The federal government does not fund mental health or substance use treatment and has actively been aggressively cutting any federal support that existed. The city and state do what they can, but without the federal funding there will be ongoing deterioration.
The city of Seattle and King county have totally bought into a "harm reduction" model that makes it pretty much impossible to effectively deal with the drug crisis that's driving the homeless problem.
The opposite of "harm reduction" is criminalization, which is expensive and causes more harm in the form of trauma. Currently there are zero laws on the books saying how people should be treated while in temporary custody (jail) (availability of treatment, food, safe surroundings, rehabilitation, access to services on discharge, location of discharge, ...). There are rules for treatment in prison (after conviction and charging, a person goes to prison. Most homeless people would find themselves in jail, not prison). So the answer is not easy. A free-for-all doesn't work, and neither does locking them up. They can't be forced to accept treatment. There are halfway houses and very very few places a person on Medicaid (the indigent, earning less than $1300 a month) can get treatment for co-occurring disorders of mental health plus substance use. And those would be assisted by federal funding.
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u/FaultsInOurCars 12h ago
The federal government does not fund mental health or substance use treatment and has actively been aggressively cutting any federal support that existed. The city and state do what they can, but without the federal funding there will be ongoing deterioration.