The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation has awarded $1.6 million over four years to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) for a study on a potential model program providing housing and treatment services to homeless individuals with alcohol and other drug problems.

The CASAHOPE Housing Opportunities Program Evaluation will research and evaluate New York's Housing First program, which provides services without the standard requirement that program participants first demonstrate six months of sobriety. The program will be examined for its fiscal benefits as well as other outcomes.

"In the past, homeless men and women who were drug and alcohol abusers and addicts could not qualify for stable housing and would end up living on the street, or in temporary shelters, never receiving the needed health care and substance abuse treatment, and taxpayers would be hit with the bill for the resulting crime, social welfare and healthcare costs," said CASA chairman and president Joseph A. Califano, Jr. "If you have AIDS or diabetes you don't have to be free of the disease before you're admitted to a supportive housing program. The same should be true for the disease of addiction."