Louisiana needs to pick up the pace in transforming its housing provision strategy, which spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually, due to a major programmatic shift at the national level.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently announced a retreat from allowing a near-purist “housing first” methodology by introducing more elements of a “treatment first” model. Housing first concentrates funding on provision of housing as quickly and as permanently as possible, while treatment first seeks to address potential health and behavioral issues prior to access to permanent housing.

Ideally, dosages of both approaches would be applied, with the housing model focused mainly on temporary rental and other assistance with government-financed residence construction as a last resort, but subordinate to the treatment model because the central cause of homelessness–for the nondisabled population–is from behavioral problems often stemming from mental health issues. Indeed, just over three-quarters of the adult homeless population has such issues, the large majority stemming from alcohol and drug abuse.

Unfortunately, this century an ideology that people in the main somehow were “victims” of some kind–such as through structural economic deficiencies–overtook housing policy-making and tilted federal government spending, through grants to states and local governments, far in the direction of housing first. Most recently, 87 percent of all federal awards went to permanent housing.

The new HUD rules instead will limit that to 30 percent. The remainder will be put towards building and operating transitional housing and allied services designed to deliver services and treatments that create conditions for self-sufficiency. No longer would non-disaster-related or non-emergency housing programs—and the subsidies tied to them, such as heating and water assistance—be open-ended, with work or service requirements now attached to shelter eligibility.

All of this was telegraphed months ago when Republican Pres. Donald Trump issued an executive order addressing criminal activity in public stemming from vagrancy, which faulted past efforts for failing to resolve underlying behavioral and mental-health issues. As the predominant “housing first” model became increasingly entrenched in HUD policy—adding nearly a quarter-million permanent units or beds, directly or through subsidies, in just over a decade while subtracting 100,000 transitional beds – homelessness rose by roughly 30 percent during the same period.

Further, research has demonstrated that permanent housing keeps a reasonable proportion of the homeless population off the streets, but actually encourages more substance abuse and costs more than a treatment-first option. Of course, for those nondisabled individuals without a history of mental or behavioral difficulties who may be subject to bad fortune and for people with disabilities, permanent supportive housing programs work well, but this describes a distinct minority of the homeless population.

If there’s a Louisiana poster child for this failure, it’s New Orleans, which continues to throw in its own public tax dollars to build or entice permanent housing. Homelessness (including Jefferson Parish) has risen since 2017–even as the city has stepped up spending on it since 2018–and voters failed to rein in the stupidity by recently approving charter amendments that lock that spending into the budget while creating a debt-laden funding source to sustain it.

Unfortunately, Louisiana’s recent history shows more emphasis placed on housing first than treatment first. The Louisiana Housing Corporation’s 2023 updated plan focuses almost entirely on strategies aligned with the former, and most of its fiscal year 2024 spending went toward expanding permanent housing—much of it in forms where landlords cannot evict tenants without agency approval—including the underwriting of billions of dollars in loans. Its 2024 annual report repeatedly celebrates the expansion of permanent housing, with only brief references to transitional services.

The new rules demand a quick turnaround in grant applications, so the state and any local agencies need to be ready. It’s too bad that Louisiana couldn’t have followed a few other states who made a quicker paradigm shift, but at least now it’s being pushed onto the right path.