The number of homeless people on America's streets is morally indefensible -- over 600,000 on any given night -- but even more startling is how little we have historically known about this population. If solving a problem depends on first understanding it, it should come as little surprise that solutions to homelessness have often been slow.
Thankfully, that reality has changed rapidly over the last year, as more than 2,000 Americans have gone to the streets of their communities to add a crucial level of detail to what we know about our homeless neighbors. These volunteers are part of local teams implementing the 100,000 Homes Campaign, a groundbreaking effort that is transforming the way communities see and respond to homelessness.
Since the Campaign's launch one year ago, volunteers from more than 30 cities have canvassed their neighborhoods block by block in the early hours of the morning. Together, they have sought out and surveyed the homeless people living among them, asking them critical questions about their health and social histories. The results of this massive data-gathering project have already revealed a new level of specificity that has helped communities recognize homelessness as an urgent public health issue and match homeless individuals with housing and health services at an accelerated rate. If the Campaign's experience proves anything, it is that the more communities know about who specifically is homeless, the easier it is to find a lasting solution.
An initiative of Community Solutions, a national not-for-profit organization, the 100,000 Homes Campaign aims to find permanent housing for 100,000 of the most vulnerable and long-term homeless individuals and families in America by July of 2013. At the start of its second year, the Campaign's 87 member communities have already moved 10,569 homeless people into permanent housing across the United States. With new communities joining every month, the Campaign is squarely on track to meet its goal.
So far, Campaign volunteers have administered more than 19,000 surveys, amassing a more detailed picture of the most vulnerable homeless people on our streets than has ever before been available. Here are some highlights:
The survey that underlies this data is called the Vulnerability Index. It's a questionnaire that captures data on the age, health status, institutional history (military, hospital, jail, and prison), length of homelessness, patterns of shelter use, and previous housing situations of homeless people in Campaign communities. Based on leading medical research by Dr. Jim O'Connell of Harvard University and Dr. Stephen Hwang of the University of Toronto, it identifies those individuals experiencing the health conditions associated with increased risk of death in the homeless population, including HIV/AIDS, kidney disease, and liver disease.
But the Vulnerability Index is much more than a medical questionnaire -- in communities across the country, it has become a powerful community organizing tool that reveals homelessness for what it is: an urgent public health emergency. By putting names and faces to their homeless population, local teams have been able to identify and focus on the most at-risk, prioritizing them for housing and supportive services first. The result has been a marked acceleration in the rate at which Campaign communities are moving people off the streets for good.
Among cities with over 1,000 chronic or unsheltered homeless people, for instance, New Orleans leads all communities with an average of 62.4 homeless people housed per month. Washington, DC is next at 38.8 people per month, followed by San Francisco (29 people per month), Los Angeles County (28.3) and Atlanta (28).
Among communities with fewer than 1,000 chronic or unsheltered homeless people, the city with the best rate of housing placements is Philadelphia (10.7 people per month), followed by Chicago (9.1), Columbus (7.5), Detroit (7.5), and Omaha (7.4).
Permanent supportive housing saves money for communities, as formerly homeless people begin to replace hospital and emergency room use with primary and preventive care. Reducing the burden on jails, shelters, and local social service sites reduces the high public costs of those systems. Dozens of studies bear out the counter-intuitive fact that it costs far less to help someone out of homelessness for good than to do nothing. At a time of unprecedented strain on local budgets, ending homelessness makes clear financial sense for strapped communities
To learn more about the 100,000 Homes Campaign, or to see if your community is among the 87 already participating, visit 100khomes.org.
Follow Rosanne Haggerty on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cmtysolutions
The Fight Against Homelessness | Legal Talk Network
Local Authorities and the Fight Against Homelessness Local ...
Street Soccer continues the fight against homelessness - ESPN ...
that means solving the problem will cost some people serious money. the doe always goes somewhere. follow the money and you'll find who's against you.
What is needed is an affordable way of housing and feeding the many millions without jobs or income and maintaining social stability while we organize a better social design.
This data is important to the solution; The United States of America has a land mass of 3,717,813 square miles; the US government holds and controls around 30% of that land and buys more each year. That is equivalent to 1,115,344 square miles and is equal to the combined land masses of Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, Greece, New Zealand, Ireland, Bahrain, Hong Kong, Liechtenstein, the Cayman Islands, Anguilla, and Bermuda.
We need Congress to assign arable land for the creation of self sustaining settlements for Americans in need. This land of ours is rich in resources and people should be given land with water, fresh air and the basic tools they need to create self sustaining eco communities where they can live permanently.
Obviously this is not the solution for all homeless people, especially those with special needs, but it will help millions that have lost their jobs and homes and have no other solution.
www.the-communal-solution.us
However, even with these efforts, many people are missed, for a couple of reasons. First, the definition of who actually can be considered "homeless" is narrowly defined and those who are doubled, tripled and quadrupled up are missed entirely, as are those who are lucky enough to have worked or panhandled enough money to snag a hotel room for the night. Second, many individuals have been pushed outside the confines of "searchable" areas by increased police presence and persecution for "quality of life" crimes that specifically target those experiencing homelessness.
Frankly, we are missing a significant portion of those experiencing homelessness in those circumstances and it is unlikely that we will be able to capture them using current methods.