Federal Homeless Policy Update
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were unprecedented: destroying or nearly destroying a number of American cities and towns, displacing hundreds of thousands, revealing the utter lack of preparation of government, and even—if only for a brief moment—putting the issue of homelessness and poverty on the political map. As we witnessed the tremendous public response, we felt a guarded, tenuous hope that the generosity and swift action of the public and private sectors might also translate into a new will to end homelessness for all Americans.
Indeed, the response to Hurricane Katrina gave us more reason to believe that homelessness could be ended—shelters emptied, housing located, services provided, goods donated, hearts opened. No more, it seemed, would the phrase “ending homelessness” be bandied about as an empty slogan or a lofty but unreachable goal—in many communities, for many evacuees, it was meaningful and achievable.
Yet, our initial optimism has been replaced by a strong sense of disquiet. The media, government, and the public have largely failed to discern the similarities between the mass homelessness caused by Katrina and Rita and the mass homelessness that preceded it. Indeed, we’ve seen little change of direction in policies on poverty or homelessness.
In fact, the public dialogue on homelessness today—especially at the federal level via the “chronic” homelessness initiative—is almost completely disconnected from considerations of the poverty and lack of housing that cause it. No wonder the public distinguishes between hurricane-homelessness and other homelessness—what they see and hear about homelessness is pathology, not poverty.
Clearly, we must do a better job of educating the public about homelessness—its underlying causes and its human consequences. But in addition, we must take a more detailed look at federal policy—for while we are at the mercy of natural disasters, we do have the power to impact other forces, less visible but equally destructive to the lives they up-end. A comparison of the federal response to the hurricanes and current homeless policy is instructive in this regard. Rather than ask what would result from applying federal disaster policies to homelessness, let’s reverse the inquiry. What would have happened if the federal government applied current homeless policy to people whose homelessness was caused by the hurricanes?
Hurricane Katrina left hundreds of thousands of people homeless—infants, elderly people, families, singles, people with mental illness, people with addictions, people with no mental health issues or addictions but struggling to survive through grinding poverty. Suppose that FEMA decided to direct resources to only 10% of the evacuees, targeting those whom they thought were “most vulnerable,” under the assumption that the others could get by on whatever they could find. Suppose the federal government argued that no money could be spent on evacuee families until there was more “research” on evacuee-ism among families—that a typology of evacuee families was necessary in order to justify the expenditure of federal funds to assist them. Suppose that after the hurricanes, the federal government told us that we should adopt a goal to end evacuees’ homelessness in 10 years, and that we should spend our time and energy making local ten-year plans without the resources to implement them.
Undoubtedly, most people would have found this approach to helping evacuees baffling and totally unacceptable. Fortunately, it didn’t happen that way. Relief agencies made few distinctions of costliness or worthiness among evacuees. No one pondered the need for a typology before committing resources to help their fellow citizens—it was enough to know that they were suffering without housing, jobs, food, and health care. And, thankfully, no one proposed ten years as an appropriate deadline for re-housing evacuees.
The hurricanes have exposed the ludicrousness and irrelevance of much of the current federal policy on homelessness: the almost exclusive focus on a small percentage of the homeless population; the use and misuse of an exceedingly narrow research base to justify a politically expedient initiative; and an un-funded local 10-year planning activity as a patent attempt to devolve federal responsibility and distract from the lack of resources.
Housing Crisis Deepens as Federal Response Falls Short
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s new report, Affordable Housing Needs: A Report to Congress on the Significant Need for Housing, found that in 2003 a total of 5.18 million very-low income renter households without housing assistance had “worst case needs.” That is, these households paid more than half their income on their housing or lived in severely substandard housing. By comparison HUD’s report found 4.86 million households with “worst-case” needs in 1999. Families with children account for 1.85 million households, over one million elderly households without children, and approximately 510,000 households of families with non-elderly members with disabilities were counted among those with “worst case needs.”
Given the disturbing trends illustrated in HUD “worst case” report to Congress, it is of no surprise that the December 2005 release of the U.S. Conference of Mayors Report on Hunger and Homelessness in America indicates that homelessness continues to increase. Among cities included in the survey, homelessness increased by 6% overall and 32% of all families seeking shelter had to be turned away for lack of space. The report cites the ‘lack of affordable housing’ as the number one cause for such increases.
Yet, a small grant program originally designed to meet emergency needs remains the centerpiece of the federal response to this crisis. On December 20th, HUD announced the fiscal year 2005 McKinney-Vento homeless assistance grants. The annual grants help provide communities with critical resources for emergency shelter, transitional housing, supportive housing and supportive services. Overall, the department awarded $1.33 billion, representing a more than $63 million dollar cut from the 2004 level and a mere 17% of the total grants were awarded to fund new projects while the remaining 83% went toward renewals.
Bay Area Rep. Champions Anti-Poverty Package
Rep. Barbara Lee (CA-9) has introduced 3 bills designed to combat poverty and create Congressional accountability on the issue. H.R. 4600 requires the Congressional Budget Office to analyze legislation and its effect on low-income Americans. H. Con. Res. 234 requires the President to submit to Congress a plan for the elimination of poverty. H. Con. Res. 282 rolls back the tax cuts for the wealthiest five percent of Americans and dedicates the funds to poverty elimination programs.
Brad
