November 25, 2004 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Advocates for the homeless have announced an ambitious new goal, backed by $30-million from seven foundations and financial institutions: ending long-term homelessness in 10 years. The aim will be to eliminate the most entrenched and problematic form of homelessness — those people who rarely achieve any form of stable living arrangement and bounce between the streets, hospitals, temporary shelters, and sometimes jail.
The National Alliance to End Homelessness, in Washington, and the Corporation for Supportive Housing, in Oakland, Calif., will oversee a nationwide effort using the foundation money, as well as an additional $30-million the groups hope to raise.
Contributions so far have come from the Deutsche Bank, Fannie Mae and the Fannie Mae Foundation, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Melville Charitable Trust, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
The money will be used to spur the development of 150,000 “supportive housing units,” which combine housing with social services. They can take the form of sizable apartment buildings that have their own health and social-services offices, or be structured other ways, such as apartments clustered within a single geographic area so social and health-care workers can make regular visits.
“The solution to breaking the chronic homelessness cycle is supportive housing, which provides a stable, affordable place to live for people with extremely low incomes, combined with the support services they need in order to stay housed, which can range from mental-health services to employment help,” says Carla Javits, president of the Corporation for Supportive Housing.
$7-Billion Needed
Estimates compiled in 2000 by the National Alliance to End Homelessness found that the capital costs to develop 150,000 housing units would approach $7-billion, with millions more required for annual operating costs.
Ms. Javits and Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, plan to use most of the $60-million their organizations are raising to persuade federal, state, and local governments to make a major investment in such housing. The homelessness partnership will pay for research projects, advocacy efforts, and aid to local and regional nonprofit groups that are developing supportive-housing projects.
“This is something we are going to get policy makers to pay attention to,” Ms. Roman says.
Advocates for the homeless point to studies showing that, while people who are chronically homeless represent only 10 percent of the population that becomes homeless every year, taking care of them requires spending about half the amount available to help all homeless people, thereby reducing the assistance available to those in need of short-term help. “We can see a real change in the streets if we really bear down and focus on chronic homelessness,” Ms. Roman says.
She says housing, combined with social services, is cost-effective relative to the other ways jurisdictions spend money on the chronically homeless. “Homelessness comes with high public costs — when the homeless are in the shelter system, when they get hospitalized, or when they’re incarcerated,” says Ms. Roman. “We can invest money in solutions, or we can continue to spend it and still have homeless people.”
The Rockefeller Foundation has been supporting the Corporation for Supportive Housing for more than a decade and has pledged $2.3-million for this new partnership effort. Says Darren Walker, the foundation’s director of working communities: “We recognized real opportunity to leverage our support and bring in some new funders, and hopefully new public support as well.”
