July 22, 2007 - The Twentieth Anniversary of the McKinney Homeless Assistance Act

A Bittersweet Anniversary

The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act


The Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act, now known as the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, was first enacted in 1987 as the first major, coordinated federal response to homelessness. Passed in response to the rapid and dramatic growth of homelessness in the United States during the 1980s, the McKinney Act was originally part of a larger piece of legislation entitled the Homeless Persons’ Survival Act. The Homeless Persons’ Survival Act contained three sections – emergency measures, transitional measures, and long-term solutions.

Recognizing the urgent crisis, Congress enacted the emergency measures as the McKinney Act. During consideration on the Floor of the House, Representative Thomas Foley (D-WA) commented “We realize, of course, that the problem … will not be solved overnight, but we cannot stand idly by while helpless people and poverty-stricken families lose the roof over their heads. The homeless are of every description and no one solution addresses the plight of all of them, but we will never solve this problem unless we begin now.”

More than a decade has passed since Congress last reauthorized the programs and addressing homelessness is more urgent than ever. Annual surveys by the U.S. Conference of Mayors have found increases in the number of persons seeking shelter and services in their survey cities every year since 1987. Other programs that were intended to accompany the McKinney-Vento Act programs and provide more permanent solutions were never enacted and, as a result, the McKinney-Vento Act is still the primary federal response to homelessness.


http://www.mckinney20th.org/

10 Steps to Help Prevent and End Homelessness Right Now


Here are 10 steps, recommended by national organizations, that the federal government can take right now to end and prevent homelessness.

1. Assist currently homeless people by reauthorizing and doubling funds for HUD McKinney-Vento programs.

2. Create housing for low-income households by enacting a National Housing Trust Fund.

3. Protect, preserve, and expand existing federal housing programs that serve the lowest-income people.

4. Appropriate funds for at least 5,000 Section 8 housing vouchers forhomeless veterans through the HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing Program.

5. Expand access to addiction and mental health services for people experiencing homelessness through reauthorization of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

6. Increase homeless and low-income persons’ access to healthcare by reauthorizing and expanding the Consolidated Health Centers program.

7. Increase homeless persons’ access to mainstream disability income, temporary assistance, and workforce investment services.

8. Provide homeless children and youth with increased services and support by reauthorizing the Education for Homeless Children and Youth program in the No Child Left Behind Act and the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act.

9. Require the Administration to develop and publish a coordinated federal plan to end homelessness.

10. Require jurisdictions receiving federal housing funds to protect the civil rights of homeless persons.

http://www.mckinney20th.org/endhomelessnessnow.html

The Twentieth Anniversary of the McKinney Homeless Assistance Act:
A Consensus Statement on Five Fundamentals

The July 22, 2007, twentieth anniversary of the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless
Assistance Act calls for reflection on the persistence of mass homelessness in the United
States, for consideration of what is needed to overcome homelessness, and for a new
spirit of commitment and determination to eradicate this social evil.

(snip)

National nonprofit organizations and a host of state and local organizations have worked
vigorously throughout the 20 years of the McKinney Act to end homelessness. The
undersigned nonprofit organizations have developed various analyses and strategies to
end homelessness, but have agreed on the following Five Fundamentals:

I. The McKinney-Vento programs should be reauthorized in 2007. “McKinney-
Vento” programs within the US Department of Housing and Urban Development
provide approximately $1.5 billion per year in shelter, services and supportive
housing for people who are currently homeless. The last reauthorization of the
McKinney programs administered by HUD occurred in 1992. We believe that the
HUD McKinney-Vento programs have helped very many homeless persons to
survive, to improve their circumstances, and to escape homelessness.

Yet a number of systemic factors result in a constant flood of newly homeless
persons replacing those whose status has improved. Mass homelessness is still an
emergency.

Our national organizations agree that an explicit national commitment to meet the
immediate needs of homeless persons must be expressed through HUD
McKinney-Vento reauthorization, and that the Congress must appropriate
sufficient resources for the purpose.

Likewise, the McKinney-Vento Education for Homeless Children and Youth
Program must be reauthorized, and other targeted homeless programs must be
reauthorized, including the Health Care for the Homeless Program and the
Programs for Assistance in the Transition from Homelessness (both originally
part of the McKinney Act), the Treatment for Homeless Persons Program (in the
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reauthorization) and
the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act. Pending legislation that includes the
needs of homeless people in mainstream programs that serve the needs of poor
people must be enacted, including the reauthorization of the Head Start Act, the
Higher Education Act, and the Food Stamp Act.

We recall that the McKinney Act, at the time of its adoption in 1987, was viewed as only
the first step in a national response to homelessness. This bi-partisan legislation
providing emergency relief measures was to be followed by measures to prevent
homelessness and by more systemic solutions to the problem.xiv The remaining
Fundamentals must be addressed in public policy to make good on that early promise of
the McKinney Act.

II. The supply of affordable housing must be dramatically increased if homelessness
is to be abated. Homelessness is at root a housing problem, driven by the dire
shortage of housing units that are affordable for very poor people. The historic
withdrawal of federal support for the creation and operation of low-income
housing that began in the early 1980s and continues today must be reversed if
homelessness is to be ended.

III. Health care, education, and social services must be provided to all who need
them. Debilitating health and social problems often precipitate and are
aggravated by homelessness. Existing “safety net” systems are gravely
inadequate for homeless people and for those at risk of homelessness; in most
states, impoverished and homeless adults are not eligible for Medicaid.
Comprehensive health insurance for everyone must be enacted as the equitable
basis for financing necessary services, while targeted services for those with
special needs and services linked with housing must also be supported. Children
and youth need school stability and support if they are to acquire the skills needed
to avoid poverty and homelessness as adults.

IV. Personal incomes must be sufficient to pay for the necessities of life. Individuals’
responsibility to care for themselves – including paying for housing, health care
and other services – can only be fulfilled if their incomes are adequate. People
who are able to work should be paid a living wage; that is not now the case for
most homeless people who work. People who are disabled and cannot work
should receive public support at living wage levels.

V. Discrimination against homeless persons must be prevented. Public systems
including education, child welfare, criminal justice, health care and others must
not deny services on the basis of one’s housing status. Homeless persons’ civil
rights to vote, to frequent public places, to utilize public facilities, and to enjoy
equal protection of the law must be supported and advanced.

http://www.nlchp.org/content/pubs/McKinneyStatement060507.pdf

Without Housing, the Poor Will Perish
by Janny Castillo



"Wet Night On Sutter Street." In this painting by Christine Hanlon, a homeless person sleeps outside a fancy clothing store on a rainy night while well-dressed mannequins are dry and warm inside.

"The government pegs homeless persons as dysfunctional human beings in need of rehabilitation. This report says, 'I don't care how many life-skills trainings you give me; if I don't have a place to live, I am going to be homeless."
-- Paul Boden, WRAP Executive Director

"Until this government invests billions of dollars more a year in housing for the poor, homelessness will increase and deaths will increase."
-- Terry Messman, Street Spirit editor

According to a U.S. Department of Education report, more than 600,000 identified homeless students attended public schools in the 2003-2004 school years. These children are invisible. They will not be seen on rooftops in flood waters, trapped and afraid. Their desperate faces are not plastered across our televisions, moving the country to do something, anything, to help. They are survivors of a different and more subtle catastrophe than Katrina.

On November 14, 2006, a group of homeless advocates met in front of the Federal Building in San Francisco to announce the release of a report written by the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) entitled, "Without Housing: Decades of Federal Housing Cutbacks, Massive Homelessness and Policy Failures." Juan Prada, director of the Coalition on Homelessness, organized the event. The 80-page report documents 25 years of federal housing cuts that have resulted in "a new and massive episode of homelessness."

"Those on the front line of homelessness -- homeless people and the providers who serve them -- are drowning in a sea of blame," said WRAP Executive Director Paul Boden. "We have joined together to speak the truth. Until federal affordable housing programs are restored and expanded, homelessness will continue to grow."


http://www.thestreetspirit.org/Dec2006/nohome.htm

NEW REPORT DOCUMENTS CORRELATION BETWEEN HISTORIC CUTS TO FEDERAL HOUSING PROGRAMS AND CONTEMPORARY MASS HOMELESSNESS

Communities call for the new Congress to take a new approach to addressing and ending the national crisis of homelessness

~ excerpt ~

"Without Housing: Decades of Federal Housing Cutbacks, Massive Homelessness and Policy Failures,” documents the correlation between these trends and the emergence of a new and massive episode of homelessness in the 1980s which continues today. It particularly focuses on radical cuts to programs administered by the US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the US Dept. of Agriculture (USDA), which administers funds for rural affordable housing. Available online in PDF format, the report also demonstrates why federal responses to this nationwide crisis have consistently failed.

Created in partnership with five other organizations, the report uses federal budget data and other sources to document that:

HUD’s budget has dropped 65% since 1978, from over $83 billion to $29 billion in 2006.

The Emergency Shelter phenomenon was born the same year that HUD funding was at a drastic low point. In 1983, HUD’s budget was only $18 billion, the same year that general public emergency shelters began opening in cities nationwide.

HUD has spent $0 on new public housing, while more than 100,000 public housing units have been lost to demolition, sale, or other removal in the last ten years.

Federal housing subsidies are going to the wealthy. In 2004, 61 percent of these subsidies went to households earning more than $54,788, while only 27 percent went to households earning under $34,398.

More than 600,000 identified homeless students went to public schools in the 2003-2004 school year, according to the US Department of Education.

Federal support helps homeowners instead of poor people. In 2005, federal homeowner subsidies totaled more than $122 billion, while HUD outlays were only $31 billion – a difference of more than $91 billion.

According to Paul Boden, executive director of WRAP, “The Administration’s current ‘Chronic Homeless Initiative’ is just the latest in a series of inadequate flavor-of-the-month distractions from the real problem. It does nothing to address the huge cuts to federal affordable housing funding that caused mass homelessness. Housing is a human right, which a democracy should advance, not restrict.

Those on the frontline of homelessness – homeless people and the providers who serve them – are drowning in a sea of blame. We have joined together to speak truth to power: until federal affordable housing programs are restored and expanded, homelessness will continue to grow.”


http://wraphome.org/wh_press_kit/press_release_wrap.html