In big cities across America, homelessness has been so bad for so long that many have given up on ever ending it entirely.
Last year, federal agencies counted a staggering 582,462 homeless people nationwide – up nearly 20% since 2015.
It’s not the same everywhere.
Homeless figures in California, for instance, increased more than any other state – from 162,000 just before the pandemic to 172,000 last year.
And those figures continue to rise, fueling a vicious cycle of homelessness and lawlessness that seemingly leaves no community unscathed.
Activists like to blame the homeless crisis on a lack of affordable housing.
Los Angeles’ recently initiated “Mansion Tax,” for instance, specifically raises funds to combat homelessness.
But those funds cannot be used for immediate solutions like emergency shelters or the treatment programs needed to help folks who are both homeless and addicted to drugs. And as I can personally attest, there are many, many such folks.
So the money must be spent on longer-term efforts, such as the homeless apartment units known as permanent supportive housing (PSHs). Advocates are keen on PSHs, pointing to Houston, for instance, which reduced its homeless population by 60% between 2012 and 2021 by more than doubling the number of PSHs.
But San Francisco has increased PSH availability by 40% – and all the city has seen in return is a simultaneous 20% rise in its homeless population. In fact, San Francisco has 50% more units than Houston even though Greater Houston has nine times more people. Los Angeles can report similarly depressing statistics – rising homeless housing and a parallel spike in homeless numbers.
Why is California failing so dismally at solving its intractable homeless problem? There are historical causes and policy causes, but in my case – and in the case of so many – the cause is clear: drug addiction.
Which is how, seven years ago, I found myself living on Los Angeles’ Skid Row stripped down to my underwear, crying, bleeding and trying to find a vein in which to punch a needle full of heroin.
The story begins when I was 9 years old and my parents started smoking crack. They would go for days without sleep and violent cocaine-induced hallucinations became the norm. My parents were already addicted to heroin and for years there had been little love in my home. But once the cocaine took over, disinterest descended into complete neglect.
By 2001, Dad couldn’t have weighed more than 120 pounds – Mom was below 90. Dad somehow managed to keep his carpentry job; but Mom only left our suburban Boston home to buy drugs. Even while finding syringes hidden around the house, I still denied what was happening.
That summer everything changed. A visit by relatives forced my family to deal with my parents’ addiction. Miraculously, they came clean and agreed to a plan: I would stay with an aunt in California while my parents headed to rehab. Then I would return to Boston and hopefully a new kind of normal could begin.
Within days of entering rehab, both of my parents were back getting high. My mother wound up dying of an overdose a year later and I remained with my aunt until I turned 18.
To no one’s surprise, I was drinking and smoking weed by high school. Somehow I graduated and made my way to the University of California at Santa Cruz – which is where heroin re-entered my life. Initially I steered clear of the drug, the image of my mother’s dead body collapsing in my childhood bedroom burnished in my mind. But eventually I caved, and by the end of freshman year heroin had me hooked.
By senior year I had dropped out to pursue drugs full time, and by August 2011, I was homeless. A pattern quickly ensued. Old friends would enable me with money and a place to stay until they’d had enough and I’d wind up back on the streets. I was homeless in Oakland, San Francisco, and New York City before returning to Los Angeles in late 2014.
I was in fist fights, endured near-fatal staph infections and had guns pointed at my head. Every day was a battle for my life, but the biggest danger was always myself.
I finally got into state detox programs but both times I left within 72 hours. I wanted to kick heroin; instead I would head to the nearest CVS, steal everything I could, sell it and buy drugs. I would get arrested periodically, but was always released within a few days back into hell.
Much of that hell could have been avoided. In 2014, California decriminalized small-scale theft and shoplifting with the passage of Proposition 47. And so folks like me rarely remained behind bars for long.
Since then, California’s laissez-faire approach to crime has only gotten worse with the election of progressive DAs such as George Gascón in Los Angeles, who on his very first day in office in January 2021 immediately eliminated cash bail (he reversed the contentious plan a year later).
As the winter of 2015 approached, and my suffering became unbearable, I began to crave a lengthy stay in jail. Even amid the fog of addiction, I realized I needed to be forcibly detoxed and separated from drugs and jail was the only available answer.
And so one afternoon, in a Los Angeles Panda Express outpost, I tried to stab a homeless person who’d attacked me. I got what I wanted – I was arrested and ordered to a six-month spell in LA County Jail.
Those six months likely saved my life.
My jail experience was nightmarish, complete with racial gangs, routine violence and a cold-turkey heroin kick that involved three weeks of ceaseless vomiting.
But jail also saved me.
Not only did I break the chains of physical heroin addiction, I also received a much-needed lesson in life – and living. I learned how to finally be grateful for things like a hot shower and sleeping on a real mattress.
I’m not suggesting jail is the answer for every addict. Some can quit without winding up in a cell. And with an estimated 65% of all folks imprisoned suffering from a substance disorder, for many, the penal system will only make their drug problem worse.
But for some who can’t quit, who destroy their relationships with family and friends, and regularly break laws to feed their addiction, radical courses of action must be considered. And, as my experience illustrates, to arrest the addiction, addicts may literally need to be arrested.
Not just compelled into treatment — which already exists in patchwork formats in much of the nation – but actually forced behind bars to begin the end of their addiction and criminal activities. Once released, a system needs to be enacted where addicts are mandated to long term treatment, ideally designed by recovering addicts themselves.
Addicts need a lot: Recovery management, cognitive behavioral therapy, community building, and, most crucially, employment and independent living training.
This is a gradual process; you can’t just throw a homeless drug addict back into society and expect them to flourish (A sober living facility after my release from jail helped ease my transition).
Addicts need to re-learn how to live by a schedule and exist among others. And more often than not, these 180-degree lifestyle changes cannot – will not – arrive voluntarily (they certainly didn’t for me).
There are those who insist that treatment cannot be compulsory, such as critics of a 2022 plan by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to mandate drug treatment in his state. A New York Times piece from last year framed forced treatment as a “last resort.”
But these claims are misleading – if not entirely missing the point. Addicts are often the least equipped to make smart choices for themselves, so it becomes difficult to compare data on those who were mandated treatment to addicts who got clean on their own.
At a time when conventional ills such as drug abuse and theft have been effectively decriminalized, compulsory arrest and recovery might be the only option left for the estimated two-thirds of homeless people who’ve struggled with some form of addiction. (And this once included my own father, who also managed to become sober after – just like his son – being forced into recovery during a stint in jail).
Like an asteroid hurtling through space, a homeless junkie cannot change course until their path is interrupted. Arrest and mandated care allows for a far more dignified interruption than overdosing or death.
Where will we find the people to run the recovery communities we need to overcome the dual crises of addiction and homelessness? By training recovering addicts.
Doing so will solve two problems, the addiction epidemic and the need to employ those formerly in its clutches.
Recovery communities can also train people to become welders, software coders, and other jobs to further their chance for success.
Examples already exist: Midnight Mission in Los Angeles pairs recovery with a strong focus on job training and “healthy living.” As does San Francisco’s Delancey Street Foundation, which trains ex-cons and addicts to be teachers, truck drivers and general contractors (I was lucky to possess some carpentry skills which kept me employed early in my recovery).
People like to make homelessness about housing, and to some extent it is. But lots of people living on the streets are just addicts like I was. They had homes, as well as families and friends. They lost them to addiction.
Nearly a decade after being forcibly separated from heroin while behind bars, I am now close to five years sober. After a couple of short slips, long term recovery has finally taken hold and I work as a writer and in the visual effects industry.
As my story suggests, California’s homeless problem won’t be solved by some activist-backed “mansion tax” or boom in “permanent supportive housing.”
Stymied by a legal system that practically encourages recidivism, far more aggressive action is now needed.
If we want addicts to finally get off the streets, then they must – like I was – have treatment and recovery forced upon them. And jail might very well be the most essential first step.
Jared Klickstein’s writing can be found at jaredklickstein.substack.com; he’s currently working on the memoir, Crooked Smile, which will be published next year.
