Federal Homeless Policy Update: Annual HUD Grant Falls Short
p>Six weeks after the U.S. Conference of Mayors released its State of Hunger and Homelessness in America report indicating that homelessness is increasing across the United States, HUD announced its annual McKinney-Vento homelessness assistance grants. This year, $1.4 billion was awarded through competitive and formula grants to HUD McKinney-Vento programs. These programs provide emergency and transitional shelter, permanent supportive housing, and support services to people experiencing homelessness.
The Administration’s claim that the $1.4 billion awarded represents a “record amount” fails to hold up to examination. When adjusted for inflation, HUD homelessness assistance funding remains essentially at its 1995 level. Moreover, 71% of the funds awarded went to program renewals to keep pace with existing demand while only 29% went to new programs designed to meet growing demand.
Simply put, the overall pot is not expanding to meet increased need, but is being reorganized to serve the Administration’s “chronic homelessness” initiative. This initiative prioritizes services for “unaccompanied homeless individuals with a disabling condition who have either been continuously homeless for a year or more, or have had at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three years.”
In a stark illustration of the reorganization of homeless assistance grants, 51 Continuums of Care nationwide went unfunded, while 30% of the competitively awarded dollars went to projects serving the “chronically” homeless. By definition, families with children are excluded from the “chronic homelessness initiative,” despite the devastating impact of homelessness on child development and the fact that a full one-third of families seeking emergency shelter last year were turned away for lack of space.
Families with children are also being squeezed out of the HUD homeless assistance budget in other, less explicit ways. After program renewals and a Congressionally mandated permanent supportive housing set-side (30%) is taken out of the overall amount awarded, there is precious little left for support services, transitional housing, or prevention activities, all of which serve families and individuals alike. In fact, support services received 39% of the total award this year, an 11% reduction as a percentage of the distribution since the 2001 awards. Without an accompanying plan for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services—or any other agency—to pick up the need for the services that are no longer funded through HUD, this critical assistance is likely to be either greatly reduced or utterly eliminated.
Thus, contrary to Administration claims, the “chronic homelessness initiative” is not “freeing up” resources for families or other populations—it is leaving them out in the cold. The pitting of equally vulnerable populations against one another—and the undermining of local planning and decision-making —is the unconscionable legacy of the HUD homeless assistance budget.
As Does the Federal Budget
Meanwhile, the real solution to homelessness—an adequately funded HUD and USDA budget, universal health care, and livable wage and income supports—took a huge hit when, on February 7th, President Bush submitted the Administration’s proposed FY 2006 Budget of the United States Government. As widely anticipated and feared, the President’s promises to deliver a “tough budget” appears to have been achieved largely at the expense of low-income Americans. Aiming to balance the budget against the backdrop of two wars, increased military spending, and the maintenance of tax cuts for the wealthiest, domestic programs alone bear the brunt of cuts. On the housing and services front, the budget includes an almost fifty percent cut to housing for people with disabilities, significant cuts to housing serving the elderly and persons with HIV/AIDS, a 73% cut to rural rental housing, the elimination of the Community Services Block Grant, sharp reductions in the Community Development Block Grant program, and flat funding for HUD McKinney-Vento homeless assistance grants.
Such cuts more than offset the Administration’s proposed $174 million Samaritan Initiative, which prioritizes services for “unaccompanied homeless individuals with a disabling condition who have either been continuously homeless for a year or more, or have had at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three years.” Furthermore, due to a tepid response from Congress last year, the Samaritan Act has been refashioned from its original design as a multi-departmental program blending housing and supportive services to simply a prioritized funding stream—limited to housing and case management—within the existing HUD homelessness grants. In other words, while cutting other housing programs, flat funding emergency shelter grants and reducing services within the McKinney programs for all populations, the Administration has proposed to add $174 million to the homeless account and require that communities seeking such funds utilize the dollars in the service of the “chronic” homelessness initiative. Yet, while HUD and other critical programs throughout the Federal government face deep cuts, the budget proposal seeks a 28% increase for the administrative expenses of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (ICH), the lead agency in promoting the President’s homelessness policies.
The National Housing Trust Fund Campaign has released a proposal for legislation in the 109th Congress. This year’s version of the proposal maintains a commitment to ensuring a significant portion of trust fund dollars serve extremely low income and minimum wage earning households and includes more clarity on funding for rural areas and regional growth strategies. Trust fund legislation and the Bringing America Home Act (BAHA) are both expected to be introduced early in the 109th Congress. STREET SHEET readers will recall that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors issued a resolution last November urging passage of BAHA.
Brad