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.