Federal Plan To End Homelessness Unveiled By White House

The White House and the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) unveiled a plan this morning to end homelessness in America. The strategy seeks to end veteran and chronic homelessness by 2015 and family and youth homelessness by 2020. The plan is called Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness.

Among the plan's more specific actions: providing more affordable and supportive housing, improving access to sustainable employment, and encouraging health care as part of homeless assistance programs.

The full plan can be downloaded as a PDF file. The plan leads off with a quote from President Obama: "It is simply unacceptable for individuals, children, families and our nation's Veterans to be faced with homelessness in this country."

For all of its ambition, Opening Doors contains relatively little strategy for implementing its goals. According to the plan, many of these strategies have not been devised yet.

USICH staff are working in partnership with the 19 Council member agencies and with other key stakeholders to begin the planning that could operationalize each strategy. Through the planning and implementation process, the feasibility of the strategies wil be assessed with some strategies taking longer to operationalize. Some strategies may prove not to be feasible to implement at scale.

Executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, Maria Foscarinis, describes the plan as an "important policy document and a good first step." The action and implementation, she says, are a different matter.

Comments

[ggmome]

03:07 PM on 07/30/2010

One month away from being homeless, because my lease was not renewed, which I don't understand why, because my rent is paid on time every month, and I have resided here for a decade. I am running into problems, because Medical Bills have me under Judgement, and in this area, your credit is checked, at a fee, and you have a Judgement against you, no home!

If you apply for HUD or Tax Credit properties, the income level is so low, you have to be proverty stricken. Then everybody, utilities, Landlords, Property Managers get all up in your credit rating and deny your application.

I am sick about this, with nowhere to turn for help!

[hardboard]

11:00 AM on 06/29/2010

set up well run tent cities within the city, security, bathrooms, ect. Not very expensive or dificult

[Richard McRae]

12:44 PM on 06/28/2010

This seems like a lofty goal with absolutely no solid plan. I hope no money gets poured into this. I'm wondering where these 'sustainable jobs' are. After getting out of the military I had to search for literally MONTHS before even finding part-time work. Over the last year I've switched jobs 3 times just trying to find a job that pays a decent salary and isn't laying people off.

If there are sustainable jobs I'd like one please.

[fortyfiveseventy]

02:37 AM on 07/05/2010

Why didn't you re-up in the military? I would have done another contract in this economy. Plus, Obama is going to have to end the two wars soon.

[ggmome]

03:13 PM on 07/30/2010

'Lofty goal" What is your religious preference? And I hope that you are never threatened with homelessness. How about people, even of your ilk, are now unable to find jobs, for YEARS, because of outsourcing. Part time positions aren't easy to find now. Further what about those up in age, being treated like pennies, asking for change, because of the GREEDIES, pushing people out of their homes, because they want more and more?

[junito65]

04:11 PM on 06/27/2010

Obama's plan: Let the RepubliKlans and Tea-Baggers win the elections in November making his presidency meaningless.
While partisan politics gets unbearable, where NOTHING gets done or vetoes are overturned, an ecomonic or natural disaster will render ALL of us homeless therefore rendering the term useless since NO one in America will have a home....
THIS is Captain Flaccid's plan....God help us!

[becarefulofwhatyoubuy]

02:37 PM on 06/27/2010

Continuation 3:
Here is what's really happening on the FORECLOSURE front in YOUR neighborhood, city/town, country. http://www.realtytrac.com/ a visual aid

Is your bank liquid and safe or will it close? Here's that picture... choose the heading "Safe and Sound Ratings" and find out. http://www.bankrate.com/
744 banks have already gone bellyup.

[becarefulofwhatyoubuy]

02:32 PM on 06/27/2010

Continuation 2: jobs futures
We have moved beyond the industrial age (electro-mechanical widgets) to the electronic age. Factory jobs are on the wain. We have been a predominant 'service economy' for quite some time now. If you want to see more factory jobs, invent a new widget/gadget that the rest of us can't live without.
Here's our factory future: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_27/b4185010570308.htm
This off-shoring behavior was already happening in the 1980's, when I was a chain store clothing buyer. Remember the advent of 'designer jeans'? For the jean manufacturers, it was cheaper to buy East Indian dyed cotten, ship it to Asia for cutting and assembling the jeans, short of any 'ornamentation'. (Pockets with designs, rivets, etc., due being taxed on those) Ship it back to the US for the application of that ornamentation and THEN ship to stores. Even Levi Strauss was doing it to a smaller degree. They tried VERY hard to remain a US only operation, but had to join the frey eventually.

[becarefulofwhatyoubuy]

02:17 PM on 06/27/2010

BTW, I am 58, female, 3 yrs of business course (no degree though), parent of 2, and raised by responsible, middle class parents of 3. I have already performed the in-home care-taking for an inter-generation family scenario alone, being divorced, while working full-time.
Continuation 1:
Use and encourage birth control. Overpopulation is the underlying issue globally. EVERY U.S. resident does want (entitlement thinking) and will want their own piece of dirt, abode, services and employment. If you choose to have 3+ children, where are those children going to find their piece of dirt to own, in the future. They will be competing with an ever increasing set of peers and also with the new landfills we create due to thoughtless consumption. Reuse, recycle, make do. Cherish what we have here, it's been a beautiful country!
Oil spill and Our administration:
Fact: there are NO oil spill experts on the payroll in the administration. It is an INDUSTRY responsibility and specialty. IF, any president were to insert gov't sponsered and mandated decision makers, and they failed... would you be any happier? This is new terrain, and the oil companies were mandated to have a viable plan in place. They didn't. They lied.

[becarefulofwhatyoubuy]

02:07 PM on 06/27/2010

I ask all of you to broaden you perspectives to beyond your local area and your educational and employment experience. I will provide what sources I can here...
The 'by-choice' homeless are likely to be those who are alcoholics, mentally ill or drug addicts. There is an ever increasing percentage of 'not by choice' homeless who were tax paying families, singles and over age 50. Causes: ageism in the workplace, the bank/mortgage derivitive greed blow-up, payroll downsizing by businesses of all sizes, cost of living vs. payscales imbalance, immigration by not only Latinos, but Russians, Asians, Eastern bloc countries.
Where are the jobs, we ask? New jobs that are viable for the employee and the businesses alike are not created overnight. But some are looming in the near horizon. I suspect there are others I just haven't found yet.
http://www.coeforict.org/2010/04/1292/ (throughout the US)
http://portland.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2010/06/21/daily23.html (Portland OR)

to be con't...

[vet65]

10:49 AM on 06/27/2010

Excuse me but is this the same administration who is dealing with the oil spill? I don't hold out much hope for anything they want to try.

[fortressfountain]

06:13 PM on 06/26/2010

Homelessness is on the upswing-look at the foreclosures and unaffordable rents people cannot pay because the government says people should take 10 hour a week jobs and the government gives welfare to the corporations to provide this kind of income.

[fortressfountain]

06:10 PM on 06/26/2010

Where is the sustainable employment the government is talking about? When you are over 40 you get laid off and have a hard time finding work no matter what the education level.

[spaceboobies]

05:24 PM on 06/26/2010

All words. No action.

[PresidentRobertBooth]

02:09 PM on 06/26/2010

There will always be homelessness as long as we operate a system where having a home is dependent on making regular monetary payments.

[jon the helper]

01:50 PM on 06/26/2010

Hope it works better than:
The BIG stimulus
Home modifications
Small business loans
Bank reform
Iraq
Afghanistan
Iran
Energy
Jobs
Escalating tuitions
Oil spill

[Mark Harker]

04:57 PM on 06/24/2010

charity isn't the government's job or responsibility. we should support the growth of private charities.

[PresidentRobertBooth]

02:10 PM on 06/26/2010

***charity isn't the government's job or responsibility. we should support the growth of private charities***

Social welfare and care is the responsibility of government in a proper country.

Leaving it all to volunteer groups is doomed to failure.