Resource Key Issue: Substance Use Disorder

  • Interim Strategies For Responding To Unsheltered Homelessness

    Although permanent housing paired with services and supports tailored to the household remains the only permanent solution to homelessness, there is no community in the country that has an adequate housing supply or social safety net. This, combined with insufficient shelter capacity, results in more and more people forced to sleep outside.

  • Interim Strategies For Responding To Unsheltered Homelessness

    Permanent housing strategies remain both an immediate and the sole long-term solution to homelessness. Whenever possible, people should be connected directly to housing from wherever they are currently residing.

  • DESC: Sheltering the Most Vulnerable

    Seattle’s Downtown Emergency Service Center opened its doors in 1979 as a low-barrier shelter for people with behavioral health and substance use challenges. In 1994, DESC’s mission to…

  • Homelessness and the Opioid Crisis: Background, Funding, and Resources

    In October, 2017, President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency. Years of rising prescription opioid use and misuse, followed by a surge in the use of illicit opioids have led to a spike in both overdoses and deaths in the United States.

  • Opioid Abuse and Homelessness

    The issue of opioid abuse has risen to a level of national crisis as the number of people abusing prescription drugs and heroin has dramatically risen, and the rate of opioid-related overdose deaths has tripled since 2000.2 In 2014, an estimated 2.5 million people had opioid-use disorders (OUD) involving prescription drug or heroin abuse, and…