[Opinion] Opinion — Mike Block: Efforts to dismantle housing-focused homelessness programs ignore history and risk repeating past mistakes

Opinion — Mike Block: Efforts to dismantle housing-focused homelessness programs ignore history and risk repeating past mistakes

This commentary is by Mike Block, CEO of All Roads.I have an eerie feeling that we have been here before. In the early 1960s, President Kennedy questioned the United States’ reliance on large mental health institutions to serve those suffering from extreme mental health issues. By the 1970s, that thought had become policy. And by the end of the 1980s, 500,000 institutional beds serving those with the gravest mental illnesses were lost.The promis…