We welcome yesterday's inauguration of President Barack Obama, and look forward to working with the Obama Administration on efforts to end homelessness in the United States. We commend the President on his long-standing focus on ending homelessness for veterans, and his strong support for legislation to reform HUD's homeless assistance programs.
In keeping with the President's commitment to work across party lines, we note that NPACH's ongoing efforts to end homelessness are, and have always been, bipartisan. We are committed to a set of values and ideals, not to any political party.
This includes our work to broaden HUD's definition of homelessness, to better align it with the definitions used by other federal agencies, so that every American who truly is homeless has an opportunity to live in permanent affordable housing. Some say that this effort comes from the left, and is a naive liberal attempt to define way too many people as homeless - including people who are not truly without homes of their own.
But that's not how we see it. Support for a broader HUD definition has always come from both Democrats and Republicans, and from a combination of community organizers and homeless service providers in urban, suburban, and rural communities. And it's always been an effort grounded in reality and in pragmatism. Reality comes from the stories of children, youth, and families in need - stories that we brought to the attention of Congress over the last several years, and will bring to the Administration in 2009. And pragmatism comes from the recognition that better alignment between federal agencies working to end homelessness means that we can house more people, more quickly, and at the same cost.
President Obama's Senate staff understood this and supported our efforts to better align federal definitions of homelessness. We hope that the Obama Administration will help us pursue this important goal.