Dr. Keith Humphreys

You know, they didn't fall out of housing or a family, they just need work.

But since, you know, unemployment is historically quite low now, so who's left are the people who cannot, even when we're near, you know, full employment, cannot find a shelter.

And those tend to be people who have problems, like mental illness, like addiction.

You can do some things and with good evidence, you can do some things by combining housing, you know, nice housing that people would want with recovery culture.

So, you know, there's a model called Oxford House, which is run by the people who live there.

and they all contribute a bit to the rent, and they have a culture which is basically you can't fight, you can't be violent, and you can't use substances or bring them in, but otherwise that's it.

And they have sort of recovery communities, like 10,000 of those things.

Those kind of things have really good evidence of benefit.

So some people will, for that, leave the streets and live there and make that trade.

You can't use your drugs anymore, you can't drink anymore, but...

You can't at least have a nice, clean place with nice people who like you and will support you.

That can help people.

Some people, in my opinion, have to – it will be a court-mandated thing.

And there's two mechanisms for that.

If someone is so impaired that they're an imminent grave –

gravely disabled and imminent threat to themselves or others, you can through the civil commitment process make them go to treatment.

If someone has committed a crime and many people do like, you know, grab someone's iPhone, knock them over and run away and get caught, that is a different type of leverage we can do through things like drug court where you say, look, you know,

You shoved that person, you assaulted them, you stole their phone, we could send you to jail for this, but we don't want to send you to jail.

Instead, if you will comply with this treatment regimen, you will not have to serve the penalty for that and we will expunge your record at the end.

Those kinds of things are going to be necessary for some people.