Bush program curbs chronic homelessness

WASHINGTON -- On a cold January morning in 2001, Mel Martinez, then the new secretary of Housing and Urban Development, was headed to his office in his limo when he saw some homeless people huddled on the vents of the steam tunnels that heat federal buildings.

"Somebody ought to do something for them," Martinez said he told himself. "And it dawned on me at that moment that it was me."

So began the Bush administration's radical, liberal -- and successful -- national campaign against chronic homelessness.

"Housing first," it's called. That's to distinguish it from traditional programs that require longtime street people to undergo months of treatment and counseling before they're deemed "housing ready." Instead, the Bush administration offers them rent-free apartments up front.

New residents, if they choose, can start turning their lives around with the help of substance-abuse counselors, social workers, nurse practitioners, part-time psychiatrists and employment counselors. However, residents are referred to as "consumers," and the choice is theirs.

The help is so good and the deal's so sweet that roughly four out of five chronically homeless Americans who get immediate housing stay off the streets for two years or longer, according to the program's evaluators. In Britain, which has used the approach for a decade, the so-called "rough sleeper" population declined by about two-thirds.

The "housing first" strategy gets much of the credit for a 30 percent decline in U.S. chronic homelessness from 2005 to 2007. The number fell from 176,000 to 124,000 people, according to the best available census of street people.

The chronically homeless, estimated to be between a fifth and a tenth of the total, are the hardest group of street people to help. A chronically homeless person is someone with a disabling condition who has been continuously homeless for a year or more or for four or more episodes in three years.

If a "housing first" strategy seems absurdly generous to them, it's proved to be crazy like a fox for many of the more than 200 U.S. cities that have adopted the approach.

The earliest adapters, including Denver, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Portland, Ore., found that the added cost of homes and support services for the chronically homeless wasn't burdensome. In fact, it was largely or entirely offset by reduced demands on shelters, emergency rooms, mental hospitals, detox centers, jails and courts.

Instead of shuttling between them, chronically homeless people "are staying housed and starting to look for employment," said Nan Roman, the president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the leading advocates of the approach. "A lot are reconnecting with their families."

A profound life change

Just being off the street is healthy, said Sheila Crowley, the president of the National Low-Income Housing Coalition. "Even if they continue to drink, they're eating better, sleeping better and interacting with people better."

For the chronically homeless, the life change is sudden and profound.

"Today, God has seen fit to bless you," James Hamilton's counselor told him last month on a day that Hamilton began in a fusty bunk bed in a Washington homeless shelter.

By nightfall, Hamilton's permanent home was a quiet one-bedroom apartment in an iffy neighborhood in Southeast Washington, for which the city pays a HUD-subsidized $900 a month plus utilities.

It's furnished with a new $1,200 furniture set, including a green plush sofa, bureau and end tables. Also a new oak kitchen table and chairs, bed, linens and a $300 Target gift certificate for incidentals such as the microwave that's perched on a wastebasket.