Thread by @ShellenbergerMD

I love HBO comedian @iamjohnoliver but last night he repeated myths about homelessness including that it is caused primarily by lack of housing, that it causes addiction more than the other way around, and that the solution "Housing First."

🧵

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/why-john-oli…

In a 25-minute segment last night Oliver attributed homelessness to poverty, high rents, and lack of housing. Oliver showed interviews with homeless people who say they would like to work full-time but are unable to do so because they have to live in homeless shelters.

Unfortunately, Oliver repeated many myths. The vast majority of people we call “homeless” are suffering from untreated mental illness and/or addiction and it led them to lose their job, housing, and family ties.

I summarize the evidence here:

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/why-californ…

We already do a great job of helping mothers and others who don’t suffer from addiction or untreated mental illness to benefit from subsidized housing. The problem is we don’t mandate the psychiatric and addiction care that many “homeless” require.

And the best-available, peer-reviewed science shows that “Housing First” agenda Oliver promotes fails on its own terms, worsens addiction, and is one of the main reasons homelessness has grown so much worse.

It’s true that we need more housing, and voluntary addiction and psychiatric care, including what is called “permanent supportive housing” for people suffering from mental illness. I advocate universal psych care, drug treatment on demand, and more shelter space for the homeless.

And Oliver is right that the U.S. lacks the social safety net that European and other developed nations have.

But Oliver badly misdescribes the problem. For example, he notes that some cities lack sufficient homeless shelter.

But Oliver doesn’t acknowledge that it has been “Housing First” homelessness advocates who caused the lack of shelter by demanding that funding be diverted away from shelters to Housing First apartments often costing $750,000 each.

Oliver claims homelessness causes addiction when it is far more often the other way around. And he ignores the evidence showing that using housing as a reward for abstinence, rather than giving it away as a right, is essential to reducing homelessness by reducing addiction.

Oliver was wrong to encourage more of the same policies that caused homelessness to increase in the U.S. over the last decade, and wrong to suggest that anyone who disagreed with him were racist and NIMBY “dicks” who cause violence against homeless people.

Oliver closes his segment by ridiculing a white woman who expresses concern about subsidized housing bringing the homeless into her neighborhood.

Why is that? Why does such an intelligent, thoughtful, and compassionate journalist repeat easily-debunked myths about homelessness?

Part of it is just ignorance. Oliver appears to have relied entirely on Housing First advocates & not read anything that questions the narrative. As I document in San Fransicko, homeless advocates are not just small service providers but influential academics at top universities.

Those “Housing First” advocates have received hundreds of millions in grants from Marc Benioff, John Arnold, George Soros, and other donors to promote the notion that Housing First works.

Another part of it is ideological. Housing First advocates believe that housing, not shelter, is a right, and that governments have a moral obligation to provide it. They have spent 20 years trying to prove that giving away housing, unconditionally, works.

But the studies show that it fails to address addiction or even keep people in apartments. The only thing proven to work is to make housing a reward for good behavior, mostly abstinence but also things like taking one’s psychiatric medicines, and going to work.

The dominant view among progressives stems from victim ideology, which was born in the 60s, when they attacked any effort to hold people who receive welfare or subsidized accountable as “blaming the victim.”

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/why-i-am-not…

Today, many progressives, including progressive district attorneys supported by George Soros, even view drug dealers as victims.

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/the-reason-t…

Victim ideology categorizes people as victims or oppressors, and argues that nothing should be demanded of people categorized as victims. This is terrible for the mentally ill and addicts alike.

Psychotics sometimes need to be coerced into taking their meds so they don’t hurt people and wind up in prison. Many addicts need to be arrested, when breaking laws related to their addiction, e.g., public drug use, theft, and public defecation.

https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1454334958831489025?s=20

Oliver's segment on homelessness is a perfect encapsulation of victim ideology and why it is so wrong on both the facts and on ethics. On the facts, Oliver misdescribes a homeless woman who is likely suffering from mental illness and/or drug addiction as merely down on her luck.

Oliver mixes together apparently sober and sane homeless families, temporarily down on their luck, with people are on the street because of addiction and untreated mental illness.

Doing so is wrong, analytically, but also wrong, morally, since most addicts and the mentally ill need something very different from just a subsidized apartment unit.

If we are to solve homelessness rather than make it worse, we need intelligent and thoughtful comedians and influencers like Oliver to do their homework, rather than to repeat myths.

I researched and wrote San Fransicko, in part, to make it easier for people to get the facts, rather than repeat what we were told, and to see that there’s a better way to help the homeless, whether addicted to drugs, mentally ill, or not.

amazon.com/gp/product/006…

The good news is that the conversation around drugs and homelessness is changing rapidly because the situation on the ground has grown so much worse. We are at the very beginning of our efforts to educate journalists, policymakers, and the public.

As time passes, many Americans will come to understand the unintended consequences of treating what is fundamentally a problem of untreated mental illness and addiction as a problem of poverty, high rents, and NIMBYs.

And some of them, perhaps even progressive comedians like John Oliver, will come to find humor, and humility, from the fact that so many of us got it so wrong for so long.

/END