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Homelessness, not helplessness in the US A report on the factors driving up the numbers of homeless people, and the initiatives which are providing both short and long term solutions. New York, USA
Though it seems as if this crisis has been pushed to the periphery of public awareness, homelessness activists are voicing hope. Paula Van Ness, director of the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) says: "It is not a hopeless situation and we are not helpless. Both public agencies and non-profit organizations are finding ways to move people into permanent housing and they are finding ways to help people get their lives on track. The tricky part is figuring out what we need to do on the scale that it needs to be done at." In a 1996 study, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty estimated that on any given night 760,000 people are homeless. A national telephone survey conducted in 1994 identified formerly homeless people and showed that as many as 12 million adult residents of the US have been homeless at some point in their lives.
Homelessness on the scale seen today is largely an outcome of the shortage of affordable housing and an increase in the numbers of the poor. According to The National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH), a national advocacy network, there are 4.7 million more low-income renters in this country than there are low-income units available to rent. This is the largest shortage on record. The contraction in social-welfare spending throughout the 1980s and the 1996 Welfare Reform Bill have both contributed to the unraveling of the "safety net" that previously kept the very poor from a perilous slide into homelessness. Indeed, Nan Roman, lobbyist for NAEH on Capital Hill, says: "The fact that there are homeless people is an indication that the system of social welfare spending in the United States is not working for a lot of people." Though the Welfare Reform Bill is intended to move people from welfare dependency into employment, having a job is no guarantee of being able to afford a place to live. In fact, in most states, a minimum-wage worker would have to work 83 hours each week to afford a two-bedroom apartment at 30 per cent of his or her income, which is the federal definition of affordable housing. A survey of 29 US cities found that almost one in five homeless persons is employed in full- or part-time jobs. The fastest-growing segment of the homeless population is families, accounting for 40 per cent. The typical homeless family is one headed by a 20-year-old mother of two, who did not complete high school, reads at a sixth grade level and has never worked. There is a 25-35 per cent chance that she has been a victim of domestic violence. Some 24 per cent of requests for shelter by homeless families were denied in 1996 due to lack of resources. To date, the only major federal legislative response to homelessness is the McKinney Homeless Assistance Act passed by Congress in l987. Regarded as landmark legislation, it authorized funding for a broad range of services for homeless adults and children, including healthcare, education, job training and housing assistance.
McKinney programs have been evaluated as innovative, effective and cost-worthy, but the resources currently allocated to them are not enough to meet demand — the magnitude of which is expected to quadruple over the next 10 years. Meanwhile, non-profit agencies such as the Emergency Housing Consortium in Santa Clara County, California, and the American Family Inn based in New York City continue to transform the advocacy approach from short-term emergency responses to long-term solutions. As well as addressing basic needs in a comfortable and secure environment, the programs feature on-site healthcare, drug rehabilitation, family counseling and recreation. These organizations have shown that, at a cost significantly less than traditional shelters, their new approaches can profoundly affect and redirect the futures of numerous individuals and families. Michael Stoops, a 25-year activist with the National Coalition for the Homeless and a key figure in the formulation of the McKinney Act, asserts that the solutions to end homelessness already exist. "We know we can help individual homeless people. From this we think we know how to solve homelessness in this country. We simply have to decide we want to do it. And then we must come forth with the necessary private and public resources. We need to convince politicians that to allow someone to live and die on the streets is actually more expensive in terms of financial and moral capital."
From the July/August 1999 issue of Share International.
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