For more than a decade, America’s homelessness system has largely measured success by one narrow outcome: whether someone gets housed.
In the process, securing housing became the ultimate destination rather than a milestone along the way. Housing certainly matters—few would dispute its value. But somewhere along the way, we lowered the bar so dramatically that placing someone inside four walls started to feel like the highest aspiration we could hold for people experiencing homelessness.
Americans expect more. More importantly, those experiencing homelessness deserve more.
The Real Crisis Behind the Housing Focus
At its core, homelessness is rarely just a housing problem. It often reflects a deeper human crisis involving addiction, untreated mental illness, trauma, family breakdown, unemployment, lost purpose, and social isolation. Housing can offer stability, but it cannot, on its own, resolve the underlying conditions that led to instability—or the ways homelessness itself often worsens those challenges.
Yet under the Housing First framework that has dominated federal policy for over a decade, housing became both the primary intervention and the main measure of success.
The results are visible in communities across the country. Federal data show that homelessness has risen by roughly 35 percent since Housing First became the national mandate in 2013.
Encampments have proliferated, unsheltered homelessness has surged, and far too many individuals remain caught in cycles of addiction, mental illness, dependency, and despair.
Many wait years for housing that may never arrive. Others cycle through low-barrier programs where recovery, treatment, accountability, and personal growth are treated as optional.
Our system, in too many cases, simply manages decline.
What True Freedom and Liberty Look Like for the Homeless
Take a moment to consider what genuine freedom and liberty truly mean for someone experiencing homelessness. Is it the freedom to remain trapped in addiction, isolation, and survival mode on the streets? Or is it the freedom that comes from regaining health, purpose, relationships, and the ability to contribute once again?
True self-government, I believe, begins with personal responsibility and the internal capacity to shape one’s own life.
As self-government advocates, we reject the initiation of force as a solution to social problems. Instead, we pursue approaches that deliver greater public safety, effective regulation, and compassionate welfare through voluntary cooperation.
Self-government envisions a world where people live in happiness, harmony, and prosperity—where individuals take responsibility for their own lives and communities through voluntary association rather than coercion. Solutions to challenges like homelessness emerge from the creativity and cooperation of free people, not from distant bureaucracies.
While government systems currently play a significant role in homelessness policy, lasting recovery is ultimately achieved through individuals, families, employers, charities, faith communities, and local organizations working together through voluntary cooperation rather than bureaucratic management.
A Better Question, a Better Path
A truly compassionate response to homelessness starts with a different question: How can we help a person become as healthy, stable, and self-sufficient as possible?
That single shift changes everything. Housing remains important, but it becomes one part of a larger pathway rather than the final destination. It’s about accountability, treatment and recovery. And of course life skills and securing employment matter.
Of course, not everyone will reach full independence. Some face profound disabilities, severe mental illness, or chronic conditions that require ongoing support. But that reality should not lead us to lower expectations for everyone else.
In every other area of life, we celebrate progress over perfection. We encourage recovery from addiction despite setbacks. We support students striving for success even if not everyone graduates at the top of the class. We invest in workforce development even though a well-paying job may be out of reach for some. Homelessness should be no different.
These victories restore a dignity rooted in purpose, responsibility, meaningful relationships, and contribution. They reflect the dignity of caring for one’s family, strengthening one’s community, and gaining confidence from overcoming adversity, rather than merely surviving it.
Why This Policy Shift Matters
In the pursuit of self-sufficiency, individuals become healthier, families heal, communities grow safer, public spaces are restored, and systems such as emergency rooms, jails, and crisis services face less strain. Taxpayers benefit as well.
That is why the proposed shift in federal homelessness policy, which prioritizes treatment and recovery alongside housing rather than housing alone, is both necessary and encouraging. Ultimately, the goal is not punishment but the restoration of hope through reasonable expectations.
Some have claimed that such expectations handcuff people experiencing homelessness. During my 13 years leading one of Northern California’s largest and most comprehensive programs for homeless women and children, however, I witnessed the opposite. Expectations and accountability unlocked the true handcuffs of dependency and despair.
Every day, I saw women overcome addiction, mothers reunify with their children, and individuals learn to manage their mental illness, secure employment, rebuild relationships, and reclaim lives that once seemed beyond repair.
Human beings are remarkably resilient when we stop defining them by their worst moments and instead provide the structure, support, accountability, and opportunity they need to succeed.
The highest form of compassion is helping people experiencing homelessness recover, heal, and reclaim the dignity, purpose, responsibility, and independence that make a flourishing life possible.
