At a meeting on Monday, October 19, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness appointed a new Executive Director. The new ED will be Barbara Poppe, who currently serves as the Executive director of the Community Shelter Board in Columbus, Ohio - an umbrella organization that oversees housing and services programs for homeless persons in Columbus.
We welcome Ms. Poppe to her new role, and look forward to working productively with the Council to ensure that federal efforts to end homelessness are properly coordinated. Our views on how to make this happen were laid out in a memo sent to the Obama transition team. Many of these recommendations have already been implemented - others remain to be accomplished. We will discuss these views with Executive Director Poppe once she officially begins her work.
We have long focused significant effort on monitoring the Interagency Council. We've raised strong objections to the Council's singular focus on "chronic" homelessness and its effort to place responsibility for ending homelessness on state and local government and local service providers, while downplaying the role of the federal government. We've exposed the Council's focus on travel and photo opportunities over substantive work. And we've criticized the Council's refusal to put a meaningful focus on ending homelessness for children, youth, and families. We hope and expect that the Council will change course and address these concerns under its new leadership.