Progressive Bay Area Dems waking up to Housing First failures
Image by Ted McGrath
Matt Haney, SF Assemblymember, intro's AB2479--aiming to unlock state funds for sober living requirements in subsidized, state-funded housing. The bill responds to the epidemic of drug overdoses and addiction enabled by CA's barrier-free, hugely expensive, and painfully slow-to-build Housing First model. Additional reporting from Ethan Varian at the Merc, below.
State Assemblymember Matt Haney, a Democrat from San Francisco, explains AB2479 on 4.17 Instagram @matthaneysf :
Today I announced AB 2479 which aligns CA housing policy with federal guidelines by recognizing that drug free recovery housing is consistent with Housing First Policy and allowing these residential programs to compete for state support.
We urgently have to put the **supportive** back into supportive housing.
With the threat of fentanyl, a drug that is unprecedented in its deadliness, our goal must always be to help people get off of and away from deadly drugs. We should be supporting people who are ready to take the next step in that journey, as part of a residential recovery community dedicated to support them, and we need to do it now.
There are thousands of people who want to live in a sober drug free recovery living arrangement, but they can’t access it because this type of housing is limited and hard to find, and unsupported by state investments.
This is because under our current Housing First Law drug free housing is not allowed to get any kind of state funding.
The lack of options forces people to live in housing that isn’t best suited for their individual sobriety journey and it puts them at a higher risk of overdose and falling back into homelessness.
Many people seeking recovery don't want to live next to others who are still using, and they shouldn't be forced to. These models allow for a community of people who are all are on a journey to be fully sober to help keep each other accountable and make sure that they have the support needed to not fall back into homelessness.
Our bill also makes sure that if individuals relapse while living in drug free housing they don’t automatically get evicted. Instead they are supported with detoxification programs and intensive peer to peer support to resume recovery. These models understand that relapse can happen, but that we have a responsibility to help people when it does. But if this doesn't work for them, they will be placed in another housing opportunity that is not built on recovery.
We need options and every tool in our tool box to confront the most deadly drug epidemic in our history, which now kills more people than homicides and car crashes combined.
--Assemblymember Matt Haney (instagram: @matthaneysf)
Excerpts from Merc 4.18 coverage on AB 2479 (Ethan Varian, reporter):
Assembly Bill 2479 is part of a broader push to rethink the state’s approach to bringing people off the street amid a deepening fentanyl epidemic and growing public frustration over homelessness. California has an estimated 181,000 homeless residents, making up almost 30% of the country’s unhoused population.
Since 2016, California has required permanent supportive housing programs that have received billions in state funding to adhere to a “Housing First” model — meaning accepting homeless people without preconditions. While the programs must offer services, residents don’t have to accept them.
But given the deadly reality of fentanyl, more officials and advocates — citing reports of overdose deaths and poor conditions at some homeless housing sites — have begun questioning whether Housing First is the only solution.
Haney, traditionally a progressive Democrat, said he doesn’t want to eliminate the Housing First strategy altogether. But he made clear he believes California’s policy needs urgent reform, noting the federal government recently updated its supportive housing guidelines to include drug-fee options.
“To the extent that Housing First is a one-size-fits-all approach — and that approach is, ‘Here’s the key, good luck,’ — it’s very dangerous, and it’s failing,” Haney said.
Read the whole Merc story here.
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