How Do You Envision Solving the Homeless Crisis?

How do you envision solving the homeless crisis? Providing a meal and overnight shelter simply enables people to stay homeless. Criminalizing the behavior of people who are homeless also does not address the root issues. How about a solution that is FAR MORE COST EFFECTIVE and reduces the cost to tax payers by over 50%? We need to work toward supplying the basic human need, which is a permanent place to live. The attached video gives good reason for this position. Please take the time to watch it, and while it’s from a few years ago, this program which was tested over 20 years has proven to be effective and continues to spread throughout the whole United States. It’s a model which has been adopted by H.U.D. and the video will help you understand why we are doing what we’re doing. Traditional treatment has been shown to be successful approximately 25% of the time while the Housing First model has been shown to be about 85% successful.

At the Rescue Mission we firmly believe in the Housing First Model. In California and Merced County housing is limited and there are not enough places to house people. Research shows if California doubles the amount of affordable housing being built each year it will take 10 years until there is enough housing available to meet the need. Therefore, while we firmly believe in the Housing First Model, we are working very hard to provide transitional housing. Through our transitional group home programs, we can move people from the hospital, incarceration, and the street into transitional housing as we work to help them find permanent housing. Housing First is the ultimate goal, transitional housing is simply a stop-gap measure until enough housing is available.