A new, cheaper form of meth is creating a wave of severe mental illness
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
“meth rarely comes up in city discussions on homelessness, or in newspaper articles about it. Mitchell called it “the elephant in the room”—nobody wants to talk about it, he said. “There’s a desire not to stigmatize the homeless as drug users.” Policy makers and advocates instead prefer to focus on L.A.’s cost of housing.”
The middle class seems to want to point towards homelessness as proof of high housing costs and their “obvious” result. If we can’t discuss the multitude of reasons someone might become homeless then solving it will be difficult.
If so, that’s even more unfortunate because (in our city) it’s treated as a fairly acute issue. In all likelihood it seems like it’s probably not at all, though. It is extremely nuanced and people who experience it once are probably at much higher chances of experiencing it again.
There are details like this which really worry me. We want temporary housing, food banks, etc. and we absolutely should address acute issues with those solutions. But imagine the atrocities and unfortunate circumstances occurring now in children who will be homeless in 15 years. What are we doing for them? Food banks and temporary housing likely do nothing to help them, but I think that’s where most of our resources need to be aimed.
I’m sure some places have a better handle on it. In western Canada it doesn’t fill me with much hope.