Cicero Institute's Treatment-First Approach Is Superior to 'Housing First' for Homelessness
Source: https://www.facebook.com/americanspectator/. "Joe Lonsdale Has a Different Answer to America’s Homelessness Crisis | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics." August 31, 2026. spectator.org
The Gist
The author argues that America's approach to homelessness—giving people housing first without requiring them to get treatment—has failed for 20 years and turned cities like San Francisco into disaster zones. Instead, we should back Joe Lonsdale's Cicero Institute, which wants to ban public camping and force people into treatment for addiction and mental illness as a condition of help, because that actually addresses the root causes rather than just enabling continued dysfunction.
Conclusion
America should abandon the 'Housing First' homelessness paradigm in favor of the Cicero Institute's approach, which discourages public camping and mandates addiction/mental health treatment as a condition of assistance, because this approach better addresses the actual causes of homelessness.
Premises
- Addiction and untreated mental illness are among the primary drivers of chronic homelessness
- 'Housing First' provides housing without requiring treatment of underlying addiction or mental health issues, effectively subsidizing the behavior that caused homelessness
- San Francisco demonstrates that unmanaged homelessness cultivates antisocial behavior—open drug markets, theft, and public disorder—rather than housing scarcity being the core problem
- Housing First has governed policy for 20 years and failed to change outcomes at scale
- Twenty-one states have considered or passed Cicero-modeled legislation, suggesting growing recognition that the old paradigm has failed
- The government has no obligation to underwrite dysfunction indefinitely
- Someone with resources willing to challenge unpopular orthodoxy and back reform with money and legislation is preferable to continued adherence to failed idealistic policy
Assumptions
- Mandated treatment programs are effective at addressing addiction and mental illness among homeless populations
- Housing instability is primarily a consequence of individual dysfunction rather than a structural/economic problem (e.g., housing costs, wages)
- Discouraging public camping (e.g., criminalization) will lead to better outcomes for homeless individuals rather than simply displacing or further marginalizing them
- Critics of Cicero's approach are motivated by ideological attachment to 'idealism' rather than by evidence-based concerns
- The visible disorder in San Francisco is representative of the effects of Housing First specifically, rather than other confounding factors (cost of living, policing policy, drug supply)
- Compassion and enforcement/treatment mandates are mutually exclusive alternatives rather than compatible policy elements