LOS ANGELES—The day Les Jones got his own room after being homeless for decades, he couldn’t sleep on the bed. He didn’t sleep on his bed the next day either, or the next. For an entire year after he no longer was homeless, Jones slept on the floor—the way he’d slept on the streets for more than half his adult life.

Jones always felt detached from the world. He tried to belong, but even as a little kid, he felt he was always doing things wrong. To punish himself, he hit himself over and over. As an adult, he heard voices. He looked for jobs but couldn’t find or keep them.

Today Jones is diagnosed with severe depression and schizo-affective disorder, but before, he wasn’t aware of his conditions. Instead, he decided he was a loser and a loner, and he slept on the streets in Los Angeles and became used to it. Then someone connected Jones to Step Up, a nonprofit organization that provides housing and services to chronically homeless individuals with mental health issues.

Now 61, Jones finally learned to sleep on a bed again. And he loves it, loves everything about having a home: being able to store his stuff without worrying about thieves, to lock a door, and best of all, to take a hot shower any time he wants. Since he moved into one of Step Up’s 200 permanent supportive housing units in 2006, he’s finally meeting his goals: He now teaches basic computer skills at Step Up and has earned his ham radio license—a goal he’s had for 40 years.

The chronically homeless are the most difficult to help among the homeless population, yet Jones found housing—and more incredibly, stayed housed. He’s a success story for a nationally touted homelessness assistance approach called “Housing First,” which prioritizes housing chronically homeless individuals as quickly as possible with no conditions attached. Unlike traditional methods such as shelters and transitional residences, “Housing First” does not require psychiatric treatment or sobriety. The idea is that the physical state of homelessness puts undue stress on a person’s psychiatric and physical health, so housing itself is a vital component of recovery.

Since the early 2000s, “Housing First” has become the most popular model for policymakers and service providers across the nation, with governments and nonprofits spending billions on the policy. Advocates tout it as an innovative yet simple solution to a complex issue: Give the homeless a home, and you immediately fix the “homeless” part of the issue. Finally, homelessness can end.

But “Housing First” hasn’t worked for everyone. Though originally meant for the chronically homeless, “Housing First” is now the preferred method for all homeless groups, including families.

Amber Gann was a 32-year-old single mother, fresh out of rehab and desperate to get her two daughters back from Child Protective Services, when a local service provider in San Diego offered her housing—no questions asked about her criminal record, her lack of employment, or her history of substance abuse. Gann was ecstatic: She would finally have a place of her own, and she made grand plans to lead a wonderfully normal life with her daughters.

That dream shattered within 24 hours after she moved into her new home. At about 4 a.m., Gann woke up to a crackling BANG! She rushed downstairs to see a SWAT team tossing stun grenades into her neighbor’s house. The police raided the place and removed packs of drugs, weapons, and ammunition.

Gann soon learned that half of the tenants in her building were “Housing First” recipients like her. Due to the low-barrier admissions policy of “Housing First,” people were free to do whatever they wanted behind closed doors. The building walls reeked of marijuana and meth and often shook with drunken parties and arguments. Through her daughters, Gann learned that one neighbor was dealing drugs and prostituting his 11-year-old daughter out to his friends.

It was a terrible environment for children and a former heroin addict. Gann began drinking. The CPS found empty liquor bottles in her house and took her kids away again. She tried to find part-time jobs, dated a customer, and became pregnant with a boy. Barely seven months after she moved into the house, Gann voluntarily gave up her keys and checked herself back into rehab: “I decided that house was not supportive for my recovery or my safety or my kids … so I got out while I could.”