Editors’ note: This commentary was originally published on September 25 in Truth on the Streets, a journal about the homelessness and addiction crisis in Portland, Oregon by veteran social services worker Kevin Dahlgren. Oakland Report is republishing it with the author’s permission for our readers to consider. Subscribe to Truth on the Streets to receive it directly.
BY KEVIN DAHLGREN
The reason the country is so divided over homelessness is that liberals and conservatives often look at the same homeless encampment and see two completely different problems.
Liberals tend to see a failure of systems. Housing is too expensive, wages are too low, treatment and social services are inadequate, and government has failed to prevent vulnerable people from falling through the cracks.
Conservatives tend to see a failure of accountability. Addiction goes untreated, severe mental illness goes unmanaged, public disorder is tolerated, and too many programs ask very little from the people receiving help.
That difference shapes almost everything that follows.
Liberals are generally more likely to argue that housing must come first because stability gives someone the foundation needed to address addiction, mental illness, employment, and other problems.
Conservatives are generally more likely to argue that housing without expectations can simply move the same destructive behavior indoors, and that treatment, recovery, work, personal responsibility, structure, and accountability have to be part of the solution.
Put simply, liberals are more likely to ask, “What did the system fail to provide?” Conservatives are more likely to ask, “What does the individual need to change?”
One side places more emphasis on systemic reform, housing, social spending, and government intervention. The other places more emphasis on behavioral change, treatment, expectations, public order, and consequences.
But neither explanation is sufficient by itself.
Personal responsibility has limits. Someone suffering from severe mental illness, cognitive impairment, profound trauma, or overwhelming addiction may not be capable of consistently making rational decisions without intensive treatment, structure, supervision, and long-term support. In those cases, simply demanding better choices may accomplish very little.
A person who is psychotic, profoundly impaired, or completely consumed by addiction cannot always be treated as though he or she is making decisions from the same position as a healthy adult.
At the same time, there are homeless people who retain substantial decision-making capacity but repeatedly reject treatment, shelter, medication, employment, recovery programs, or other realistic alternatives.
Conservatives argue that government cannot spend its way around behavior forever. If someone is offered reasonable opportunities but continues engaging in conduct that is dangerous to themselves or destructive to the surrounding community, additional money without expectations may do little more than sustain the status quo.
This is where the political divide becomes especially important.
In many major American cities, homelessness policy has for years been heavily influenced by progressive ideas about Housing First, harm reduction, low-barrier services, bodily autonomy, voluntary treatment, and reducing coercion. Homeless service nonprofits, advocacy organizations, public health departments, housing agencies, and local governments in many large urban areas operate within this philosophical framework.
Critics on the right argue that because these institutions frequently share similar assumptions about homelessness, competing ideas involving mandatory treatment, sobriety expectations, behavioral requirements, work, sanctions, or stronger civil commitment standards can be dismissed before they are seriously tested.
The more radical wing of the left goes considerably further.
Most anti-capitalist activists argue that homelessness is fundamentally a consequence of capitalism itself. Housing is treated as a commodity, landlords seek profit, wealth is unequally distributed, poor people are priced out, and homelessness becomes the predictable result.
Within this framework, addiction, mental illness, crime, disorder, and individual decision-making can become secondary explanations because the economic system is viewed as the underlying cause.
At the furthest end of that argument, homelessness cannot truly be solved through better shelters, treatment programs, policing, employment, or even conventional affordable housing because capitalism itself is seen as the problem. Private ownership, profit-driven housing markets, and large disparities in wealth must therefore be fundamentally transformed before homelessness can disappear.
The problem with allowing any single ideology to dominate homelessness policy is that eventually the ideology itself can become more important than the results.
Critics of progressive homelessness policy point to a difficult question: after years of enormous public expenditures, expanding homelessness bureaucracies, widespread adoption of harm reduction, and major investments in Housing First programs in many West Coast cities, why do visible homelessness, street addiction, overdose deaths, and severe public disorder remain so persistent?
Those trends do not by themselves prove that progressive policies caused the increases. Housing costs, fentanyl, methamphetamine, mental illness, economic conditions, migration, treatment capacity, and many other factors also matter. But poor outcomes should at least force policymakers to examine whether the dominant model is delivering what was promised.
That scrutiny becomes especially important when the organizations responsible for solving homelessness are also responsible for defining success.
A system can count contacts, outreach encounters, referrals, shelter nights, naloxone distributed, housing applications completed, and millions of dollars spent while avoiding the much harder question: Are substantially more people actually recovering, becoming stable, leaving the streets, and remaining housed?
The same skepticism should apply to conservative solutions.
Clearing an encampment without adequate shelter, treatment, or somewhere realistic for people to go may simply move homelessness several blocks away. Arresting people repeatedly without addressing addiction or severe mental illness can create another revolving door. Accountability without an attainable pathway out is not much of a solution either.
Housing should be provided when housing is the primary problem. Treatment should be readily available when addiction is the primary problem. People experiencing disabling mental illness may need intensive psychiatric care, structured environments, and in some circumstances forms of intervention that go beyond repeatedly asking whether they would like assistance.
People capable of working should be given meaningful opportunities to work, rebuild purpose, and become more self-sufficient. And when individuals repeatedly reject reasonable alternatives while continuing behavior that harms themselves or the surrounding community, accountability cannot simply disappear from the conversation.
The mistake is assuming homelessness must be either a systemic failure or an individual failure. In reality, it can be both, and the balance is different for every person. Effective policy therefore has to be capable of distinguishing between someone who cannot make better choices and someone who will not make better choices. Treating those two people exactly the same may sound equitable, but it is not necessarily effective.
The real test should not be whether a policy sounds compassionate or punitive. It should be what happens afterward. Are fewer people sleeping outside? Are fewer people dying from overdoses? Are more people completing treatment? Are people with severe mental illness becoming stable? Are people working when they are capable of working? Are formerly homeless people remaining housed a year, three years, and five years later? Are emergency room visits, jail bookings, overdoses, and repeated shelter stays declining? Those are measurable outcomes.
Homelessness is not purely a failure of capitalism, government, personal responsibility, housing, treatment, or compassion. It is a human problem involving economics, addiction, mental illness, trauma, disability, behavior, relationships, opportunity, and choice. Any ideology that insists on explaining every homeless person through a single cause will inevitably misunderstand a large portion of the population it claims to be helping.
Homelessness is too complicated to be owned by either side. Liberals are right that circumstances matter. Conservatives are right that behavior matters. The challenge is determining which matters most for the person standing in front of you and responding accordingly.
A system genuinely interested in ending homelessness should be willing to test ideas from across the political spectrum, abandon programs that repeatedly fail, and expand approaches that measurably help people leave the streets.
The question should not be whether an idea is liberal or conservative.
It should be whether it works.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kevin Dahlgren is a freelance journalist, a drug and alcohol counselor, and a homelessness consultant in Portland, Oregon. He has worked in social services for over twenty-five years.
“I started reporting on the homeless and addiction crisis a few years ago after many years of watching our government fail in ending this crisis. I entered social services with the genuine intent to make a difference. I quickly learned this was near impossible. Our social service system is extremely dysfunctional, has become very radicalized and at times corrupt. What once was a cause has now become a multibillion-dollar industry.
“I was fortunate over the last eight years to work for programs I truly believed in, and we made a real difference. But the problem is so big, a few successful programs with measurable results are barely enough to make a dent. However, I am optimistic. We are creating a shift. Questioning the status quo is becoming more accepted as many others have started to notice that the billions spent to solve this crisis have, in fact, made it worse.
“It is why I decided to start this newsletter. I also have a very active X account, where over the last few years, I have interviewed hundreds of homeless people. I started interviewing them when I realized nobody was really listening to the experts with actual results. In fact, they were often the ones bullied, doxxed, and ridiculed by our current social service system. The homeless know exactly what is going on and have shared with me the brutal truth.
“I am excited to share what I have learned over the last few decades and know it is no longer if we can end this crisis but when.”
— Kevin Dahlgren, author and publisher of Truth on the Streets
Truth on the Streets is a reader-supported publication based in Portland, Oregon. Subscribe to receive new posts and support its work.
Progressives have controlled the what has turned into the Homelessness Industrial Complex for years. It is disingenuous to say that the problem is multi-ideological (basically blaming everyone). The more money that has been spent by Progressives, the worse the outcome. Occam's Razor would put the the majority of the blame on those who have control of the resources and those who have largely chosen the homeless lifestyle. I'll exempt the mentally ill. Leaving them on the streets is beyond cruel. Shutting mental health facilities without providing any reasonable support led to tragedy for the mentally ill - this was bipartisan and the one area for joint blame. Every society in human history has had marginalized people who disregard the social contract and engage in destructive behavior (to others and themselves). Society should be protected from these individuals. Public intoxication used to be treated as a crime - we had far less problems when the law was enforced. Likewise with public "camping" on city streets and parks. How is this not a seizure of property from the community? Homeless encampments are an enormous public health and safety hazard - fire risks, breeding medieval diseases, harboring criminals (who prey on the defenseless homeless people). Current public policy actually. enables homelessness - the NGO staff's compensation depends on perpetuation of the problem. The only real solution is to get people out of encampments and into mandatory rehab which leads to employment or jail, medical treatment for the ill, mental institutions for the mentally damaged. These are not a happy alternatives, but the enabling has clearly failed.
All five states with highest homeless rate: DC, NY, Oregon, VT and CA are run by so called progressives. At least 40% of homeless are drug or alcohol addicts.