This is true, and that's why housing first is a terrible policy (I've seen it fail spectacularly first hand). Many of these people simply can't take care of themselves, and putting them in free apartments doesn't fix their situation, but it does make life miserable for long-term residents. All while being extremely expensive.
> Maybe they go maybe they don’t
Here they have frequent wellness checks. It doesn't solve anything. This shouldn't be a surprise - someone who's incapable of living civilly when given a free apartment likely isn't going to be a person who's going to put the time and effort into mental health classes.
HUD[1]:
"Housing First is an approach to quickly and successfully connect individuals and families experiencing homelessness to permanent housing without preconditions and barriers to entry, such as sobriety, treatment or service participation requirements."
California Department of Housing and Community Development[2]:
"Housing First is an approach to serving people experiencing homelessness that recognizes a homeless person must first be able to access a decent, safe place to live, that does not limit length of stay (permanent housing)...Under the Housing First approach, anyone experiencing homelessness should be connected to a permanent home as quickly as possible, and programs should remove barriers to accessing the housing, like requirements for sobriety or absence of criminal history."
[1] https://files.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/Housing-F... [2] https://www.hcd.ca.gov/grants-funding/active-funding/docs/ho...
Presumably you're aware that's not the only option, as your last comment before the one above was on a thread about the Finnish approach, which has found it to be cheaper and to act as a gateway to get people other help.
Furthermore, the Finnish example shows savings per homeless, despite a far cheaper healthcare system. US savings vs. having these people cost a fortune of ER capacity would likely be far higher per homeless.
US potential savings are vastly higher.
Why US taxpayers are so consistently willing to burn taxpayer money to keep things worse when there are more efficient alternatives always confuses me.
If this was some super-costly policy that needed a big apparatus around it, then they'd have a point, but e.g. in Finland, one estimate is that it costs them up to 9,600 euro a year less to house a person first vs. leaving them homeless. As such, just starting to provide some housing units and gradually grow it would be a win for every local government with a homeless person.
It only starts to become a challenge if a few local governments reaches such a level of provision that it attracts homeless people from surrounding areas that don't do anything themselves, but that's not a reason not to start.
Sometimes it feels like US taxpayers wants the government to burn money if the alternative is to do something that might help other people with it.