Housing first is effective for people who want our idea of a 'normal lifestyle'
I think people in this thread are asking you to question your assumption- do you think every drug addict on the west coast wants to hold down a job and live our normal life?
People don't want to be drug addicts and live a poor existence to feed a habit. They have problems, they use the drugs to medicate or fit in, the problems compound with drug use, so they use more to deal with the problems more. They are also ostracized by communities which nobody likes as we are social creatures. The level of that social exclusion probably depends a lot on their current level of wealth. People like having shelter and their physical needs met and while they might not necessarily want normal either, I'd argue a big part of that is more that they have poor coping strategies and don't now how to cope with normal. There will always be people who don't fall into certain strategies for combating homelessness and drug addiction, but this is a much better approach than doing what amounts to nothing.
I definitely disagree. The oscillation is not out of actually wanting to be addicts, it is because they lack the coping skills to deal with trying to get clean and dealing with the world on someone's terms other than their own. There is a big difference between wanting to be something and feeling like you have no other alternatives other than to become that something.
I'm pretty sure that for a lot of these people, their "dream life" would be one in which they're a productive member of society and use drugs all day, and the drugs just happen to have no negative side-effects.
People don't want to live like drug addicts; but nor do they want to stop using drugs.
To reverse the timeline of an obvious example: the people on the street addicted to heroin, would much rather just become people working regular jobs who are prescribed heroin.
These people probably they got addicted to heroin because of chronic pain, and probably that chronic pain hasn't gone away. So any time the heroin is wearing off, the pain comes back, and that decreases the amount of energy/willpower they have to do anything besides the simplest, shortest-term thing they can do to stave off the pain: buy more street heroin.
You might wean them off heroin, but you aren't gonna make them not take some painkiller, because they still have chronic pain. They'll always be "a drug addict" in a technical sense; they need painkillers the same way people with diabetes need insulin.
Why are you assuming that giving a person a house means they have to have a normal life? Can't they live in the house and continue not to have a job and continue living a non-normal life and get clean too?
> do you think every drug addict on the west coast wants to hold down a job and live our normal life?
That's not the relevant question. Is it better for the rest of us if that drug addict is on the side walk or living inside? In the latter case, there's a better chance of treatment success, but it's also better when they remain addicts.
I think people in this thread are asking you to question your assumption- do you think every drug addict on the west coast wants to hold down a job and live our normal life?