The cheapest way to end homelessness is ridiculously simple

By Drake Baer
Business Insider
Originally published May 28, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

What's counterintuitive about housing first is that people get to keep their homes even if they keep using drugs or alcohol. As we reported last February, this method is better at keeping people from lapsing back into homelessness than traditional housing methods, where homeless people have to lock down jobs and stay sober to keep their temporary housing.

So you could say that the Housing First method isn't just more compassionate to the people who suffer from homelessness, it's also more effective at keeping them off the streets and preventing the drain on community funds.

"If you move people into permanent supportive housing first, and then give them help, it seems to work better,” Nan Roman, the president and CEO of the National Alliance for Homelessness, told The New Yorker in September. “It's intuitive, in a way. People do better when they have stability."

The entire article is here.

Early Death for Severe Mental Illness?

By Allen Frances
The Huffington Post Blog
Originally published December 30, 2014

People diagnosed with serious mental illness -- schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or severe depression -- die 20 years early, on average, because of a combination of lousy medical care, smoking, lack of exercise, complications of medication, suicide, and accidents. They are the most discriminated-against and neglected group in the U.S., which has become probably the worst place in the developed world to be mentally ill.

In many previous blog posts I have bemoaned the shameful state of psychiatric care and housing for people with severe mental illness. My conclusion was that the United States has become the worst place, and now the worst time ever, to have a severe mental illness. Hundreds of thousands of the severely ill languish inappropriately in prisons. Additional hundreds of thousands are homeless on the street.

The entire blog post is here.