Also, pro-tip, you might want to scrub your comment history. The type of people you want to befriend may not want to be preyed upon as “sugarfriends”

Are you really trying to convince us you’re Serena Williams? That’s my first tip: don’t use links that use a celebrity’s photo as false representation.

I used to park under WaPo regularly for work and it’s reasonably priced for the area and if I’m remembering correctly, has a prepaid price for long term parking. If you’ll need in and out privileges though, I don’t recall them having them.

Was there? I was there handing out fresh needles and narcan and there wasn’t any that I could see and I was walking from tent to tent. Or do you have special glasses to help you see spent needles and narcan cartridges?

I live in Virginia and live next to drug users (I smell weed all the time) and I’m fine with it.

So I volunteer with one of the harm reduction organizations and I personally have made inroads with drug users who want help and to get sober. The one thing that’s stopping them is DC’s requirement that they have to be sober first. They don’t have the health insurance to be able to get sober because the main reason they use is pain management and they got addicted because of the opioid crisis. They don’t have a reliable address for Medicaid and they can’t use mine because I live in Virginia.

There IS money for programs, but DC has used more of that money to do sweeps and evictions than they have to get people into housing. LA has way more of a population to house and has been successful with a housing first model. So count up how many policy failures DC has and estimate how much money they could potentially save on sweeps if they prioritized housing instead of abstinence sobriety?

Harm reduction isn’t easy, but usually when someone got addicted, it wasn’t easy either. Most of the people I speak to when I’m supporting them with fresh supplies say that they want to get clean, but they don’t know where to find support. The folx who can find MAT clinics and stay supported eventually do get sober. Sobriety isn’t an overnight thing. LA I believe has a housing first model that does get people housed and slowly weans them off of whatever they’re using on the streets and gets them onto a MAT regimen. There’s also a program in North Carolina that does the same thing. The main block to those programs being implemented nationwide are policy changes and funding.

Agreed. There’s been reports that the money that’s supposed to be going towards housing the folx in the parks people on this sub are clutching their pearls about is actually being spent clearing them instead. Color any of us surprised.

Going from “slamming heroin” every day to sober overnight has numerous studies to back up that that’s not a way to be sober sustainably long term. The most long term sustainable sober option is medication assisted treatment, that people still clutch their pearls about.

Like if any of you who are hardcore against drugs and would do any amount of research to see why harm reduction is the model that helps more people get sober and healthy with the assistance of MAT and able to get into housing and jobs long term like many of you claim to want them to get into, perhaps the policy failures that keep plaguing DC would get somewhere.

You know what actually helps prevent drug deaths and exposure to needles?

Safe use facilities, which cities like DC refuse to legalize.

Isn’t it Dan’s Cafe?

You’re also asking leasing offices for video tours and responsiveness during what is typically “no man’s land” in between Christmas and New Years. If I can help it, the two things I avoid doing are job hunting and apartment hunting during the holidays because everyone is on PTO.