Homelessness Crisis: Housing First Era a Humanitarian Disaster

Since President Trump announced his executive order on homelessness programs in July, it seems as though every week has brought a new statement from advocacy organizations decrying the inhumanity of these impending policy changes. But for decades, those organizations have failed to acknowledge the inhumanity at the core of their own policy preferences — housing instead of treatment. And according to national polls, large majorities of Americans across the political spectrum have had enough.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) has been the preeminent voice on homelessness policy since the Clinton era. However, its credibility has eroded as tens of billions of dollars in federal, state, and local spending on programs that the group promised would eliminate homelessness have not, in fact, achieved anything of the sort. To the contrary, homelessness is worse than at any point since the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) began collecting data.

PW

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Paul Webster

Paul Webster is a senior fellow at the Cicero Institute.

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Homelessness Crisis

Since President Trump announced his executive order on homelessness programs in July, it seems as though every week has brought a new statement from advocacy organizations decrying the inhumanity of these impending policy changes. But for decades, those organizations have failed to acknowledge the inhumanity at the core of their own policy preferences — housing instead of treatment. And according to national polls, large majorities of Americans across the political spectrum have had enough.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) has been the preeminent voice on homelessness policy since the Clinton era. However, its credibility has eroded as tens of billions of dollars in federal, state, and local spending on programs that the group promised would eliminate homelessness have not, in fact, achieved anything of the sort. To the contrary, homelessness is worse than at any point since the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) began collecting data.