What role does mental illness play?
[impending rant - not targeted at heel]
It plays, but largely due to the malicious political cynicism, you mentioned.
We’ve decided to take a 1950s view of mental illness, relative to houselessness (I use that term intentionally) and addiction, while evolving our view to help Stacy and Chad continue to serve as marketing executives and accountants. It’s nothing more than an opportunity to obfuscate and deflect
societal responsibility by rhetorically bludgeoning “less dead” individuals.
In
many cases, mental illness and addiction prevent a person from navigating the often Byzantine houseless to house programs (in some situations, mental illness leads to a preference for outdoor living but not a large %). Curbing addiction is also a massive parallel goal to programs like HF. Yes, the individual must play ball, but I’m so [exaggerated eye roll, head shake] by the rapidity with which pols, cynics, and largely cons turn their ire upon the individual. Individuals who frequently lack the skills necessary to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” (see severe and persistent mental illness and addiction). We’re talking individuals who also represent shocking percentages of people with TBI,
severe sexual and physical abuse, and co-morbid conditions; and, by the way, the parameters for “bootstrapping” are ever moving and controlled by the same villains.
These villains then want to blame, scorn, and laugh at programs that attempt to curb the issue but fail (and the people behind them), while never acknowledging that the status quo got us here; the programs in question rarely get funded appropriately (except intermittently by the VA); and making houselessness illegal is
more societally costly, in real and opportunity terms (e.g. enforcement, jail costs, court costs, public defenders, cleanups, etc. AND it’s a revolving door).
The US has a pathetic dearth of residential treatment facilities for drying out and stabilizing persistent and severe mental illness,
and habituating the uncompromising routines and support structures necessary to curb the individually and socially destructive aspects of the conditions. We also have a dearth of affordable housing. The “solution” (it’ll never be 100% solved) is MORE. But, disingenuous low hanging fruit gets picked by do-nothing demagogues and ignorants (ie they’re sick in the head, they chose this!, they're felons!) to forestall and subvert resourcing genuine efforts. Why? Because the villains are more beholden to personal gain and millionaire/billionaire hyper-capitalist benefactors than giving two-shits about societal well-being, ie massive expenditures to house people mean shallower public confers to raid; more resources going towards people they either hate and/or don’t care if they die/wither away; it would remove a bludgeon aimed at political opponents; and they might get primaried from the right bc their constituents tend to not care about or outright hate people they only see in b-roll on Fox News, oan, or any number of Sinclair stations.
ETA: the prior rant largely addresses the obvious houselessness that gets kicked around as a political football, ie tents, shacks, broken down RVs, sleeping on stoops, psychosis in the streets, etc. Turning these obvious and yucky! people into derisive wedges eviscerates opportunities for the houseless person who lives in their car, works regular hours at McDonald’s, keeps a gym membership for showering purposes, and can’t get into funded housing because they are too functional.
