How many American people are homeless?
Good Morning,
HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson issued a statement yesterday (10 Jan 07) thanking the National Alliance to End Homelessness for "helping to analyze homeless data from hundreds of local communities around the country". He then went on to mention that HUD "will release its First Annual Homeless Assessment Report" "soon".
HUD has been funding programs to address homelessness through the McKinney-Vento Act since 1985. It remains the only Federal legislation on homelessness. The trend has been from creating emergency shelter to transitional shelter with supprtive services to forcing community collaboration (Continuum of Care process) to, now, permanent housing for chronically homeless individuals with less emphasis on services.
A few years ago someone in Washington figured that the internet is a means to providing service providers with reliable linkages to build services networks & to get an accurate count of all the homeless persons in the country. Welcome Homeless Management Information Systems (HMIS). I personally think the idea has some merits; however, the system is useless as it stands now.
1st, while all HUD funded providers must participate--except Domestic Violence providers who are statuatorily exempt for confidentiality fears--consumers of homeless services are not required to participate. Immediately, the data is incomplete & inaccurate.
So, any analysis provided by HUD will be no more accurate than the data that peeved Mr Jackson. As a side note: all this is happening because 25 Jan 07 is the date of the annual homeless census, which will reveal numbers as guess-timated as any others.
This count and analysis is important because it will determine the direction HUD and Congress will take over the next five years in funding services. It just won't be any more accurate than what we are reporting and using locally. The best indicator of service need is the Annual Progress Report (APR) and the number of services provided in a given reporting period. If I am providing a certain level of services I can be reaasonably sure that I can predict need over the next 18-24 months--which is the amount of time needed to secure one year's funding.
What I really want is to know if Northwest Continuum of Care was funded in the 2006 competition cycle.
Click here to read the NAEH report.
