My (27m) brother (23m) is on the verge of serial homelessness and I don't know what to do to help him

Background:

I last saw my brother Adam (name changed for privacy) last October (2018) while on a week long trip visiting my family in my hometown (Midwest, US). At that time he was living with his girlfriend and they were having reasonable conversations about planning their life together. In the months since then the following events have taken place, with the later developments happening within the last 2 weeks. This is patched together from fragmented conversations I've had with Adam and my parent's conversations with him.

1. Broke up with that girlfriend 2. Moved into an apartment with an old girlfriend from highschool (and possibly other people?) 2. Ended that relationship and took on the lease of the apartment himself (it was a month to month lease from what I understand) 3. Lost his job 4. Was evicted from the apartment 5. Met new people he now considers "more trustworthy than any people I've ever met" 5. Reported his car stolen 3 separate times from either these same people or people connected with them. 6. Is now functionally homeless and it is unclear on a day to day basis where he is sleeping but likely in his car

Advice request:

I am looking for advice on the ways that I can intervene in this downward spiral, either with resources available to me personally or public resources. I will try and organize this by the problems I see as needing to be solved and their priority.

Pri 0: Separating him from his new "friends"

I unfortunately don't have the exact details about who these people are. My best understanding is that there are 4 individuals, 2 men and 2 women. I do not know if Adam is romantically involved with any of them. Adam did mention smoking weed with them as one of the reasons he felt he could trust them. They seems to be homeless, and may have criminal histories. Adam is defiant that he will not leave these people. With the limited information I have my theories on why he is with these people have included drugs or other illegal things, blackmail, threats of violence, romantic relationships, or a general good nature feeling of responsibility that he may have for them. I don't believe that I any help I can give to my brother would be useful while he is still with these people.

Pri 1: Housing

Multiple family members and family friends would be more than willing to offer Adam housing and support immediately, with varying degrees of conditions that he apparently won't accept. I would be willing to go so far as to straight up lease an apartment for him with almost no conditions if I could have some assurance that he was at least trying to take proactive steps towards independence.

Pri 2: Job

When I first started hearing about these things happening I didn't fully understand the depth of his spiral. My initial advice centered on the basics of job hunting, such as doing work for a temp agency, helping him search indeed for local job postings, and general interview/resume advice. These kinds of problems feel so far from what he actually needs help with now that it almost seem silly talking about them.

Pri 3: Mental Health

I have a general concern that the Adam may not be acting rationally because of some kind of mental impairment that would require professional help. I don't think my armchair psychiatric theories or general concerns of possible affects of hard drugs are useful without somehow convincing him to be diagnosed professionally, so that is my main concern here.

Misc:

My ability to communicate with Adam is somewhat limited. He seems to be with these 4 individuals constantly and has mostly refused to take phone calls but instead message over text/IM. Initially I was concerned if it was actually Adam that I was speaking with, but I think I recognize his tone of voice as authentically him even through the text messaging. I am willing to fly back to visit him in person if I had a game plan for how to intervene and get him help. I am also concerned about pushing away whatever trust he still has in me. Our family background is stereotypical conservative Christian and that has been a cause of tension between him and our parents in the past. I am not concerned with the general vices that are huge deals for our parents (sex, alcohol, weed, etc) unless they are somehow a root cause of his current situation.

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TL;DR:

My brother is on the verge of serial homelessness. The immediate concern is that he is tethered to 4 individuals that in the least are keeping him from getting immediate assistance for housing, and at the worst are making him accessory to any number of illegal things. I am willing to take drastic action to intervene in his life, but I don't know what to do that will actually be helpful.

Submitted February 25, 2019 at 06:32PM by xyylli https://ift.tt/2ViWLEX