Federal Homeless Policy Update
President Bush’s 2007 budget includes a proposal to add $184 million to HUD’s McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Grant program. Under the President’s proposal, however, these funds would be reserved for the “Samaritan Permanent Housing Bonus,” a currently unauthorized program that would provide supportive housing and case management services to “single adults with disabilities who have been homeless for over a year, or at least four times over a three year period.”
Not only are families, children, youth, non-disabled individuals and persons with disabilities who fail to meet the definition of “chronically homeless” ineligible for these funds, the combination of housing and case management that is contemplated under the Samaritan Permanent Housing Bonus is already allowed under the McKinney-Vento program. Therefore, a new program is not needed – especially because such a program would tie the hands of current grantees, as funds could not be used for supportive services beyond case management – such as mental health and substance abuse treatment, or job training assistance.
What HUD is effectively proposing, and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (US ICH) is busy promoting, is the creation of a new set-aside, within McKinney-Vento, to fund permanent housing – with minimal services – for the “chronic” homeless population. This set-aside, along with an existing 30 percent set aside to provide permanent housing for homeless persons with disabilities, would seriously reduce the ability of local communities to have their top homeless assistance priorities funded, unless those priorities featured housing for “chronically homeless individuals.”
Identifying the best use of limited resources can be difficult, but local service providers and advocates are better equipped to make these decisions than HUD staff in Washington, D.C. Call Mayor Newsom and your Member of Congress and urge them to support the proposed $184 million increase in funding for HUD McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Grants, but oppose dedicating these funds for the Samaritan Housing Bonus. If Congress and the President are serious about “ending” homelessness they should begin to restore the draconian cuts HUD housing programs have endured over the past three decades rather than promote the kind of quick-fix-clean-up-the-street-gimmickry represented in the Samaritan proposal.
June 1 marks the start of the 2006 hurricane season and national weather experts are once again anticipating a severe season. 2005 was an especially brutal year for the Gulf South. Katrina claimed the lives of 1,500 people, and in the New Orleans area alone destroyed or severely damaged over 200,000 homes. At least 750,000 people were displaced in the immediate aftermath of the storm.
Prior to Katrina, over 63,000 New Orleans area households paid more than 30% of income on housing, a quarter of Orleans Parish residents had household incomes below the Federal poverty line, and the waiting list for Section 8 and Public Housing assistance in the City of New Orleans exceeded 17,000. According to estimates by the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials (NAHRO), throughout the affected region as many as 15,000 families in public housing and 18,000 families receiving voucher assistance were impacted by Katrina. These federally funded resources are indispensable long-term assistance for very low-income families, unavailable from any other source.
In the nine months since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, hundreds of millions of dollars have been privately raised for relief efforts, Congress has responded with billions in aid, and thousands of American families have opened up their homes to the victims of the hurricanes. But if we are to prevent recovery itself from becoming another slow moving hurricane, this outpouring of emergency assistance must be matched by meaningful long-term national priorities and policies.
Nine months later many neighborhoods sit ravaged, most public housing in New Orleans remains closed, HOPE VI- a program notorious for displacing residents- has been cited as the rebuilding model, and HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson has declared that only “the best” public housing residents should be allowed to return. Moreover, Katrina has brought out a real “daddy knows best” attitude in many state and aid institutes as well as within some sectors of the national advocacy community that claim to speak on behalf of the poor and marginalized.
Yet, quietly and in defiance of opportunistic land grabbing, retrogressive governmental measures and HUD and FEMA inaction, Gulf Coast reconstruction is slowly being shaped by and for the people most victimized by the storms and their aftermath. Increasingly, residents of affected areas are returning to their homes and neighborhoods and contributing to rebuilding as held in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internally Displaced Persons. Through neighborhood and tenant associations, volunteer organizations, non-profit enterprises and housing justice groups, a wide variety of mutual aid efforts are slowly defining the terms of reconstruction in some of the region’s poorest communities. While HUD drags its feet on re-opening public housing and as “vulnerable” neighborhoods are threatened with conversion to “green space,” Gulf Coast residents are rebuilding and doing as those displaced by deadly Asian tsunami waves of 2004 have done- demand through collective action a fundamental human right to housing. In working together, these people centered efforts in the Gulf can help ensure that the catastrophic storms of 2005 finally force our political leaders to do what should have been done all along- respond to homelessness and poverty as the national crisis that it represents.
NPACH and the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR) have arranged for a community exchange between citizens of hurricane-ravaged areas of the Gulf South and villagers from areas in southern Asia recovering from the December 2004 tsunami. This summer housing activists and residents from Aceh, Indonesia and coastal Thailand will visit New Orleans and southern Mississippi to tour the region and meet with community groups. In return, community leaders from some of the hardest-hit areas of New Orleans, including the Lower 9th Ward and New Orleans East, will travel to Thailand in late July to learn firsthand about the survivors of the tsunami’s efforts to rebuild their homes and lives.
To support this important exchange, please contact Tom Carton at tcarton@npach.org.
Brad