Put mental illness, addiction at center of homeless solution

Almost like the ebb and flow of tides, homelessness gets our attention and then recedes.
It appears since late last summer, though, initiatives have prompted a deeper commitment to meeting this challenge.
That is, putting in place more permanent, thought-out, systemic and inclusive efforts to cope with not only people in shelters and in transitional housing but that of what some call street homelessness.
There still looks to be some parallel or redundant efforts underway, including one by the city of Morgantown to hire a consultant to perform a 9-12-month evaluation of homelessness and addiction issues downtown.
Still, though this action won’t eliminate homelessness, this one step — creating a centralized point of contact — has potential for improved outcomes.
Yet, we trust the city will implement things it can in the meantime while that evaluation is ongoing.
The other effort, which operates under the name Home for the Holidays, for now, appears ready to take it’s more activist efforts forward in the new year following successfully placing 27 people into housing in mere weeks.
Though the holidays are over, what this initiative accomplished in such a short time will have a lasting affect on most of those people and our community.
We applaud these important first steps to assure the long-term resolution of homelessness by both efforts.
Yet, we cannot gloss over the real reasons why too many people still sleep in doorways and tents, and often appear disoriented, intoxicated or even threatening on the streets.
These deep-seated, complex problems are mental illness and addiction, and as long as they remain at the periphery rather than the center of solutions, people will suffer.
Obviously, many are homeless because of the lacks of affordable housing units, or from domestic violence in their former households.
However, we suspect for many on the streets, their issues are simple to recognize, but complicated to resolve.
Since the 1970s, our state and country have systematically shuttered psychiatric facilities and cut funding for public mental health programs.
As a result, too many mentally ill people find themselves run through a series of emergency rooms, shelters and jails. A moveable psychiatric ward on the cheap.
While ongoing issues with drug addiction and alcoholism are pervasive and extreme, they also are generally cycled through the same hospitals and courts as the mentally ill. A problematic detox center on the streets.
On Jan. 22-23, the yearly point in time homeless count is set to get started in Monongalia County.
We are encouraged to see that additional questions have been added to discover what’s working and what’s not.
Recognizing those who are suffering from mental illness and addiction among the homeless community is critical.
How we help them, like waves on a beach, though, will need to be constant.