Right now, tens of billions of dollars are flowing to states as part of legal settlements with pharma companies and drug distributors that helped fuel the overdose epidemic. These funds are supposed to be used to help treat people struggling with opioid addiction and to end the opioid crisis. This offers us a once-in-a-generation opportunity to secure mass investments in life-saving harm reduction and treatment programs to keep our communities safe. But we need your help to do it!

This guide provides background information about the opioid crisis, describes a harm reduction approach to using settlement funds, and offers resources that will help you find important information about the opioid crisis, the settlement money, and what’s happening in your state to help you start organizing to make sure settlement funds are going where you want them to locally.

This guide focuses specifically on using settlement funds to support affordable and green social housing. Permanent, safe, and affordable housing is vitally important to supporting recovery, health, and well-being, and programs that dramatically increase access to housing must be part of any plan to address the opioid crisis.

Together, we can expand harm reduction investments across the country and keep our communities safe and secure. Let’s get to it!