It used to be that housing programs for homeless folks required people to get treated for mental illness and addiction first. The idea was that people needed to clean up before they were ready to live on their own. It turned out, however, that it was difficult for people to stick to their treatment programs—to keep taking their meds, or to stay away from drugs—while living in the streets.
So, throughout the 1990s and 2000s, cities in the United States and Canada tried reversing the formula. They ran “Housing First” programs, which gave people access to subsidized apartments right away. Since then, plenty of research has shown that Housing First generally costs cities less and helps more people succeed in treatment. Still, the programs could use improvement, as Pacific Standard reported last year: Namely, they could be better tailored for specific populations. Chronically homeless people may need something different than people who recently became homeless because they lost their jobs, for example. Now, a new study shows one tailored program's preliminary success.
[For more of this story, written by Francie Diep, go to http://www.psmag.com/politics-...ing-first-with-tweak]
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