Sherry Chandler » The Other Face
The Other Face
of doing nothing in America is the face of the chronically homeless. The NYTimes this morning reports a new approach to get our cardboard dwellers into permanent shelter and some sort of stable life:
DENVER — Arthur Sena spent years living in a hole that he had dug near the railroad tracks. He would probably still be there, defying offers of help from social workers and using cardboard to ward off the chill, if Denver had not adopted a radical strategy of putting homeless people into apartments of their own, no strings attached.
The “housing first” policy that this city adopted last year is part of an accelerating national movement that has reduced the numbers of the chronically homeless — the single, troubled men and women who spend years in the streets and shelters — in more than 20 cities.
In this campaign, promoted by a little-known office of the Bush administration, 219 cities, at last count, have started ambitious 10-year plans to end chronic homelessness.
…
Part of the credit, Mr. Hess and others said, goes to Philip F. Mangano, a Bush appointee who has spent five years visiting every mayor and governor he can, brandishing successful examples, cost-benefit studies and his own messianic fervor along with modest amounts of federal money.
…
Wherever he goes, Mr. Mangano, 58, who was director of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance, emphasizes that it is cheaper to put the chronically homeless right into apartments, and provide medical and addiction treatments there, than to watch them cycle endlessly through shelters, soup kitchens, emergency rooms, detoxification centers and jails.
“Cost-benefit analysis may be the new expression of compassion in our communities,” he said at the Denver meeting.
An interesting statement, that last. It’s cheaper to help people before they hit rock bottom. And that from a Bush appointee—
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