If a person sleeping outside turns down a shelter bed, what should be done?

I have one more new story to share, published today. It’s about a community grappling with new and growing homeless tent encampments (as so many cities now are) and how its leaders tried to straddle a line between helping unhoused residents at one encampment and clearing them under pressure. In the end, they cleared all 50, even though research suggests that will likely further traumatize residents, and even though leaders didn’t know where the people experiencing homelessness will go. They were able to offer some shelter beds, but no real housing or shelter options with privacy, like a motel room.

I went to Portland, Maine last month to visit encampments in the city, speak with advocates, housed and unhoused residents, local business owners, and attend an emergency city meeting on addressing homelessness. It was a powerful trip, and one that clarified for me some of the debates happening right now both quietly and loudly in politics and in closed-door meetings about tent encampments and involuntary treatment.

There’s a growing number of people who are arguing that it’s naive at best to expect everyone who needs care to voluntarily seek it out, and it’s cruel to leave people outside, even if that’s what they say they want. Many others look at our ghoulish era of mass institutionalization, and worry that so-called targeted efforts to help people suffering from severe mental illness will not only strip people of their rights but also be not very targeted at all. I explain developments happening in New York City, Oregon, California in this regard.

You can read that story here.