Month 3: Why Housing First
Housing First Explained:
Theme of the month!
As already mentioned, this year we delve deeper into dialogue (brainstorming) of how to resolve our nation's homelessness crisis, with a different topic for discussion each month. After several years of working with our HADs (Homeless Addiction Disorders), we learned a great deal about our subculture and how best to navigate and administer our Addiction Remission Model Of Recovery: ARMOR Outreach Program, to their encampments and tent cities. After thinking we had discovered something new and novel (bringing it to those in need), we later learned about Dr. Jim O'Connell's work in Boston with the homeless. You're the Man Jim!
Housing first is not about giving people a free place to live! Really, its importance is more about giving people a necessary resource to survive called sleep. This is Doc, and Richard’s work for today’s News Brief is so right on point, that I wish to refrain from mucking it up! For me, it’s simple, lack of sleep causes psychosis and greatly influences the risk of death, indirectly, via organ failure and/or brain trauma injuries. I have placed an informative pdf file below. How do you like Author Richard’s featured image above?
A Poem for all homes and the homeless:
by Richard Ebner - 02/02/2026
Where is Home?
Where oh where could my next home be?
The older I get the less I can see.
I need a home that takes care of me.
When I was younger a wigwam would do.
Now at seventy-two, the vagabonds show through.
I need a somewhere with services too.
Time presses on for me to decide.
A place to live or a place to hide.
It’s not about vanity, not about pride.
Today, I live only steps from the ocean.
The sea is always here, always in motion.
Always here for me, in waves of emotion.
And so, I say, disappointments be damned.
I’ll live where I am, live where I can.
You know who you are, and me who I am.
Together we might expand, all pure souls.
This can be done without fearing trolls.
This can be done with a minimum of tolls.
Once in my twenties I became a recluse.
To the mountains I went, drugs my excuse.
Today I have no need, for any self-abuse.
We all need that nebulous space of time alone.
We all need the constant of a place called home.
Together and separately, I want us free to roam.
So, have no fear about any of this my dear.
The path, while murky, is also very clear.
Karma surrounds us, if we know how to steer.
Note page # 4 below in the findings: it relates to the O element in our ARMOR Program, which involves how Observation of our circadian rhythms plays a crucial role in an addiction remission process for our clients.