Sources: HHS, Telehealth.org, DEA — March 2026
On February 2, 2026, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a $100 million federal investment targeting addiction and homelessness. The program is called STREETS — Safety Through Recovery, Engagement and Evidence-based Treatment and Supports. It funds outreach, psychiatric care, medical stabilization, and crisis intervention for clients experiencing both homelessness and substance use disorders.
This is not a grant you apply for and wait on. It is a signal about where federal resources are moving and what kind of delivery model the government expects providers to have in place.
The delivery model is telehealth.
Federal guidance tied to STREETS is explicit: telehealth can enable screening, therapy, and medication-assisted treatment while allowing clients to receive care from home and maintain continuity with providers. That framing matters. The government is not funding programs that require clients to walk through a door. It is funding programs that can find clients where they are.
The program launches initially in eight communities, with plans to expand partnerships with local governments and community organizations. For facilities in or near those initial markets, the window to position for referrals and partnerships is open now, not after the program scales.
For facilities already operating with telehealth infrastructure, this is an opening. For those still running exclusively in-person models, it is a structural mismatch.
The piece most operators are not paying enough attention to is the DEA waiver. Right now, clinicians can prescribe buprenorphine and other controlled substances via telehealth without requiring an initial in-person visit. That flexibility exists because of a COVID-era waiver the DEA extended through December 31, 2026. Permanent rules have not been finalized. That means the operational window for telehealth-based MAT is open, but it has a known expiration date seven months away, with no certainty about what comes after.
Facilities building telehealth capacity today are doing two things at once: positioning for funding opportunities like STREETS now, and building toward whatever the permanent regulatory framework looks like when the waiver closes.
The broader pattern is worth naming. Federal investment in behavioral health is not disappearing. It is shifting toward integrated models, toward clients who have historically been hardest to reach, and toward delivery systems that do not depend on clients self-selecting into care. STREETS is one data point in that shift.
The facilities that will be positioned to grow through this are the ones building the infrastructure now, not the ones waiting for certainty that may not come before the window closes.
