual shift in coordinated entry is its housing first philosophy. Until very recently, most homeless services operated on a “housing readiness” model that moved individuals through different program steps before they could be housed. Someone

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attain independent housing. At each stage, a set of behavioral requirements—sobriety, treatment compliance, employment—were gateways that controlled access to the next step. The housing first approach emerges instead from the understanding that it is difficult to attend to other challenges if you are not stably housed. Housing first puts individuals and

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to make everyone feel welcome and to preserve clients’ dignity, it feels like what it is: a warehouse for people. Pathways follows a harm reduction, housing first philosophy, case manager Richard Renteria explains as he gives me a tour. This means that Pathways staff will do everything in their power to keep someone

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Los Angeles (HACLA) “housing readiness” model National Housing Act (1934) permanent supportive housing redlining single room occupancy SRO Housing Corporation Wagner Act See also homelessness housing first philosophy in homeless services Hunt, Quanetha Hurricane Katrina hybrid eligibility systems IBM and apartheid Indiana v. IBM incarceration and child welfare and digital poorhouse and homelessness

Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen

by Dan Heath  · 3 Mar 2020

. The same issues homeless people have, people who are housed have.… People who are housed can start working on those other issues.” Along with the “housing first” strategy came a shift in collaboration, involving what’s known as “coordinated entry.” Cities have many different housing options for homeless people—supportive housing, transitional housing

Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing

by Andrew Ross  · 25 Oct 2021  · 301pp  · 90,276 words

to the prolonged impact of the pandemic, retrofitted motels are turning into an increasingly viable option for supplying the homes so urgently needed by the Housing First model. ANDREW ROSS 3 Dopesick and Homesick HECTOR TORRES WAS not the first person I met at the Sandpiper Inn, but he is the main reason

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Christian audiences by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, When Helping Hurts: Alleviating Poverty without Hurting the Poor … and Yourself (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2009). 20.  The Housing First model was developed by Sam Tsemberis, at Pathways to Housing in New York, in the early 1990s, and then research by Dennis Culhane provided evidence of

San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities

by Michael Shellenberger  · 11 Oct 2021  · 572pp  · 124,222 words

users.”45 There is evidence that privacy and solitude created by Housing First make substance abuse worse. A study in Ottawa found that, while the Housing First group kept people in housing longer, the comparison group saw greater reductions in alcohol consumption and problematic drug use, and greater improvements to mental health, after

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is it? And how would you deal with it?” “No one would disagree that there is a problem of drug sales,” she said. “But the Housing First model is to get people off the streets and get them into housing where they can get their lives in order.”24 Some progressives I talked

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about their organization’s position toward involuntary psychiatric treatment as an alternative to incarceration for the mentally ill who break the law. “We support the Housing First model, not involuntary treatment,” said ACLU attorney Jamie Crook, “which has proven to be ineffective and has violated liberties without keeping people off the streets.”34

Beautiful Solutions: A Toolbox for Liberation

by Elandria Williams, Eli Feghali, Rachel Plattus and Nathan Schneider  · 15 Dec 2024  · 346pp  · 84,111 words

polluters. WHAT ARE SOME OF THE MOST PROMISING STRATEGIES? Valuing care work. Valuing healers. Movements for universal healthcare. Decriminalizing drugs and plant medicines. Social cooperatives. Housing first policies for unsheltered people. Disability justice. Community health workers. Elder and child care cooperatives. Personal, intergenerational, and collective trauma-informed care. HOW ARE WE MAKING BEAUTIFUL

The End of Policing

by Alex S. Vitale  · 9 Oct 2017  · 318pp  · 82,452 words

at very low or no cost, and to provide a range of optional support services to help them stay there. This is known as the housing-first approach, and it is growing in prominence. In the past, homeless programs focused on proving emergency and transitional shelter, in the belief that if you stabilized

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, and such housing does not come with the necessary support service to help people maintain stable housing. Virginia has been a major proponent of a housing-first approach, including rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing. From 2010 to mid-2016, the state experienced a 31 percent drop in overall homelessness, including a 37

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family homelessness. In 2015, it became the first state to end veteran homelessness.22 The state of Utah was also an early adopter of a housing-first approach. Overall, officials are very happy with the results, which have significantly reduced overall homelessness and the number of chronically homeless people, who tend to have

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moral codes before receiving services. These codes can be especially restrictive and even discriminatory toward LGBTQ people. Even if we began moving immediately toward a housing-first model, there would still be people waiting for a place to live for some time. And even when a full housing model is in place, there

Home: Why Public Housing Is the Answer

by Eoin Ó Broin  · 5 May 2019  · 301pp  · 77,626 words

was consuming a disproportionate amount of Residential Tenancy Board dispute resolution time) as well as measures to address homelessness, included as a recommitment to the Housing First model. What is striking about the document is its failure to understand that private homeownership will only remain the tenure of choice if other tenures such

There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

by Brian Goldstone  · 25 Mar 2025  · 512pp  · 153,059 words

, Housing First: Ending Homelessness, Transforming Systems, and Changing Lives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Nan Roman, The Ethics of Housing: The Case for the Housing First Approach (Washington, D.C.: National Alliance to End Homelessness, 2018). GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Staff at schools and colleges: Brian Goldstone, “3 Kids. 2