Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner says that, given the incredibly high rate of mental illness and substance abuse among homeless people, it is obvious that merely providing them a lot of taxpayer-funded freebies, including housing, is not solving the root issues. This is really a crisis of mental health and drug addiction.
Ever since America got rid of insane asylums and forced incarceration for seriously deranged people, our homelessness problem has exploded. All the people who used to be in institutions are now wandering the streets, endangering both themselves and sane people. Then add in the huge drug culture among the homeless, and you understand why they’re “unhoused.”
The Daily Wire’s Cabot Phillips asked Scott Turner on Morning Wire on August 23 about Housing First and Treatment First. The secretary answered, “Well, housing first has been around since 2013, you know, and they set this up, they say, ‘Hey, housing first is gonna get rid of homelessness in our country’. It really has been a failure. It has not gotten rid of homelessness. As a matter of fact, homelessness has gone up.”
The Housing First model received record funding and resulted in record homelessness.
— Scott Turner (@SecretaryTurner) August 30, 2026
Time for a new play.
We will fund “Treatment First” policies that get people off the street and onto the path of self-sufficiency. pic.twitter.com/BBUbyvmM2N
For years, “in our country, there's been record funding, but yet record homelessness, almost 750,000 people on one single night this year is homeless on the streets of America,” Turner continued. “And so, the housing first model is a failed model. And as you alluded to, treatment first is the model that we want to go to. That's the transformation, and what does it mean? Housing first means that you’re just building a homeless industrial complex. You have people that are just warehoused, that are homeless. They're still addicted to drugs, they're still mentally ill, and a lot of times, they're dying inside of empty apartments, vacant buildings, empty hotel rooms.”
Turner’s plan “is that not only do we house them, but we get to the root called mental illness, drug addiction. We get it treated. We get people transformed, and then back to a life of self-sufficiency.” Any welfare program should be temporary, aimed at bringing the people back to independence.
Data shows 75% of homeless Americans are addicted to drugs, while 78% suffer from mental illness.
— Scott Turner (@SecretaryTurner) August 12, 2026
Housing alone won’t solve homelessness.
This is our new playbook. https://t.co/9RdQfK5ZTD
Some urban politicians, with California Democrats being particularly infamous examples, will deliberately provide drugs and paraphernalia to homeless drug addicts. Another popular solution is to pour an inordinate amount of taxpayer money into NGOs and programs that simply provide more and more material benefits to people without curing them. New York City reportedly spends over $81,000 per homeless person.
Democrats love to fuel problems by wasting money on wealth redistribution, which has never solved a societal crisis and never will.
Editor's Note: President Trump is fighting to renew America this 250th birthday year.
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