REPORT | 22 JUN 2011
FILES: On June 22, 2010, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) issued the Administration’s federal strategic plan to end homelessness.
Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness (the Plan) set the goals of ending chronic and veteran homelessness in five years and homelessness among families and youth in ten years. It also proposed to set the nation on a path to ending all homelessness. The Plan identified 52 strategies to be used to meet these goals. It identified the agencies – primarily the Departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Health and Human Services (HHS), Veterans Affairs (VA), and Labor (DoL) – responsible for each strategy, because while USICH is the federal coordinating body for implementation of the Plan, it is the member agencies of USICH that have the resources and responsibility to meet the goals.
The Plan has made the federal government a partner to the more than 240 jurisdictions with ten year plans to end homelessness and represents a federal commitment to coordinate agency policies and make federal resources available for these efforts. Additionally, the Plan, along with a major evolution of the federal homeless assistance system in the form of the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act, ushers in a new era of federal accountability for the nation’s homelessness problem.
The Plan proposes to achieve the goals by implementing the 52 strategies, which are grouped under five themes and ten objectives. The first section of this Progress Report, “Summary of Program Assessments,” looks at the progress that federal agencies have made on the Plan’s 52 strategies. The assessments made in this report reveal the following:
- Some progress has been made on 39 of the 52 strategies (75 percent) identified in the Plan and measurable progress has been made on 18 of the 52 strategies (35 percent).
- The most progress has been made on the objectives to “Promote Collaborative Leadership” and to “Strengthen Capacity and Knowledge.” Considerable progress has also been made on the three objectives related to health care (“Integrate Health Care with Housing,” “Advance Health and Housing Stability for Youth,” and “Advance Health and Housing Stability for Adults”).
- Two key objectives where more progress will be critical in order to meet the goals of the Plan are the objectives to “Provide Affordable Housing” and “Increase Economic Security.”
- No progress was made on 13 of the strategies (25 percent).
The second part of the Progress Report, “Available Data on Changes in Homelessness,” looks at the limited information available at the time of writing on changes in the incidence of homelessness since the introduction of the Plan. While not conclusive, an examination of certain point-in-time counts taken by jurisdictions over a time period that most directly coincides with the release and anniversary of the Plan shows a slight increase in homelessness during the Plan’s first year. So, while it is clear that much activity and some progress have been made by the agencies in pursuing the strategies, it is also clear that more aggressive efforts are needed moving forward, particularly in the areas of employment and housing, to begin making the kind of progress
No Increase in Homelessness Despite RecessionHomelessness in the United States did not increase significantly during the height of the recession, according to the Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress (AHAR) released by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) yesterday. The flat numbers, in spite of an idling economy, are a testament to improved homeless assistance systems and the adoption of housing-based strategies to end homelessness. However, budget cuts at the federal, state, and local levels threaten to destabilize the efforts made to avert increases in homelessness.
The report, based on 2010 data, shows a one percent increase in overall homelessness from 2009 to 2010. Subpopulations, including individuals, unsheltered homeless people, and persons in families increased slightly; 0.75 percent, 2.76 percent, and 1.61 percent respectively. Chronic homelessness continued to decline, dropping one percent. Experts largely attribute the continual decline in chronic homelessness to the broad implementation of best practices to serve chronically homeless people, namely permanent supportive housing.
For the first time, the impact of the federal Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP) was included in the AHAR. The $1.5 billion program, funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), offered communities significant new resources to curb homelessness resulting from the recession. In the first year, HPRP funds prevented and ended homelessness for an estimated 690,000 people and are credited with decreasing the length of time people experienced homelessness in suburban and rural communities, where the average length of stay in an emergency family shelter declined from 62 days to 40 days.
The three-year stimulus program, which ends next year, will leave a considerable hole in the budgets of many local homeless assistance programs. Coupled with cuts to mainstream poverty programs, local and state services, and the relentless rise in need, experts predict that homelessness may rise in the coming years.
“There’s little question that the federal government’s investment in homelessness prevention and rapid re-housing and local efforts to promote housing-based solutions staved off an increase in homelessness during an economically troubled time,” said Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “But bigger obstacles are ahead. Not only is HPRP ending but federal, state, and local budget cuts will arrest our ability to dedicate the resources necessary to prevent and end homelessness in the face of rising need. Now is not the time to become complacent; now is the time to rally to meet the challenge.”
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
