Addiction, mental illness complicate help for the homeless
EVERETT, Wash. — This is the lesson that the working-class city of Everett has learned: It takes a community to rescue the hardcore homeless.
It takes teams of outreach workers — building relationships with men and women struggling with addiction or untreated mental illness, prodding them to get help. It takes police and other agencies, working together to provide for their needs.
And it takes a prosecutor who was tired of managing the unending cycle of homelessness — jail-street-jail-street-jail. Hil Kaman left his job prosecuting the homeless and took up the challenge of finding solutions. For starters, he helped put together a team that would track the 25 most costly and vulnerable cases, and hover over each one individually until he or she was in treatment or housing.
“It was when everything else seems to have failed,” said Kaman, who became the city’s public health and safety director 17 months ago.