Sue Lani Madsen: Homelessness is not an identity

When Robert Marbut first joined the production team for the movie “No Address,” it was as a subject matter expert. It wasn’t because of his PhD in international relations and political behavior, it was 30 years’ experience in researching root causes of homelessness in America. Lack of an address is not one of them. Untreated mental illness and substance abuse are.

Now the executive producer for the movie due to be released later this year, Marbut made sure it was written into the contracts for major players in the ensemble cast to spend at least eight hours learning first-hand about homelessness at a rescue mission, on the streets, and in encampments in Sacramento. For three of those actors, that wasn’t enough. William Baldwin, Xander Berkley and Ashanti hung out in encampments over five weeks in between filming.

As Marbut and the man he calls Billy Baldwin talked on set, Marbut expected they’d have differences. “Billy and I are definitely on opposite sides of the political spectrum, and over time we found out how many things we were on the opposite side of, including my Olympic sport – modern pentathlon – kicking his sport of wrestling out of the Olympics. We’re on opposite sides of everything, but on this we are aligned.”

Marbut has served in three presidential administrations including an appointment as executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness in the first Trump administration.

William Baldwin leans left, publicly disagreeing with younger brother Stephen who supports former President Trump.

On the narrow issue of homelessness and the intersection with untreated mental illness and substance abuse, Marbut and Baldwin found themselves in agreement.

In an interview last week, Marbut described the nationwide best practices study he completed out of frustration with a lack of results from so many programs. When he explained to Baldwin that handing out housing vouchers without any requirement for treatment or training was like handing out Pell grants for college but not requiring a student to attend class or make progress, “Billy said, ‘That’s nuts,’ ” according to Marbut.

In 2007, Marbut visited 237 operations striving to address homelessness in 12 states and the District of Columbia. From that field work he developed his “Seven Guiding Principles for Transformation – Moving From Enablement to Engagement.” Recognizing homelessness as a protected class is not one of them.

A well-intentioned yet naïve ordinance to do just that was recently deferred by the Spokane City Council indefinitely but may be brought back in an amended version after the November election.

“My view is homelessness should be treated as a clinical issue,” said Marbut in a text exchange when asked about the temporarily tabled ordinance.

Three-fourths of street level homelessness is tied to mental health and substance abuse according to Marbut, citing research by the California Policy Lab.

Making homelessness into an immutable identity group is one more link in a victim mentality chain. It is the opposite of a positive language shift to “unsheltered” or “unhoused” in a move to draw a line between the person and their living conditions. The root problem is clinical, not housing.

Marbut described an incident after giving a briefing on homelessness response with Baldwin in Seattle. They were barely a few hundred feet from the door afterward and found a guy doing the “fentanyl fold,” standing bent awkwardly over on the sidewalk and barely breathing. Baldwin completed the Chicago Fire Academy for his role in “Backdraft” and knows what he’s looking at, according to Marbut.

A call was placed to 911 and the whole parade arrived – a ladder truck with two EMTs, an ambulance and crew, a mental health care team, police officers, Marbut and Baldwin. There was nothing any of them could do, the homeless addict invoked his right to refuse treatment and took another hit. “He’s going to be dead,” said Marbut.

As psychiatrist Dr. Charles Krauthammer used to say, we now let the mentally ill “die with their rights on.”

Marbut pegged the start of the homelessness problem to the mass closing of inpatient mental health facilities in the 1980s. Hopeful theories supported simple outpatient treatment for everyone, like any other chronic medical condition. Now the U.S. inpatient bed capacity is barely 25% of what it was in 1970, without adjusting for population growth. “One side didn’t want to spend money and the other side moved to close down institutions after seeing “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Marbut said. Both sides got to the same place, and now he’s not surprised at rising homelessness, violence, mental health – “we got rid of the thing that treated that.”

Marbut will be in Spokane on Sept. 20 with Baldwin to speak at a Washington Policy Center dinner with their message on the mental health and substance abuse underpinnings of street-level homelessness. Good timing as the community struggles with what to do next.

“We really think we need treatment in this country and we need to work on it. If Billy and I can agree on this, maybe other groups can get together.”

Contact Sue Lani Madsen at rulingpen@gmail.com.