Following the death of his daughter, Dalton Duffie said he lost perspective on life and turned toward drugs. Years of deepening addiction culminated with him ending up on the streets, caring less, he said, about whether he would live to the next day and more about whether he could get high in the next moment.
Today, Duffie is a resident of and on the board of directors at Foundation Communities, a local nonprofit focused on building and providing deeply affordable housing to the community’s most vulnerable residents. Duffie’s work focuses on housing, more of which, leaders have said, is the key to the city’s homelessness challenge; however, Duffie said had mental health and substance abuse services been more accessible, he likely would have spent less time suffering on the streets.
“At some point, all substance abuse users think about treatment, but you can’t get to it if you have to pay thousands of dollars for it,” said Duffie, who got clean over the course of more than two years with a limited program at the Salvation Army. “All of the people I knew who were substance abusers had no way to pay for treatment. If there were more [programs like the Salvation Army’s], more people would use them.”