This is a
printer friendly version of an article from www.starnewsonline.com
To
print this article open the file menu and choose Print.
Back
Article published Jan 31,
2006
A 10-year
plan may be 1st step to solve chronic homelessness
The
Wilmington City Council voted last year to create a 10-year plan to end chronic
homelessness. On Monday, it invited surrounding counties to
participate.
Elected officials from New Hanover and Brunswick counties
joined Mayor Spence Broadhurst and three other council members Monday to talk
about the plan. Unfortunately, none came from Pender County. Representatives of
government and private agencies also attended.
Philip Mangano, executive
director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, said a 10-year plan
could improve an area’s quality of life, with fewer people on the streets and in
shelters and fewer emergency room visits and police calls.
“It’s time to
move beyond punitive approaches that haven’t worked,” he said. “Be tolerant of
your homeless neighbor but intolerant of homelessness.”
Solving the
problem
Solving the problem costs less than ignoring it.
Boston
studied 119 chronically homeless people for five years and found they accounted
for 18,000 emergency room visits costing around $1,000 each, not including
ambulance rides.
San Diego followed 15 chronically homeless people for 18
months and tallied the health care and law enforcement costs at $3 million, or
$200,000 per person.
Mangano cited an Asheville study I’ve quoted before,
where the community found it was spending $1,200 a month on 19 chronically
homeless people.
All that money and nothing improved. No one moved into a
more productive life.
Mangano told the group that the 10-year plan needs
to have quantifiable goals. It will show results, he said. Miami officials say
they’ve seen a 40 percent reduction in the numbers of its chronically homeless,
Philadelphia a 50 percent reduction, and San Francisco, where homelessness is
particularly rampant, counted a 36 percent reduction after putting its 10-year
plan into action, he said.
After the meeting I asked Mangano about
Housing First, a new approach that has been effective in cities like New York
and Philadelphia. Instead of making homeless people “earn” a home by staying
clean and getting a job, we put them in a home and create an assertive community
treatment team, or ACT team, to look after their needs.
Mangano told me
that can cost $15,000 to $25,000 a year for housing and support, less than we
spend on jails and emergency rooms for homeless people.
And while the
cost of doing business as usual will rise, the costs of Housing First often fall
as time goes by. Mangano said many people want to go to work after they’re
housed and their basic needs are met. Housing is therapeutic.
And the
lack of a home can certainly be a major obstacle to employment.
Chris May
of the Cape Fear Council of Governments facilitated the meeting and took
suggestions for membership of a steering committee. There were a lot. I think
they’ll need to appoint a steering committee for the steering
committee.
Broadhurst recommended counties formally decide whether
they’re in or out.
Martha Are, homeless policy specialist for the state
Department of Health and Human Services, said she’d be willing to help make
presentations to county commissioners. She did a good job of advising our City
Council members on the importance of having a 10-year plan when she addressed
them in 2004.
Mangano is President Bush’s point person on homelessness.
I’m very skeptical of this administration’s commitment to the poor. But it took
this Republican president to set the audacious goal of ending chronic
homelessness. Mangano really believes it can be done.
We can either be
part of the solution or we can keep spending large sums to provide inefficient
services with no overall goal.
I’m backing Mangano’s
approach.
Contact Si Cantwell at 343-2364 or
si.cantwell@starnewsonline.com. You can read his columns at
www.StarNewsOnline.com/Cantwell, or his blog at
www.StarNewsOnline.com/CommonSense.