"Meet the outsider who accidentally solved chronic homelessness"

"Homeless services once worked like a reward system. Kick an addiction, get a home. Take some medication, get counseling. But Tsemberis’s model, called “housing first,” said the order was backward. Someone has the best chance of improving if they’re stabilized in a home.

It works like this: First, prioritize the chronically homeless, defined as those with mental or physical disabilities who are homeless for longer than a year or have experienced four episodes within three years...

Then give them a home, no questions asked. Immediately afterward, provide counseling, a step research shows is the most vital. Give them final say in everything — where they live, what they own, how often they’re counseled.

“People thought this was crazy,” said Tsemberis, who today runs Pathways to Housing. “They said, ‘You mean even when someone relapses and sells all the furniture you gave them … [to pay for] drugs, you don’t kick them out?’ And I said, ‘No, we do not.'”...
“We were equating the severity of diagnosis with ability to function,” he said. “But surviving in homelessness is labor intensive, exhausting and complicated. It calls for a skill set of functionality.""
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2015/05/06/meet-the-outsider-who-accidentally-solved-chronic-homelessness/

Amazing. Because there is so much compassion there, so much centering the person in need instead of the distaste that the privileged people have for them and their desire to see fewer distasteful things.

It's like, I will never get over the fact that my hometown (Palo Alto) made it illegal for people to sleep in their cars in this giant, giant parking lot by a community center. There was literally no problem they were causing, it wasn't very many people, but the people who owned homes nearby were uncomfortable and so a few years ago made it a city ordinance (or whatever it's called).