Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Feb. 2 announced a new $100 million program that he said will help homeless people find jobs and treat drug abuse.
The $100 million investment is aimed at assisting homeless people and drug users in recovering from addiction, finding employment, and locating stable housing.
Kennedy told an event on Prevention Day—which is sponsored by the government and dedicated to preventing drug abuse—in Washington on Monday that the health care system under the previous administration was designed to cycle people who suffer from mental illness and drug addiction “between sidewalks, emergency room visits, jails, mental hospitals, and shelters.”
“No one took responsibility for the whole person. No one stayed long enough to help them recover, to help them reestablish their links, and teach them the lessons of how to live in a community,” he said. “That system is neither humane nor effective.”
Kennedy, who has said his addiction to heroin ended with help from 12-step programs, said that the $100 million would fund pilot initiatives that are crafted to resolve long-term homelessness and reduce opioid addiction by expanding treatment regimens that emphasize recovery and self-sufficiency. The program is known as Safety Through Recovery, Engagement, and Evidence-based Treatment and Supports, or STREETS.
“STREETS will engage people continuously, from first contact on the street through recovery, through employment, and through self-sufficiency,” Kennedy said. “Law enforcement, first responders, courts, housing providers, and health care systems will work as one team, so people will no longer fall through the cracks.”
STREETS follows an executive order President Donald Trump signed in January that says drug addiction is a chronic disease and that the administration needs to prioritize addiction treatment and recovery.
The new program builds on an investment federal health officials awarded in 2025 to boost homes for recovering addicts. Kennedy says he knows many people who have recovered in such homes.
Kennedy also announced the government will be providing $10 million through an assisted outpatient program to help adults designated as having serious mental illness, which he said will reduce hospitalization, incarceration, and homelessness.
Officials also said that the Department of Health and Human Services will, moving forward, let states use federal funding to pay for addicted parents to receive Food and Drug Administration-approved medications.
And they said that they would be giving faith-based organizations that meet certain standards funding to help with drug addiction recovery.
“This is a chronic disease. It’s a physical disease, it’s a mental disease, it’s emotional disease, but above all, it’s a spiritual disease,“ Kennedy said. ”And we need to recognize that, and faith-based organizations play a critical role in … helping people reestablish their connections to community.”
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