When I say Housing First, I mean just moving to immediate access to permanency. The pre-treatment piece and the journey towards healing is that ability to access. You can stay as long as you need to. We're going to be the next piece, which is getting permanent housing, but without a date, without a deadline for when that has to be completed.
I work with lots of providers. Our members are all service providers. None of our transitional housing folks really want to be doing transitional housing. They want to be doing permanent housing. There isn't enough affordable housing and there aren't enough real long-term treatment options, so they're functionally doing permanent housing, because they just can't help people move into the kinds of spaces.... I guess I would say that.
Also, how do we build a system that is so flexible and so oriented towards the person in front of us that it fits their need now for 24-7 support with community, while maybe in two months, four months or four years, they want to move into an apartment with a roommate? How do we design that system?
None of it is backtracking or failure. It's moving, but every option along the way is a permanent option. We're not expecting people to fix something before they have access to that permanent option.