Housing First Says OK to Drugs; Prosecutors Should Say No

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Issue Areas

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Advocates of Housing First have begun to push back against the direction of federal homelessness policy in the second Trump Administration. However, regulatory reforms take time and, with homelessness and overdoses at crisis levels nationwide, lives are at stake.

Following the closure of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness earlier this year, the Administration is widely expected to continue to restructure the homelessness programs of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and reprioritize programs that require treatment and sobriety over more permissive Housing First policies.

The federal government has a powerful tool available to it to make sweeping changes to the most dangerous elements of Housing First immediately: the so-called federal Crack House Statute. That statute was Congress’s response to the crack epidemic of the 1980s, in which landlords and club owners were complicit in the deadly spread of crack cocaine in buildings they owned and operated. The crack house statute opens landlords and businesses to prosecution by U.S. attorneys, with penalties of up to $2 million in civil fines and 20 years in prison.

The crack house statute offers a unique avenue for the Trump Administration to promptly end the disturbing category of policies and programs known as harm reduction. While some specific harm reduction policies are based on robust scientific evidence, the broader harm reduction philosophy and many programs that operate under it are dangerous.

Harm reduction is rooted fundamentally in the belief that people have a right to use drugs. The philosophy prioritizes practices that destigmatize drug use, eliminate prohibitions against drugs, and assist people in using drugs in ways that advocates view as safer than others.

Harm reduction is the core principle of Housing First programs, which provide housing to homeless individuals without any requirement for sobriety or engagement with treatment or services.

The harm reduction practices of Housing First service providers open them up to potential violations of the federal Crack House Statute for permitting drug use in their housing units as a matter of official or unofficial policy. If Housing First providers have received complaints from tenants about drug use or trafficking in permanent supportive housing units and failed to take any reasonable actions expected by a landlord or service provider to stop the activity, then the providers could be prosecuted by U.S. attorneys.

In some states, providers could also be prosecuted under state law. For example, this year Utah codified its own law against “drug-involved premises,” which includes buildings that allow use or manufacture of drugs, or which are specifically used for a supervised drug consumption site—one of the preferred programs of harm reduction activists. Violations are a second-degree felony.

More states should prohibit drug-involved premises, as well as create drug-free homeless service zones. Drug-free homeless service zones are based on drug-free school zone policies, which enhance penalties for trafficking or using drugs within a defined radius of schools. Drug-free homeless service zones are similar, except in the Cicero Institute’s model, they enhance penalties for traffickers as well as service providers who knowingly permit drug use in their facilities, without increasing penalties for users themselves. This approach rightfully focuses on offenders who are taking advantage of vulnerable homeless people or are negligent in their care.

Enforcement of laws against permissive environments for drug use is not just about enforcing the law for its own sake—it’s a matter of life and death. A recent randomized control trial of a Housing First program was characterized by researchers as a success, but there is a major problem with that conclusion: the Housing First group had a 50 percent higher death rate than the control group. This fatal evidence, combined with the fact that overdoses are the leading cause of death among homeless people in many states, highlights the urgency of curbing harm reduction policies that fail to take drug use seriously. It is time for prosecutors at all levels of government to increase their vigilance against policies and programs like Housing First that endanger the lives of the most vulnerable people in our communities.