DESPITE CONDEMNATION, HESS HOLDS HIS GROUND
Called reckless by some, a new homeless families' policy is having the desired effect, testifies the Department of Homeless Services commissioner. > By Tram Whitehurst
City Limits WEEKLY #611
October 29, 2007

After only two weeks, the lines have been clearly drawn in a vigorous debate over the new Department of Homeless Services (DHS) policy eliminating emergency overnight shelter for homeless families deemed to have other housing options. Both DHS staff and opponents of the measure packed a City Council General Welfare Committee hearing last week to examine the controversial policy change.

In his testimony before the committee, DHS Commissioner Robert Hess gave a progress report on the new policy and explained how and why it came to be. Hess argued that it has been successful in limiting the number of ineligible families who show up at the Prevention Assistance for Temporary Housing (PATH) facility in the Bronx. Since Oct. 12 when the policy was implemented, the total number of families seeking “late arrival placement”—or shelter after 5 p.m.—was 46 percent lower than in the weeks prior to the change. A total of 16 families previously found ineligible for shelter persisted in requesting late night placement over the past two weeks, 11 of which were once again denied shelter, he said. According to Hess, the policy “is helping to restore order at PATH and strengthen a system that is dedicated to providing support and services to homeless families.”

Critics at the hearing were not convinced by Hess’s testimony and questioned the logic and motivation behind the policy. Expressing a concern voiced by several speakers, Councilman Bill de Blasio, a Brooklyn Democrat and chair of the committee, asked Hess: “Why would a family come back [to PATH] if they had a viable alternative?”

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Advocate says legislation needed to help homeless in rural areas

Charlotte Ferrell Smith
Daily Mail staff

Thursday October 11, 2007
Advocates for the homeless say proposed federal legislation could help alleviate homelessness in rural West Virginia.
Amy Weintraub, executive director of Covenant House, says the HEARTH Act is "a beautiful piece of legislation" that would equalize government assistance for those in urban and rural areas who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.
HEARTH is an acronym for Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing.
The act, now before Congress, would allocate federal dollars to help people in more rural areas get access to services and get them into permanent housing, Weintraub said.
Right now, more services are available for the homeless in urban areas while the rural population is struggling.
"Rural homelessness is often hidden," Weintraub said.
Weintraub traveled to Washington, D.C., last week at the invitation of Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., to testify before the Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity.
Weintraub was also part of a panel discussion regarding reauthorization of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, which sets aside funding for shelters and housing programs.
Capito said Weintraub's input was valuable for lawmakers because she's been a longtime advocate for the homeless and has been active on issues involving education, health care and domestic violence.
Weintraub and Capito said they agree the federal government's definition of homelessness needs to be expanded so those in rural areas would qualify for services.
"We are looking at a bill on homelessness to modernize the definition," Capito said.
In West Virginia, there are homeless people who move about as they live with relatives or sleep in cars, Capito said.
"The HUD definition of homelessness excludes many people who we here in rural West Virginia would identify as homeless," Weintraub said. "That would include families and individuals living in motels and families doubling and tripling in trailers, apartments and houses."
Capito said reauthorization and reform of federal homeless programs is a bipartisan issue.
"There are many areas of agreement when you compare the various homeless legislative proposals," Capito said.
She said, for example, several legislative proposals all call for a series of federal grant programs to be consolidated.
That would alleviate the need for HUD to review each applicant project individually and would cut the time needed for grants to be approved, Capito said. Consolidation would also increase local control and flexibility over how money could be spent, she added.
Weintraub said the act also would give communities more flexibility when it comes to solving homelessness issues in both rural and more populated settings.
"The HEARTH Act adopts a simple approach to meet needs of rural communities," Weintraub said. "By aligning HUD's definition of homelessness with the definition used by other federal agencies, it ensures that people who are without homes in rural communities are counted as homeless."
West Virginia's mountainous topography often isolates those in need of assistance that readily available in urban areas, she said.

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The Housingfinance.com Blog notes:

A HUD notice today broadens eligibility for the $30 million HUD advertised in May as available for emergency capital repairs to multifamily seniors' projects.

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...mean.

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The New York Times:

The Bloomberg administration intends to give out 22,000 new federal housing vouchers to help low-income New Yorkers rent apartments on the private market over the next two years, officials said yesterday. To do that, officials are temporarily reopening the waiting list for the program, called Section 8, to nonemergency applicants for the first time in 12 years.

Twelve thousand of the vouchers will be given out this year and 10,000 next year — more new vouchers than the city has had in years, officials said. Three thousand will go to New Yorkers on the brink of homelessness, but officials said that most would go for the first time in years to ordinary New Yorkers struggling to make ends meet.

Continue reading "NYC Reopens Section 8 to Nonemergency Applicants" »

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The Independent of Massillon Ohio has a nice profile of Randy Allen, residential director for the Canton Rescue Workers of America, and staff member Dean Hollaway out on an icy night in Massillon working on a 24 hour count of street homeless in Stark county.

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The Orlando Sentinel:

People seeing a 125-acre, 5,600-bed homeless community will look at it and say, "Wow, I wouldn't mind living here," urban developer Michael Arth wrote in a proposal advancing the idea.

Arth gets points for enlightened self-interest. He came up with an imaginative solution to a growing problem of homelessness, which is an unwelcome addition to the image he has created for DeLand's Garden District of restored homes where crack houses once flourished.

. . . The only problem is a large body of evidence that suggests it won't work, and the absence of workable funding from either public or private sectors.

Arth downplays the $100 million-plus cost of the project as minimal in the light of what we spend today in public and private funds on law enforcement, treatment, rehabilitation, feeding, housing and even burying the homeless. He says the construction would be "a one-time cost of $17,500 per village resident," although there is no detailed discussion of what rising construction costs would do during the 10-year build-out period envisioned or how the operational costs would be covered.

County officials and leaders of the Homeless Coalition, which has made what most consider good progress in trying to provide shelter, treatment and coordination among health and welfare agencies, have greeted Arth's proposal with polite skepticism.

After all, compared with Daytona Beach police Chief Mike Chitwood's widely applauded suggestion to give the homeless a bus ticket and send them home, this looks pretty good, especially when you consider studies have shown about 60 percent of the homeless in Volusia identify it as home.

. . .A number of the more than 2,500 homeless on Volusia's streets at any given time aren't seeking the shelter, showers, care and camaraderie envisioned by a community just for them. . .

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A new study from Ohio State of a program in Albuquerque shows that homeless teens benefit from a more comprehensive approach to outreach.

In the treatment as usual, youth who stopped by the drop-in center were offered food, a place to rest and the opportunity to meet with case managers who helped connect them with counseling and other services that they needed. This is the standard treatment for homeless youth around the country, Slesnick said.

The CRA program offered a more comprehensive treatment involving 12 individual therapy sessions and four HIV education/skills practice sessions.

The therapy sessions were adapted for teens who lived on the streets, Slesnick said. The first goal was to stabilize their situation, and help them address the basic needs of food, shelter and safety.

The sessions then focused on goals that the youth themselves saw as most important in their lives. The counselor helped them address coping, skills development, and the steps needed to achieve their goals.

“The youth then had to apply these skills in the real world, maintain those skills, and see how they could improve their own situation,” Slesnick said.

Continue reading "New Study Highlights Successful Teen Outreach" »

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The New York Times profiles "Long Island’s Best Known Homeless Person"

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From The Portland Tribune (Oregon) we find a story maddening in the details.

A real estate developer buys a large apartment complex, begins to renovate the units which are affordable housing, a community of a low income tenants are evicted.

Rose City Village apartments — a mammoth 18-building complex that was home to hundreds of low-income Latino and Southeast Asian immigrant families — had become a ghost town practically overnight.

Research by the Portland Tribune found that most of the inhabitants had left to avoid months of dislocation due to renovation by new ownership, as well as rents that were swelling by $200 to $300 a month.

Neighbors and residents told of families and friends being scattered around the city, of tenants crying as they packed their bags to go.

. . . “It feels wrong,” she wrote in an e-mail to the Portland Tribune, recalling the day she asked the property manager what was happening. “On the way to the office we passed a Spanish-speaking family having a garage sale on their front lawn. In another apartment we could hear a large group singing hymns in Vietnamese and holding a small church service. … Our next-door neighbors are refugees from Laos and have lived in their small apartment for 10 years.”

Another person who took note of the project was Micky Ryan, a crusading lawyer for the Oregon Law Center, which advocates for low-income people. She began amassing documents in order to figure out what happened and who was responsible.

She found evidence that the complex was not, as city officials initially thought, merely private property whose owners could do with it as they wished. Rather, documents and interviews show, in 1991 the apartment complex was funded with state low-income-housing tax credits of at least $2.3 million.

The Portland Development Commission, meanwhile, provided a $1 million rehabilitation loan as well as $7 million in bond financing.

The original owner bought the property for about $4 million in 1989. In May 2003, he sold it to Steve Rose, a Portland developer, and a limited-liability corporation called Dylan/Bristol, for $11 million. In June 2006, Rose sold it to Brenneke of Guardian Management LLC, which was partners with a California investment company, for $16.5 million.

Continue reading "State Neglect Results in Mass Evictions" »

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