Homelessness and reinstitutionalization

The Observer has an "interesting" story on homelessness and housing — "interesting" that it minimizes to a fair degree GOVERNOR Ronald Reagan starting the deinstitutionalization of the seriously mentally ill and minimizes the degree to which reinstitutionalization might help. Much of the story is good, above all for rightly lambasting Monty Bennett, but that part is not. 

My rule of thumb has long been that approximately one-third of homeless are that way for problems outside their control, whether simply having too low of income (the Observer doesn't mention roommates, nor in today's world, a screening system for pairing people up with such) or things such as medical bankruptcy, one-third are due primarily to addiction, and one-third primarily due to mental illness. The second and third, of course, have some overlap.

This is not to deny that the world of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" didn't have problems. It certainly did. But, both in, theoretically, the operation of inpatient long-term mental health care housing today, and the variety of medications available today vs 50-60 years ago, we're generally not in that world.

Also, interestingly, the Observer didn't even talk about "housing first" outside the US. For me, when I started the story, Vancouver, British Columbia came immediately to mind.

But, back to the main problem. Mentally ill on the streets will NOT be medication-compliant. And shelters aren't well-trained in this. Period. And, of course, "housing first," if it means non-shelter housing, means mentally ill remaining medication-noncompliant.