With housing insecurity rising across the country, local and state governments in places like Kentucky are using punitive measures to clear encampments and prevent people from sleeping on city streets.
In contrast, a group of housing advocates took over an aging hotel in Louisville two years ago to provide people the space and stability they need to find permanent housing.
At the Arthur Street Hotel, about 70 guests at a time get a room, meals and access to a case management team that helps them through the process of getting a federal housing voucher, more commonly known as Section 8. Guests can also access therapists and substance abuse treatment, but neither are mandatory. Many continue to use drugs while living in the hotel.
Its unique model — focused on housing first and treatment later — is seeking purchase in a landscape increasingly hostile toward people without permanent housing.
Republican President-elect Donald Trump has toyed with the idea of using the death penalty against drug dealers. In overwhelmingly Democratic states like California and Oregon, residents are increasingly abandoning progressive policies on drugs and homelessness in favor of things like forced treatment and re-criminalizing drugs.
The country’s changing attitudes are compounding the challenges facing low-income and houseless Americans: inadequate health care, unaffordable housing and drug addiction.
Kentucky needs to add more than 200,000 homes, according to a Kentucky Housing Corp. study. Housing prices are rising, homeownership rates are falling, and homelessness in the state’s largest cities increased nearly 20% between 2022 and 2023, according to the latest point in time counts.
Meanwhile, state lawmakers have made life on the margins more difficult. Kentucky made street camping illegal this year. Dozens of people have already been cited in Louisville.
The Arthur Street project has already helped 200 people transition from living on the streets, to a hotel room and finally, into permanent housing. Countless others have received food, water and connections to resources in the hotel’s lobby.
The financiers behind the hotel are one of the largest affordable housing developers in the country, headquartered in Louisville. Given its success, Arthur Street cofounder Donny Greene is grappling with bringing the model to other communities.
“It’s not whether we’re ready,” Greene said. “It’s that there is a need that is still unmet here, as well as a million other places in this country.”
Low barrier to entry
The housing first approach is working for 52-year-old Bonnie Baker.
Baker spent the last five years on the streets living with an abusive partner. At times, she would make holes in the fence only big enough for her to fit through, not her partner.
“When you’re outside you cannot power down, you have to because your body makes you eventually, but you have to be aware of your surroundings at all times,” Baker said.
Baker moved into the Arthur Street Hotel in February. She wasn’t considering sobriety when she first arrived and she said she'd probably still be out on the street if hotel staff had tried to force her into treatment.
But when her housing voucher came through this summer and she started looking at apartments, Baker knew she was going to have to change her old patterns.
“I’ve seen a lot of people fail and lose their houses, like, right away. I want to keep this,” she said.
It was around that time that Baker asked about medication-assisted drug treatment. Now, every morning, she wakes up at the crack of dawn to go to treatment. Baker does a quick group therapy session before getting her medication. They talk about breathing techniques and gratitude lists.
“I kind of forgot about those,” Baker said, standing in a line with a dozen others waiting to walk up to the nurse stations. “I might suggest making a little group of people to make a gratitude list every morning, you know.”
Baker’s journey from chronic homelessness to stable housing — and her own decision to reduce her drug use — is the ideal outcome for advocates of the housing first model.
But the approach is not universally praised. It’s increasingly come under fire from conservatives who see it as enabling bad behaviors. And some of the critics wield a lot of power.
Opposing housing first
Devon Kurtz is the director of public safety at the Texas-based Cicero Institute. The think tank’s model legislation was the inspiration for parts of the Safer Kentucky Act, which the state’s Republican-controlled General Assembly approved earlier this year.
Among other things, the bill criminalized street camping and banned the use of state funding for housing programs that don’t require mental health and substance abuse treatment.
Kurtz said the “no rules” approach of housing first organizations can make things more dangerous for everyone.
“If we're in the same housing unit and I'm using drugs and you're a recovering addict, that is not a safe environment for you,” he said.
The Cicero Institute and other conservative lawmakers have also questioned whether providing housing to people who are still struggling with mental illness or substance use can actually lead to long-term stability.
Most of the available evidence shows that the vast majority of people who go through housing first programs are more likely to make it into permanent housing and still be in housing years later. But there is some evidence that suggests it doesn’t work for everyone.
One survey from 2022, which looked at people living on the streets in San Francisco, found 11% of respondents had already received some form of subsidized housing.
“So, it starts to say, well that doesn’t look good as an effective intervention,” Kurtz said.
The Cicero Institute advocates for states to fund a mix of programs, including those with stricter rules and requirements. And they’ve had some success influencing policy, not just in Kentucky but in Florida and Texas, too.
Greene, Arthur Street’s cofounder, argues that everyone, regardless of whether they use drugs, has a right to housing. He thinks Arthur Street isn’t much different from other motels or bars, where everyone knows people are using drugs.
“The only difference is that we actually acknowledge that we know it happens,” he said.
A lack of resources, and a way forward
This is a “defining moment” for the U.S. when it comes to addressing the twin crises of homelessness and addiction, said Marcy Thompson, vice president of policy and programs at the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
Thompson said service providers’ embrace of housing first and harm reduction approaches are incorrectly blamed. In reality, it’s an issue of resources, she said.
“Even if every person in your community wanted to go into treatment tomorrow, there aren’t enough beds,” she said. “There aren’t enough mental health providers. There isn’t enough of anything.”
The increasing popularity of punitive approaches come from the mistaken belief that they are indications of a person’s moral failings, rather than a failure of governments to provide people with the resources they need to live healthy and productive lives, she said.
Arthur Street is trying to provide those resources. Given the chance, its founders say they would love to replicate what they’re doing in other places. But the project’s funders don’t think it would be easy.
Lisa Dischinger and her husband, Chris, are cofounders of LDG Development, one of the largest affordable housing developers in the country, headquartered in Louisville. They were the people who came to Greene two years ago, offering to purchase the Clarion Hotel that would eventually become Arthur Street.
Today, the nonprofit Rita June Foundation, which Lisa Dischinger chairs, foots almost the entire bill for the day-to-day operations of Arthur Street. It’s a yearly tab of about $3 million.
“I kind of laugh, when they come and they go, 'OK, can we open ten more of these?'” Dischinger said. “I’m like, we can’t even, as a community, fund this one.”
Like Greene, Dischinger said she sees the need for more Arthur Streets locally and across the country, but that requires long-term financial sustainability which remains out of reach two years on.
It costs Arthur Street about $150 per guest, per night. That includes all of the wraparound services, like case management, transportation to doctor’s appointments and laundry. Arthur Street leans on different community partners for other services, like a walk-in clinic that recently opened up in a spare room there.
Arthur Street’s leadership has started to put a big focus on sharing their story and seeing what grants and other funding streams are available.
But outside funding can have its own pitfalls. Sometimes, nonprofits have to tweak their mission or their work to fit with what they can get a grant for. Part of the hotel’s success has also been its partnerships with other housing agencies and nonprofits. If Arthur Street starts competing with them for limited pots of money, like Medicaid dollars, that could strain relationships.
The reality, however, is that a single funder can’t foot the entire bill forever.
“We’re putting a lot of resources in, but we can’t do it alone,” Dischinger said. “No one can do it alone. It’s just, it’s not possible.”
Another challenge that could make community relations more difficult for another Arthur Street — and perhaps the model's biggest challenge — is the legal gray area it operates within.
Arthur Street’s housing first approach, allowing guests to continue using drugs in a safer environment, probably isn’t legal anywhere in the U.S., even if it’s an effective housing strategy.
Dischinger said city officials in Louisville aren’t blind to what goes on at Arthur Street. She and other hotel leaders say they think the reason law enforcement isn’t busting the doors down is because the program works. Plus, the city doesn’t really have an alternative for helping the population Arthur Street serves.
“The fact that we’ve put so many people into housing, and taken them off of the street, it’s kind of hard to argue with it,” Dischinger said. “You know, people are going to do it, it’s just a matter of where and a matter of getting them the support they need so they can keep getting better.”
While Arthur Street has so far been able to operate without law enforcement interference, it’s not clear how another city would respond to this program.
A hopeful transition
In October, Baker moved into a one-bedroom house with a big porch and a backyard where her dog Wren can play.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Baker said to one of the hotel's support staff on a recent visit.
When she first got a room at Arthur Street, Baker struggled with the transition. She’d spend some nights at the hotel, others back in her tent. She hasn’t been nearly as apprehensive about her new place.
As she got ready to move into her new home, she wrote an email to Dustin, her case manager.
“I said, ‘Hi Dustin, it’s Bonnie Baker. I hope you’re having a good day,” she said.
Reciting the email she sent him, Baker told Dustin not to listen to the people who were saying she wasn’t ready to leave Arthur Street. She said they’re just haters.
“LOL, I’m telling you I have a real chance of being happier than I’ve ever been at this lovely house and I love the location,” she said.
Tears streaming down her face, Baker said she also told Dustin how much she appreciated his work.
“I just wanted to thank you, Dustin, for all the effort that you put in and I’m so grateful to you. You told me to stay the course with the house and I decided to trust you,” she said.
Baker said she eventually wants to go back to Arthur Street, but only for a little bit at a time. She wants to volunteer, helping other people with their transition and giving back to a place that she says saved her life.
