Tim Stay is CEO of The Other Side Academy (TOSA), a long-term treatment and residential program in Utah for people caught in cycles of addiction, incarceration and destructive behavior. Its 2½-year program requires sobriety, intensive peer-group therapy, and vocational and leadership training, with the goal of something considerably more ambitious than simply getting someone off the street: personal change, work, responsibility and reintegration into society.
TOSA grew out of the Delancey Street Foundation, and its results—participants who are drug-free, employed and living self-reliant lives—are striking. In fact, TOSA also operates businesses, including The Other Side Donuts and The Other Side Movers, that give participants hands-on vocational training and real-world work experience. They learn not only how to do a job, but how to show up, work with others, take responsibility and eventually lead. Revenue from these enterprises helps support the program, which is provided at no cost to participants.
It is an organization worth examining, particularly as the prevailing approach is being challenged at the federal level.
The Trump administration is moving away from the failed Housing First policies and toward a model that emphasizes safe housing alongside treatment and recovery. I recently wrote about that shift—and why I believe Housing First has been insufficient to address the deeper problems underlying homelessness.
Tim’s criticism of Housing First is that it tends to understand homelessness primarily as an asset problem. If someone is homeless, give him a house. If he is hungry, give him food. If he is addicted, give him medication to prevent an overdose.
None of those things is inherently wrong. The question is whether they address the fundamental deficit.
More often than not, Tim argues, that deficit is not an asset. It is agency. A person doesn’t simply need a place to live; he needs to rediscover who he is, what he is capable of becoming and how he can once again become a valued and productive member of society.
“What we really care about is someone living a self-reliant, stable life,” Tim told me. And that begins internally—with the recognition that one’s life is on the wrong track and must be redirected or renewed.
That idea has deep roots in both Christianity and Western philosophy.
In Romans 12:2, Paul writes: “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Real transformation begins internally and is then manifested in how we live—in our habits, our decisions and our actions. For Christians, those actions should reflect the example of Jesus, who “came not to be served, but to serve.” (Mark 10:45.) Scripture also makes clear that service entails responsibility. Paul writes, “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.” (2 Thessalonians 3:10.) Work is not merely a means of earning money. It is one way we become responsible, productive, and capable of not only sustaining a home but contributing to others.
The core tenets of Western philosophy point in much the same direction. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that human flourishing and happiness consist not simply in possessing things (housing), but in activity in accordance with virtue. A good life isn’t something you receive. It is something you practice, grounded in an accurate understanding of what is true and what is good. Aristotle begins with the internal—our understanding of truth and virtue—but he doesn’t stop there. That understanding must be expressed through action and reinforced through daily habits. That is how we cultivate virtue, develop character and ultimately live the good life.
This is precisely where progressive homelessness policies such as Housing First have gone astray. They place enormous emphasis on changing a person’s circumstances, with the expectation that better circumstances will lead to better habits and, ultimately, a transformed life. But the direction of causality may not be so simple. Changing a person’s circumstances does not necessarily change the person.
Whether policymakers genuinely believe that circumstances are sufficient to produce transformation, or whether that proposition is simply more politically convenient than asking people to transform themselves, is harder to say. But the more important question is one of results: What does it actually mean to transform a life? What does it mean to flourish? And can a policy that primarily provides relief from suffering produce the habits, agency and character required for a stable, self-sufficient life?
If it cannot, then perhaps we should look more seriously at models that ask more of people—and, in so doing, perhaps give them more, than just a house.
I hope you enjoy our conversation.
You can learn more about Tim and The Other Side Academy here: https://www.theothersideacademy.com/
To learn about TOSA’s fascinating history, go here: TOSA’s history.
You can follow TOSA on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theothersideacademy/?hl=en
Related articles and interview: You can’t house your way out of homelessness
San Patrignano confronts suffering honestly
Monica Barzanti of San Patrignano on CRT
Interview coverage:
:43 - 50k foot view of the homelessness problem. In California, homelessness has grown 20% since 2019, despite the substantial expansion in spending. Why things aren’t getting better.
2:19 - The government treats the homeless and drug addiction problems as “asset” problems. TOSA offers treatment services and rewards participants on whole-person change.
7:45 - The reason the dominant narrative around homelessness is that it is a housing scarcity problem is because building houses is what the government can do.
10:40 - The pendulum is shifting away from Housing First to Human First.
13:08 - From entrepreneur, philanthropist to CEO of TOSA, which leveraged the work done at Delancey Street Foundation, a therapeutic community model started in the 70’s and notable for reducing recidivism in long-term addicts.
18:20 - Foundational principle: Drug addiction and substance abuse are identity problems and a crisis of meaning vs an external (lack of housing) problem.
19:44 - Program requirements and the typical participant profile. About 40% who enter the program complete the program. Of those, 70% remain drug-free.
24:12 - The shared characteristics of a participant (average age 30-40’s from broken families). And why the majority of who apply get accepted—to avoid jail time.
29:52 – Oftentimes, the most hardened hearts are the ones who end up making miraculous recoveries.
32:35 - The 60% attrition rate is prevalent in long-term programs and underscores the immaturity of people to deal with emotional stress. That is why work and stressful situations are required: it teaches people how to handle hard problems, not run away from them.
37:26 - Progressive homelessness policies suffer from the soft bigotry of low expectations. They don’t believe people can handle stress. You don’t learn how to handle stress by just talking about how stressful life is.
41:05 - Abstinence is required because if people around you are on drugs, it’s hard to be free of it.
43:52 - About The Other Side Village–for those with deep chronic mental problems. The difference between the government’s permanent housing under progressive policies is that the Village is a sober community with drinking and illegal drugs not allowed.
46:30 - Robert F Kennedy Jr has talked about expanding addiction healing camps - particularly San Patrignano. The pendulum toward these policies is shifting.
49:33 - TOS receives government assistance for the building of its residential homes. But it receives zero funds for its operations and peer-to-peer treatment services.
52:50 - The government can help homelessness by rewarding service providers based on behavioral outcomes. Not how many people are housed; but how many have been in steady jobs?
55:43 - A Democrat Socialists of America proposal is to give guaranteed employment. TOSA’s model of employment is to make people employable.
[The underlying progressive goal: create more homelessness and drug addiction to create dysfunction and government dependency. Then the government will provide people their identity vs giving the people the freedom to discover their own identity.]
59:12 - The DSA is correct in saying the current prison system is a warehousing model. The prisons should incorporate a community-treatment model to learn accountability and responsibility.
1:01:01 - Housing First gives independence but TOSA says before independence, participants need to learn how to live independently and responsibly. Pursuing homelessness as an asset problem just makes homelessness a cyclical problem.
1:04 - One of TOSA’s goals is to build its third campus and find hard workers who believe in its mission. Another is to share its process and learnings to others who’d like to build long-term recovery centers.
