Please Visit Us At Our New Home!

Funders Together has a new home for the Homelessness Ends Here Blog. We look forward to seeing you there!

Grantmakers Site Visit in New Orleans Highlights Health Benefits of Supportive Housing for a Cross-Disability Population

After the devastation hurricanes Katrina and Rita waged on housing resources for people with disabilities, homeless and disability advocates, consumers, service providers, and state and local government agencies successfully advocated for the inclusion of 3,000 new Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) units in Louisiana’s Road Home hurricane recovery plan. The result is the nation’s first state-driven PSH system using integrated, scattered-site housing linked with evidenced-based mobile community supports for the most vulnerable people with disabilities - including people who are homeless and people at risk of unnecessary institutionalization - supported by cross-system partnerships that provide a structure for program design, policy development, and implementation.

Several housing production strategies are being employed to reach the 3,000 PSH unit goal, and intensive efforts were undertaken to successfully obtain rent subsidies from Congress to ensure affordability of PSH. Today 430 out of the proposed 3000 individuals and families have already moved into their new homes. With subsidies now available, that number will likely reach 1000 later this year.

In addition, the state received Community Development Block grant (CDBG) funds for PSH supportive services for five years, after which the state must sustain PSH supportive services using Medicaid and other funding strategies. The Department of Health and Hospitals is exploring various Medicaid options to help sustain services after five years.

The LA Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) designated six agencies in the hurricane affected areas to work with local homeless, health, behavioral health and youth/family service providers to identify and refer eligible individuals to housing units, and to provide access to basic housing supports and other needed care in the community. The agencies are also working collaboratively to assure the support services embody "best practices" in their outreach, clinical and continuity of care approaches. A best practice approach that has emerged relative to the PSH program is the establishment of an Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) initiative using a "Housing First" approach and a supportive housing intervention in the Greater New Orleans area. DHH is funding the services and a portion of the housing for this initiative which will serve over 300 people this year including 100 people diverted from the criminal justice system.

Today in New Orleans, a group of funders attending the annual conference for Grantmakers in Health will discuss these and other issues on a special site visit hosted by Unity of New Orleans and the Technical Assistance Collaborative on the topic of "Creating a Sustainable System of Housing & Services: Louisiana’s Permanent Supportive Housing Initiative."

2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Recent Coverage from Funders Together

We've posted links in a special new section of the Funders Together site to key partners' analysis of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as it relates to homelessness and supportive housing. Here are the most recent documents featured:

• What the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Means for Permanent Supportive Housing Production
• Homelessness Prevention and Re-Housing: Overview of Funds
• Additional ARRA Homelessness Resources
• Legislative Text of Homelessness Prevention Fund
• Steps in Planning: Checklist for Advocates
• Creating A Plan For The Homelessness Prevention Fund
• TANF Emergency Contingency Fund
• Coordinating Prevention and Re-Housing Initiatives: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Programs
• Federal Stimulus Resources
• Using the New Prevention and Re-Housing Funds

The Solosit - Opens April 24th

See below for two video clips from the soon-to-be released move, The Soloist, about the true-life friendship between Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers, a mentally ill homeless musician he meets on the streets of Skid Row. The book is both inspirational and true-to-life, describing the gradual trust that builds between the two men, culminating in Ayers finding housing and support in the Lamp Community, a provider of immediate housing and lifelong supportive services in Los Angeles.

Buy the book from Amazon.

Read the LA Times series by Steve Lopez that inspired the Soloist.

Do you have any events or discussions planned in your community to tie-in to the release of this movie? Please let us know in the comment section below.

Steve Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers:



An introduction to the Soloist:

Progress in Addressing Homelessness in Los Angeles?

by Bill Pitkin, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation

Los Angeles has often been referred to as “the homeless capital of the world” and has a reputation as a bit of a basket case when it comes to addressing homelessness. With more than 70,000 homeless persons on any given night (a third of them chronically homeless), a highly visible concentration of street homeless in Skid Row, and famously uncoordinated public safety net systems, Los Angeles County is often thought of as beyond hope when it comes to successfully ending – or even reducing – homelessness. The current economic crisis, in the context of a long-term affordable housing crisis, is placing a severe strain on already overburdened emergency shelters and social safety nets.

Despite these great challenges facing Los Angeles – and probably surprising to many because it is largely happening behind the scenes – there has been progress in addressing homelessness, especially chronic homelessness, in recent years. These advances are due to several factors.

First, there has been increased – if sporadic – public pressure to address the homelessness problem in Los Angeles, due in large part to high-profile coverage in the media. There have been several stories in local media about “dumping” of people onto Skid Row by hospitals and law enforcement, which have led to several mea culpas and policy changes. More significantly, Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez unveiled the horrid conditions and consequences of street homelessness through an in-depth series of articles on Skid Row in 2005, which caught the attention of local elected officials and the public at large. He also wrote a number of columns about the friendship he developed with Nathaniel Ayers, a mentally ill homeless man, which provided a personal look into the challenges of chronic homelessness. That story has been recounted in a book titled The Soloist, which was turned into a movie by the same name starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jaime Foxx that is slated to be released in theaters on April 24, 2009.

Second, the increased public attention to homelessness has opened the door to necessary systems change and innovation. One of the structural barriers in successfully addressing homelessness in Los Angeles County – with a total population of nearly 10 million people – has been the lack of coordination, and even enmity, between the County (with responsibility for health and human services) and its 88 cities (which have jurisdiction over land use and most housing dollars), with the City of Los Angeles obviously the most prominent. Foundation and civic leaders have placed pressure on the county and city to better coordinate their efforts, with some actual progress being made. As documented by the Urban Institute’s Martha Burt in a series of reports on the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation’s grant to the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH), public systems are aligning much better to increase the pipeline of permanent supportive housing units, even if not at the scale necessary to address the needs in the short term.

One innovative approach that highlights this trend is “Project 50,” an effort to replicate Common Ground’s “Street to Home” model of outreach in New York City. Employing the Vulnerability Index methodology developed by Jim O’Connell from the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, project outreach workers created a registry of the 471 persons sleeping outside in Skid Row on December 7, 2007 and did in-depth surveys over the next several days to measure personal health and disability vulnerabilities. The 50 most vulnerable were targeted to receive housing and supportive services to ensure housing stability. Preliminary results presented at the recent one-year anniversary of the program are impressive: 49 people were placed into housing and 43 remained in housing after the first year. Utilization of major public systems such as ERs and prisons has declined sharply for participants, offsetting costs for taxpayers. And, perhaps most importantly, dozens of county and city agencies have collaborated in new ways for the benefit of the participants. Organizers of Project 50 have called for expanding the program, “turning 50 into 500; and then 500 into 5,000.” This targeted approach is being replicated in various parts of LA County, such as in the City of Santa Monica, which has seen an 8% drop in street homelessness over the last year.

Finally, the capacity of the housing development system and local jurisdictions to build permanent supportive housing has increased substantially, due in large part to the work of CSH providing training and identifying financing opportunities. At the initiation of our most recent grant to CSH in 2005, there were just five nonprofit housing developers engaged in permanent supportive housing in Los Angeles. Over the past few years, dozens of developers and service providers have been trained and received capacity building grants through CSH, bringing thousands more units on line and into the development pipeline. Developers and service providers are learning a common language and approach to ensuring that homeless persons receive the support necessary to access and remain stable in permanent housing. In addition, Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority and community partners have been working with cities and public agencies around the county to build their capacity to address homelessness throughout the region.

With more than 22,000 chronically homeless persons in Los Angeles County according to the 2007 homeless count, the scale of the challenges remain daunting. To meet the need, Los Angeles probably needs to develop around 20,000 permanent supportive housing units. However, the quiet, but significant, progress that has been made in just the past few years provides something on which to build. Community ownership of the problem is an important step in successfully ending homelessness, and residents of Los Angeles are increasingly demonstrating a desire to step up to the plate. Thousands of residents have participated in the past two years in Homewalk, an annual 5k family walk organized by the United Way of Greater Los Angeles to raise awareness and resources to end homelessness in Los Angeles County. Over 3,000 people participated in the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s 2009 Homeless Count. Through these and other educational and volunteer efforts, Angelenos are becoming personally engaged with addressing homelessness and recognizing that with sufficient community and political will, we can end it.

An Illustration of One State’s Analysis of the Resources Available through the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act

On March 9th, Shelly Geballe, co-founder and current Distinguished Senior Fellow at Connecticut Voices for Children, presented an analysis of the “Federal Budget Overview as it relates to Connecticut” to a room full of funders in Hartford attending a summit on “Government and Philanthropy working together.” Her analysis provides a very helpful summary of the purposes, timeline and scope of ARRA, as well as a thoughtful template of considerations for any state thinking about how to quickly grasp and maximize the benefits available through this landmark legislation. View her presentation below - to view full screen version, click on button at lower right.

HUD releases interactive map to view total state allocations under the economic recovery act

(Click on image to access interactive map)

Upping the Odds on Successful Prevention and Rapid Rehousing

By Mary Cunningham, The Urban Institute

Every day I wade through dismal headlines and discouraging data. Perhaps most troubling is that communities that were once reporting declines in homelessness are now reporting significant increases, particularly among families.

I could feed you gloom and doom statistics by the spoonful, but let’s look for something positive instead.

There’s certainly a lot of buzz around the $1.5 billion Congress recently appropriated through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 for homelessness prevention and rapid rehousing. The new fund represents a whopping increase—in some communities, ten times current budgets—for homeless assistance. The scope—prevention and rapid rehousing—is also new to all but a handful of communities across the country. As such, it could both prevent catastrophic increases in homelessness—like those of the 1980s—and transform the homelessness assistance system by building communities’ capacity to shift from sheltering to prevention and rapid re-housing.

While the appropriation of these funds was met with a huge sigh of relief, a lot hinges on the infusion’s success, and since these funds will all but fly out the door, concern about lack of local capacity is well placed. Here’s where philanthropy could help. It’s all about leverage: by supporting program implementation, foundations up the odds that these funds will be used strategically and efficiently. A few ideas that could go a long way:

• Knowledge Building. To implement programs, communities will need concrete tools and templates right away. There are some model practices to emulate, but no accessible “how to” guides. Foundations could support intermediary groups, like the National Alliance to End Homelessness, to write and distribute these guides.


• Technical Assistance. Communities will need ongoing support to help them answer the day-to-day questions of implementation. Besides funding nonprofits that provide nuts and bolts technical assistance, foundations could create a peer-learning network to connect program administrators who are already operating model prevention and rapid rehousing programs to those just starting off.


• Research and Evaluation. Since there’s relatively little empirical data on the long- or short-term efficacy of homelessness prevention, shelter diversion, and rapid rehousing, foundations should support the development of strong performance measures and rigorous research. Why not bring a group of researchers together to identify communities that could serve as “learning laboratories” across the country, feeding policymakers real time data as programs are implemented?

We are still a long way off from truly good news, but implementing this fund wisely could give us the one headline we’re looking for: despite the terrible economic outlook, communities are preventing homelessness and getting people back into stable housing.

Read Mary’s most recent brief on next steps for preventing and ending homelessness.

What do you think of Mary's suggestions for the role philanthropy can play in providing leverage? What other ideas and strategies have you used, or would you suggest?

About the Author

Mary Cunningham is Senior Research Associate for Metropolitan Housing and Communities at The Urban Institute in Washington, DC.

March 4th Audio Conference: Interactive Blog

Foundation Leader: Philanthropy Must Turn More Attention to Housing Issues

A couple of weeks ago the head of one of the nation's leading funders reiterated it's long-held belief that housing is at the heart of nearly every key social issue funders face - an opinion we very much share at Funders Together. Here in it's entirety is the commentary from Jonathan Fanton, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (you can also read it on the MacArthur site).

The American economy cannot recover without a turnaround in housing.

While the federal government considers what additional steps to take to help homeowners and the housing market, American philanthropy need not wait to play a role in solving the crisis and helping to spur a recovery. Grant makers must understand that even if housing is not a part of their direct mission, it affects just about every type of effort to aid American families and improve neighborhoods across the country.

Housing is not just a vital component of the economy, after all. New research shows that stable, affordable housing is central to education, health, employment, and economic development.

Foundations should act promptly to focus on housing issues because the vicious cycle of home foreclosure is likely to get worse before it gets better. As even more adjustable mortgage rates are reset this year, many additional families will not be able to meet the higher payments required to keep their homes.

Home foreclosure filings continue to increase rapidly. The Center for Responsible Lending projects nearly 2.5 million foreclosures nationally this year. In Chicago, where my philanthropy, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, has its headquarters, foreclosures doubled in 2008; there are two or three foreclosures per block in some of the city's hardest-hit neighborhoods.

The damage the housing crisis is likely to cause could affect families for generations. Research shows that children with a stable place to live are healthier and perform better academically; employment rates for adults are higher when they have a steady residence; and communities with longtime residents have a greater share of citizens actively involved in civic affairs and experience less crime.

For instance, Robert Haveman, a University of Wisconsin researcher, and his colleagues found that frequent moves for a young child or an adolescent have "a strong negative and significant effect on achievement." Indeed, moving as a child has a greater negative impact on high-school graduation rates than does poverty or welfare dependency. Children whose housing is not stable also are at risk of deficient nutrition, as well as poor health.

It is not just homeowners and their families who are affected by the foreclosure crisis. As many as one-third of foreclosed properties are multifamily units, putting renters in jeopardy when building owners can no longer afford their mortgages. In some cases, renters have been evicted without legally required notice, losing security deposits, incurring moving expenses, and being forced to double up.

As families lose their homes, neighborhoods also suffer. Vacant houses quickly deteriorate, dragging down property values and encouraging crime and vandalism. The cost to local governments is considerable: up to $34,000 per house in police and fire protection, trash removal, unpaid water bills, court proceedings, and, in some cases, demolition. The cost to neighbors and the local housing market are equally serious: a drop of up to 1.1 percent in property value for every home within an eighth-of-a-mile radius.

Foundations are in a strong position to make a difference in resolving the housing crisis. While our resources are much more limited than those of federal and state governments, we can be more nimble and can act more quickly. We know the communities we serve well, including where local needs are greatest. In many cases, foundations have supported and helped to build resilient networks of organizations that are capable, experienced, and ready to expand their efforts to ensure stable and affordable housing.

MacArthur has almost a decade of experience supporting community and economic development in 16 of Chicago's promising, but low-income, neighborhoods. We are concerned that our investment and the hard work of our grantees may now be put at risk. But we also recognize that our experience — and that of the organizations we have supported over many years — is an asset, enabling us to make a real difference in these troubled times.

Responding to the growing lending crisis and the rise of foreclosures, MacArthur is investing $68-million in grants and low-interest loans in foreclosure prevention and mitigation efforts in Chicago neighborhoods. We expect our investment to attract more than $500-million in capital. Our goal is to help local organizations reach 10,000 Chicago households, provide counseling to 6,000 of these, and help prevent 2,700 foreclosures by 2010.

We recognize that only half or fewer homes in foreclosure can be rescued. Consequently, we are also investing in efforts to reclaim foreclosed properties and to bring them back quickly to productive reuse.

Homeownership is not for everyone. Today one-third of American households, 37 million, rent their homes — including new college graduates, older Americans, and young families saving to buy their first place. So we are also leading the local Preservation Compact, an effort to reduce the net loss of affordable rental housing in the Chicago area to zero.

Our efforts to prevent foreclosures and mitigate their effects draw on and expand the work of organizations we have supported in these neighborhoods over the years. These groups are familiar with their communities and residents and can best reach those in need. For example, more than half of all borrowers facing foreclosure never contact their lender, though doing so, at any time, can increase the likelihood of avoiding foreclosure.

Neighborhood groups can get the word out — they know where, how, and when to reach troubled borrowers to educate them about the need to contact lenders. They are also in a good position to provide the housing counseling that borrowers need, enabling many to restructure or refinance their troubled mortgages. For many such groups, extending their reach and improving their capacity to respond is the most significant challenge. They simply need more employees and more money to expand their efforts in the face of tremendous need. Foundations can provide that additional assistance quickly.

Foundations can also be of direct help to local governments. In Chicago, MacArthur is working with the city government and local nonprofit groups to acquire and put back to productive use thousands of foreclosed properties, initially with money from the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program.

MacArthur's investment in housing reflects our values. We know that housing matters to people and neighborhoods. We believe that, in difficult times, foundations should increase, not cut, grant making to help people in need.

American philanthropy has a long history of serving the needs of communities and helping to improve the local and national economy. In uncertain times, investments in housing benefit individuals, families, communities, and the overall economy.

As T.S. Eliot wrote, "Home is where one starts from."

Report from New Orleans: A national disgrace and local dreams

By Bill Pitkin, Poverty and Inequality

I spent a couple days in New Orleans recently learning about the recovery effort from Katrina. It was, in a word, stunning. I was stunned by the endurance of the devastation more than three years since the storms, as well as by the resilience and passion with which residents are rebuilding their great city. Katrina ended and destroyed thousands of lives and ruined thousands of homes and businesses. Moreover, it generated a national dialogue on poverty and race, the ugly issues we don’t like to discuss in polite company. I remember hearing from friends in developing countries who saw the coverage of Katrina in 2005 that they were shocked to see that such poverty existed in the U.S. Yes it did exist and let me tell you that it still does.

We toured several of the most affected neighborhoods, such as Gentilly, Lakeview, and the Lower Ninth Ward, where we saw just islands of homes in a sea of vacant lots and abandoned buildings. There is a lack of street life in these formerly dense neighborhoods, with buildings waiting for repair or demolition and a general sense of trepidation in the air. Looking even closer, there is despair. We entered abandoned buildings – old homes, vacant public school buildings, even a city-owned property – with homeless outreach workers and saw evidence of people sleeping in dark, smelly, rubble-filled spaces that barely offer a roof over their heads. In one room in a large public building, one person had set up a mattress (hauled up three flights of stairs) with a few worldly possessions, including a metal bar next to the mattress that we could only guess was for personal defense. We met and spoke to elderly disabled people living in the most precarious conditions, happy to have someone showing interest in them, but hoping for a more permanent solution.

Katrina has obviously exacerbated long-standing poverty and housing challenges in the city. According to the latest New Orleans Index, there are about 65,000 abandoned or blighted properties in New Orleans, fair market rents have increased by nearly 50%, and almost 14,000 people in the region are at risk of a severe housing crisis when their Disaster Housing Assistance Program vouchers are set to expire in March 2009. Perhaps most telling is that the homeless population in New Orleans has doubled from about 6,000 to 12,000 since Katrina (while the overall population is at just 70% of that before the storm).

Despite these challenges, there is evidence of hope. I asked Albert Ruesga, who recently moved to New Orleans to serve as CEO of the Greater New Orleans Foundation, about the most surprising thing about the city that he has noticed, and he pointed to the deep pride and sense of place that residents have. Coming from California , where everybody is originally from somewhere else, I was surprised to learn that the vast majority of New Orleans residents were born in Louisiana. We witnessed this local pride in the form of renovated homes by property owners fortunate to have insurance or other means to rebuild and beautify their homes (Mardi Gras was coming up, after all). Civic, philanthropic and nonprofit leaders are coordinating to make key investments in building affordable housing and a viable community development system. We saw first hand the smart, compassionate work of outreach workers from UNITY of Greater New Orleans, which is leading the charge to move chronically homeless people from the streets or abandoned buildings to permanent supportive housing. Public sector funds have unfortunately been slow to get on the ground; but
at least the city government is beginning to think more holistically about their work and interface with private and nonprofit efforts.

The problems facing New Orleans are great, but from the short time I was there, I saw evidence that its people are stepping up to the challenge. But, they need our help. In a future post, I will highlight some ideas on what you can do to help in the recovery effort in New Orleans.

Read "Report from New Orleans, Part II: What you can do to help" at the Poverty and Inequality Blog

Learn more about Funders Together's tour at the 2009 Grantmakers in Health Annual Conference on "Systems Change and Supportive Housing in New Orleans"

How do you define your role in the economic crisis?

Deciding whether funders need to shift from "grantmaking as usual" in the ongoing economic crisis is probably a foolish question - clearly, grantmaking as usual just won't cut it in the months and years ahead.

But figuring out exactly how you plan to shift your focus in the light of so many new (and not so new) pressing needs is easier said than done. Just a few of the questions grantmakers are asking themselves:

How do we reach out to local providers, policymakers and state agencies to best understand the rapidly shifting sands of our region's support networks?

What advice and guidance, if any, do we share with these groups?

How do we think about the messages we send - and the forums we use to convey these messages - to our local providers, policymakers, or the general public?

And, perhaps most importantly: Can we afford to sacrifice long-term goals for short-term emergency fixes?

One foundation that is thinking deeply about this issue is the New Hampshire Charitable Trust.

Last week, the Trust's president, Lew Feldstein, sent out a letter to its broad network discussing the hard choices it is now making in its approach to the crisis and why, for the most part, it has chosen to keep to the long view. Lew writes:

I once likened the Foundation to an earthworm.

Some winced at this decidedly un-heroic metaphor. They would have preferred a lion or a hawk, a mighty mountain, Hercules manning the barricades.

I get that – I too hear the trumpets, the fife and drums. All of my instincts in times like these are to rush to the walls. To position the Foundation as a great and mighty force resisting the ravages of recession. Helmeted, with a huge fire hose in one hand, bags of cash in the other. Throwing ourselves into the breech, filling the huge service holes caused by imminent state budget cuts and reductions in private giving to our agency colleagues. A philanthropic “Walter Mitty.”

But that’s not who we are.

Yes, the Foundation can marshal emergency help in crises. We did it with the 2003 closing of the Berlin mills, the 2006 floods in southwestern New Hampshire, “Stay Warm NH” just this winter. We will do so again.

And yes, the Foundation was among the first in the state to fund programs to address AIDS, child abuse, homelessness, and payday lending – in most cases well before there was public support. And will continue to do so.

And yes, the Foundation does provide significant annual support to hundreds of nonprofits that provide basic human services, and we remain the largest single source of scholarships in the state. And will continue.

But the highest and best use of the Foundation – and the broader charitable sector – is not to underwrite basic services. This is not our role even in good times, and we certainly don’t have the resources to take it on in hard times.

The nonprofit sector simply doesn’t have the firepower to meet the overwhelming needs emerging in this recession. That job must be led by government.

Think of it this way. Nonprofits and government are in the same business – helping to move citizens to a better life. But if government is a bus or a train, we are a motor scooter. They carry far more people and do the bulk of the work. But we can start and stop faster, and take the turns more sharply.

At the same time – and here is where the earthworm metaphor works – the Foundation’s job is to build the soil, to enrich the ground in which the state’s thousands of nonprofits work, to have the truly long view that asks, “What will the ground look like when we come out of this? Still fertile or scorched and sterile?”

So what does that mean for our work in this deepening recession?

It means we must …

• Sustain our grantmaking capacity as well as we can
• Focus investments in high performing change agents
• Make changes to better support the nonprofit sector as a whole
• Encourage donors to dig deeper than ever
• Strategically advocate long-term public policy solutions to systemic
  problems.

And that’s what we are doing.

(Read the rest of Lew's letter: The Foundation's Role in Troubling Times)

While there are no easy answers to the challenges our communities now face, and while there are no easy answers to the most appropriate role for funders, we think that Lew's sentiments may provide a good starting point.

On March 4th, Funders Together will host an Audio Conference for its national network of funders to discuss the topic of "Responding to Crisis." If you're a funder and would like to participate, please sign up here. Others are invited to provide their comments and suggestions - rest assured, we are interested to know what you think.

Taking Apart the $819 billion Stimulus Package

While the exact numbers have changed since it was initially created, this recent graphic from the Washington Post provides a fascinating look at the distribution and timing of the 2009 Economic Stimulus Package.

Click on the image below to view a larger version of the graphic.

Funding Principles Slide Show

Learn more about Funders Together's mission, goals and approaches, including a brief presentation of our Funding Principles for Ending Homelessness. (To view a full screen version of this slideshow, click on the button in the lower right-hand side of the image below).

Homelessness is a Solvable Problem

"So, does anyone else wonder how many more years the Melville Charitable Trust will be looking for a solution to Homelessness? Every night I hear on NPR that it is funding "All Things Considered" and working on finding solutions to homelessness? So, how is it going for them on this quest for the Holy Grail? Have they found a solution yet? Homelessness has increased every year for the past 20 in Cleveland, so the solutions have not made it to the Midwest..."

"...I have to wonder that all the money spent on staff, advertising, shelters, permanent supportive housing projects, National Alliance, and NPR would have helped more people by just providing a family a housing voucher for one year. They could have paid for an entire year of housing for 1,000 people in Cuyahoga County over the 10 years if they had just given away $6.5 million dollars to us. That would have doubled our Shelter Plus Care program and increased our Voucher program by over 7% with $6.5 million."

(Read full post).

-- Brian, clevelandhomeless,

We recently came across this critique on the blog for the Coalition for the Homeless in Cleveland. Melville staff member Aimee Hendrigan offered the following clarification of the Trust's overall strategy.

What do you think, either about the critique or Aimee's response? Please add your comment below.
_________________________________________________________

Hello Brian,

As a staff member of the Melville Charitable Trust, I read your comments with interest. Allow me to jump in and offer my two cents.

I think we agree that homelessness is a solvable problem. The Trust focuses on the creation of supportive housing as a key solution, one that can be used throughout the country. The Trust has spent over fifteen years funding supportive housing solutions in Connecticut (the Melville family’s home state). This focused investment in the state has contributed to significant results (thousands of units of housing) and a strong group of leaders who advocate for real solutions to homelessness, including funding for ongoing services (a very big challenge as you acknowledge).

We would be the first to say that this type of change does not happen quickly. It can be frustrating, but for us it is worth the consistent investment. You can visit one of our key grantee partner’s sites to learn more about the advocacy we support: http://www.ctpartnershiphousing.com/.

When you suggest that we might have better used our funding to pay for an entire year of housing for 1,000 people, that’s where we seriously disagree. Philanthropy cannot and should not be the direct funding solution to the nation’s housing crisis. It is not sustainable; frankly, we would run out of money – and pretty quickly.

To be most effective in addressing major social issues such as homelessness, foundations can work to leverage their funds. The Melville Trust does this on a national level when we support the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the National Low Income Housing Coalition, and the Center for Budget Policy and Priorities, among others. Their legislative advocacy has a tremendous impact on the federal and state allocation of funding for housing and homelessness priorities throughout the country (if interested, you can find a list of all of our grantees from the past five years on our website http://www.melvilletrust.org/).

We also work to facilitate relationships with other funders, again with the aim of leveraging funds as well as sharing ideas. The Trust is a founding member of Funders Together, http://www.funderstogether.org/, a national network of funders dedicated to ending homelessness.

Our ongoing support of NPR underwrites their tremendous contribution to airing stories about housing and poverty – important reporting you don’t hear in many other places. It is our hope that our tagline might offer encouragement/inspiration for those working in the field or impacted by homelessness, as well as awareness for others who think homelessness is an unfortunate constant in our society.

I appreciate the forum to respond and would be happy to discuss any of these issues further through the blog or otherwise.

Sincerely,

Aimee Hendrigan
Senior Program Officer, Melville Charitable Trust

Slip slidin' away, or getting ready for a new day?

By G. Robert Hohler, Melville Charitable Trust

"Slip slidin' away, Slip slidin' away, The nearer your destination,
the more you're slip slidin' away."

-- Paul Simon

First, the encouraging news: Homelessness Counts, from the National Alliance to End Homelessness, reports the latest compilation of homeless "point in time counts" from communities across the country. From 2005 to 2007, a time of increased commitment by states and communities toward ending homelessness, the trend lines were moving down:

• Homeless families with children went from 303,524 to 248,511 - a significant decrease of 18%.
• The decline in the number of chronically homeless individuals was even more dramatic; from 171,192 to 123,790- a drop of nearly 30%.

So, prior to the economic meltdown, communities across America were beginning to register significant progress in the fight to end homelessness. A growing array of studies have shown that strategies and approaches that include supportive housing, prevention, rapid re-housing, and targeting have been having a cumulative and cost effective impact.

The point is, when resources from the private and public sectors are made available, we can make substantial and lasting progress -- we know what works.

Now, the bad news that comes with the foreclosure crisis and a rapidly deteriorating economy: the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities just released a telling new study on the rapidly increasing number of homeless families with children. A few of the examples cited by the report:

• From July to November 2008, compared with the same period in 2007, the number of families entering New York City homeless shelters jumped by 40 percent.
• Massachusetts reported a 32 percent increase between November 2007 and November 2008 in homeless families residing in state-supported emergency shelters.
• In Connecticut, family homeless shelters turned away 30 percent more families due to lack of bed space in September 2008 than in September 2007.
• Hennepin County, Minnesota reported a 20 percent increase between the first 10 months of 2008 and the comparable period in 2007 in the number of homeless families in emergency shelters.

These figures, along with continued dire news on jobless claims and unemployment, put into stark focus the immediate need for increased funding for homeless individuals and families within the Obama Administration's new economic recovery package. As reported last month, a broad coalition of nonprofits led by the Alliance and the National Low Income Housing Coalition is working tirelessly on behalf of the nation's homeless to ensure that these resources are included within the new legislation.

This is not going to happen without a great deal of visible support from those who care about ending homelessness - and that certainly includes those of us who are making grants and supporting the efforts of providers, nonprofit developers and community activists. Even with friends, we must take nothing for granted. We have to make a strong argument for pressing forward with the programs and approaches we've refined and developed over this past decade and a half. And this brings us to one last point: advocacy works.

It's not an accident that where we've made a significant dent in homelessness you will find enlightened and tough minded funders who have encouraging policymakers and providers to change systems, integrate effective strategies, implement evidence based practices into their programs to end homelessness. These same funders have been strong advocates with elected officials to gain the commitment of public dollars from the cities, counties, states and federal governments.

We are now at a crucial point. We must make sure that jurisdictions at every level adopt, support and promote the proven solutions, rather than fall back into short term fixes - open an armory to house the homeless overnight, put families up in motels and hotels. Instead, we must ensure that they continue to invest in permanent housing and accessible, relevant services that help people achieve self sufficiency. We need government to consider the "double payoff" of a stimulus plan for housing and social service programs, as described by Paul Grogan and Eric Schwarz in the Boston Globe.

Clearly, focusing only on long-term solutions is not as simple as it seems - there are many communities with emergency needs out there, and in some cases emergency responses are warranted. But to lose sight of our recent history's solutions-oriented, results-based - and results-achieved - approaches would surely cause us to slip slide away from our goal of ending homelessness.

G. Robert Hohler
Chair, Executive Committee
Executive Director, Melville Charitable Trust

Massachusetts Department of Mental Health Cuts More Than 100 Case Managers: the Tip of the Iceberg?

By Stephen L. Day, Technical Assistance Collaborative

I had just returned from a business trip and saw a copy of the recent Boston Globe article about the lay-off of 100 case managers. This is just the tip of the iceberg as states all across the country seek to balance budgets in the face of severely restricted revenues. It is likely there will be many more direct care staff layoffs and cuts in other community services and supports affecting thousands of people with disabilities before the economic situation improves.

There’s so much bad news facing so many of us right now that it’s hard not to lose sight of what these layoffs really mean in human terms.

The 100 case managers being laid off are probably serving about 3,000 individuals and families. Every one of these people and families has a case manager because they have a serious mental disability that makes it difficult for them to live successfully in their homes and communities.

Case managers help people get and keep the supports they need to live as independently as possible and to remain integrated in their communities. But more importantly, case managers represent a trusted human relationship with a caring person. For many people with mental disabilities this trusting relationship is essential to their own personal pathways towards recovery and self-sufficiency. This trusted relationship is more than the bureaucratic function of service planning and linking people to services. It is frequently the primary bridge between a person’s isolation and disconnection from society and their potential to find a way back to community living.

All of us depend on trusting relationships with people who support us in various ways. And all of us need human contact and support to make our ways in the world. Without the on-going support and trusting relationship with a case manager, some people with mental illness have no source of this support – no one to give them a hand as they struggle to overcome and learn to live successfully with their disability.

When you see homeless people with mental illness, or when you see people with mental illness being jailed for petty offenses, think about the fact that they might not have had a trusted relationship with some caring person who could help them in their journey away from homelessness or jail and towards self sufficiency in the community. When case managers are laid off, the people with disabilities that they serve are likely to become disconnected from sources of support in their communities. The short term savings attained through the lay-offs are more than likely to result in higher costs shelters, emergency rooms, inpatient acute acre, and jails.

What do you think? How can we ensure that those with disabilities continue to have access to the supports they may need in the face of ongoing cutbacks?


About the Author
Stephen L. Day is co-founder and Executive Director of the Technical Assistance Collaborative, a national non-profit organization that works to achieve positive outcomes on behalf of people with disabilities, people who are homeless, and people with other special needs. Steve has provided consultation and technical assistance to 35 states, over 100 local jurisdictions, and numerous national policy and advocacy organizations.

National Alliance to End Homelessness Publishes Interactive Map with State by State Data on Homelessness

The National Alliance to End Homelessness, an implementing partner for Funders Together, has published the new edition of Homelessness Counts, documenting changes in homelessness populations from 2005 to 2007, looking more closely at changes at the state level and among subpopulations.

Features of this report include:

• Comprehensive reporting in maps and tables of changes in chronic, family, unsheltered, and total homelessness at the national, state and community (CoC) level.
  
• Identification of the states and communities with the highest and lowest levels of homelessness (by subpopulation) and the largest changes in homelessness.
  
• An interactive, online map that features state profiles of homelessness characteristics, changes in homelessness from 2005 to 2007, and the economic indicators (unemployment, poverty, housing affordability) most closely associated with homelessness.
  
• Click here to access the interactive map.
  

Google Maps of Ten Year Plans and Permanent Supportive Housing Programs, Around the Country

Interested in finding out which cities and regions around the country have completed Ten Year Plans to End Homelessness, or want to find your local plan? Drawing upon a previous collection put together by our colleagues at the National Alliance to End Homelessness, we have created the following interactive map of completed plans from around the country. To explore plans and programs in your region of the country, view the larger version of the map and drill down as you wish.


View Larger Map

You may also be interested in viewing the following map, which incorporates various examples and resources for permanent supportive housing programs around the country:


View Larger Map

Hint: As you Zoom In on the second map, be sure to occasionally click on "Search Maps" to bring up new results within the region you are focusing on.