Rosseaux t1_j8s2fu7 wrote on February 16, 2023 at 3:36 PM

The homeless population is a lot more than just people without a house: there are deeply-rooted addiction and psychological issues in homelessness that a "room with a lock" isn't going to fix. And that's one of the reasons towns banned boarding houses (aka flop houses) 100 years ago. We need to adjust the zoning and regulatory environment that exacerbates the cost of urban development, and we need safe, regulated, institutions for addicted, mentally ill people. Legalized flop houses are not a solution.

FIFAFanboy2023 t1_j8s5kff wrote on February 16, 2023 at 3:56 PM

De-institutionalizing was the best and worst thing ever done in the mental health world. The new DMH treatment model (ACCS) could work wonders for people, except it's underfunded and understaffed and the people who utilize it refuse to ever discharge despite it being the intended purpose of it. Even the people who work for the agencies that provide this treatment plan don't want to work on discharging people, so the ones who don't have help cant get help.

poutine-pal t1_j8tt9jw wrote on February 16, 2023 at 10:11 PM

ACCS isn’t great. The licensure requirements pushed a lot of very qualified managers and supervisors out of their jobs and put clinical staff in charge of the day-to-day crap of managing budgets and staff, more than actual providing therapy. Any LICSW or LMHC worth their salt seems to want to get out of ACCS asap.

FIFAFanboy2023 t1_j8wnjv7 wrote on February 17, 2023 at 2:10 PM

That's not the ACCS specific licensure though, that's just how human services works in general now. The powers that be, whether its governmental, administrative or a certifying agency, believe that because someone has a Masters degree in a psychology related field that they should be the one running the teams. I feel that we're on the same page with our comments, I just disagree that its the licensure specifically getting in the way.

masshole4life t1_j8sm5ow wrote on February 16, 2023 at 5:44 PM

this seems like another one of those "easier to swallow than actual sweeping change" solutions.

i would absolutely love to see more housing options for people living on the streets, and i wouldn't fuss too much about a reasonable tax increase to fund it, either.

but you are correct that addiction and mental illness aren't going to go away just because people have a secure room.

mass dmh is stretched way thin and barely serves a fraction of the people who need services. in our zeal to put a stop to the abuse of the mentally ill, we let the pendulum swing a hair too far to the other side and the threshold for forcing treatment is very high.

the general public barely has a surface understanding of how laws and funding work and i don't see many voters clamoring for additional funding or law changes.

but this "build a bunch of rooms" idea gets traction because it seems like a simple magic bullet. not enough rooms so build more rooms! ta-da! we did something!

it's not near enough and without simultaneously addressing mental illness and addiction the results are going to be very lackluster.