Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

In partnership with the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced the new “Best Practices Toolkit: Addressing Homelessness and Addiction Through Treatment First.” From the press release: This first-of-its-kind resource provides communities with practical and proven strategies to help Americans transition from homelessness and addiction to recovery and self-sufficiency. This toolkit advances a “Treatment First” model that prioritizes coordinated and accountability-driven engagement in evidence-based treatment and recovery support services to ensure access to effective, comprehensive, and evidence-based care necessary for homeless individuals. “It’s a policy change many of us who have spent time on the frontlines serving the homeless have been arguing for,” Senior Read More ›

More than 48 million Americans are battling substance use disorder. Many are deteriorating in plain sight — on sidewalks, in encampments, and in emergency rooms. Others decline behind closed doors. Overdoses are shattering families, especially within the homeless population where the death rate among people living on the streets has surged by 77 percent. Yet in a media landscape quick to amplify controversy but slow to recognize consequential reform, President Donald Trump’s executive order to overhaul America’s addiction response passed with remarkably little national attention. It shouldn’t have. At its core, the order affirms a truth long understood by those who have worked on the front lines: no man or woman living with addiction ever dreamed of this life. When Read More ›