Trump is right to drop the ‘Housing First’ Rx for homelessness

It looks like Team Trump will soon officially ditch the failed “Housing First” answer to homelessness that has burned tens of billions of dollars only to see the problem grow worse all across the nation.

Housing First pretends that the only reason people are homeless is that they lack a home, so the simple answer is to get keys in the hands of each homeless person ASAP.

In reality, it’s rarely about a cruel housing market and bad luck: Most homeless have far deeper problems, notably mental illness, drug addiction or both.

Putting seriously dysfunctional people into houses or apartments isn’t just putting the cart before the horse: It’s putting a horse in the driver’s seat, telling it to find its way home and to do the dishes once it gets there.

The White House is reportedly preparing to shift funding toward programs that mandate treatment for drug addiction and mental illness and impose work rules as conditions for getting placed in permanent housing.

Advocates for Housing First — typically not-for-profit outfits that get paid to “help the homeless” — claim that people must feel settled in permanent housing before they get started on sobriety, treatment for their mental illness or looking for work: Treatment should be available but strictly optional.

Yet this has never actually worked: Again, homelessness has only gotten worse with this approach.

As a Manhattan Institute report explains, “Formerly homeless people are more likely to engage in behaviors that can lead to eviction, including nonpayment of rent, hoarding, setting fires, flooding, noise, harassing other tenants, assaulting other tenants, and ‘unit takeovers,’” where drug dealers or other criminals take control of a unit.

Supportive housing programs that provide the troubled homeless with on-site treatment, therapy and training certainly can help people achieve stability — but tough love is always necessary.

A vast network of advocates, nonprofits and allied politicians will fight tooth and nail to protect Housing First, because they’re all serving their own needs.

If the country’s ever to turn the corner on homelessness, states, cities and the vast social-services “industry” must get onboard the Trump administration’s new tack.