Obama’s urban policy seeks to shelter 1.6 million, but has a long way to go

As President Obama watches the fireworks and celebrates his daughter Malia’s birthday on July 4, his 6,300 homeless neighbors in the District of Columbia will be celebrating a bit differently.

The release last week of the Interagency Council on Homelessness’ (USICH) “Opening Doors” plan marks the president’s intent to focus more attention towards ending domestic homelessness through efforts targeting youth, family, veterans, and children.

HUD’s annual report on homelessness noted that a total of 1.6 million people experienced homelessness last year alone.

Prior to the Bush administration, federal efforts to address homelessness were geared towards providing emergency housing for what was widely seen as a temporary spike in domestic homelessness. The importance of providing permanent supportive housing has become apparent only in recent years.

Neil J. Donovan, Executive Director for the National Coalition for the Homeless, believes that increasing supportive housing isn’t necessarily the right direction to take.

“It’s appropriate for a vast minority of the homeless population,” he said. “I think what we are finding is that the supportive housing community has a strong lobby and that they are capturing a good deal of resources and making supportive housing available,” he said.

Donovan, who previously served as a Senior Advisor at USICH, said he believes that the Bush administration’s policy towards homelessness focused too much on the chronically homeless at the exclusion of other subpopulations, creating gaps in resources for children and families.

Some initiatives in “Opening Doors” include a $15 million multiagency pilot program between HUD, VA and DOL; a collaboration between HUD, ED, and Human Services to distribute Section 8 vouchers to 6,000 families; as well as HUD’s and VA’s Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) program, which provides case management services and permanent housing to veterans.

Peter H. Dougherty, Director of the Homeless Veterans Programs at VA, said he is encouraged by the aggressive plans and timelines.

“We’re on the right track, both in the Department [of Veterans Affairs] and across all departments,” he said.

Fmr. President George W. Bush’s homeless czar, Phil Mangano, introduced the well-known “Housing First” strategy, which focuses on implementing permanent housing instead of shelter options. Also known as “rapid re-housing,” the policy calls for housing placements to be followed up with social casework and support services to ensure a stable and viable transition.

“While there is a lot of rhetoric about holding local communities accountable with report cards and annual reports, [“Opening Doors”] doesn’t have quantifiable goals, benchmark goals, or budget implications. It’s a report focused on process rather than performance,” Mangano told The Daily Caller.

Obama hopes to apply Mangano’s strategy to more of the country’s homeless population. Based on his experience in the Bush administration, Mangano said he believes that homelessness is solved through business principles and cannot be adequately addressed inside the Beltway.

While in the Bush administration, Mangano’s team brought in renowned business authors and scholars such as Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink, Jim Collins, author of How the Mighty Fall and Good to Great, and Harvard Business professor Clay Christensen to help tackle the issue of homelessness.

“What they taught us was that the typical way we try and solve big problems is to handle the big problem all at one time, while only having limited resources and applying them without a key for results and outcomes,” Mangano said. “The way you address big social problems is to concentrate resources on the most visible and seemingly needy population.”

In the coming months, evaluations and progress reports on the key initiatives targeting veterans, families with children, youth, and the chronic homeless are expected to be released.

“Under President Bush, the administration wanted to end all of homelessness,” Mangano said. “But, we had to face what makes sense, find what is a strategy that will work. It is not good enough to have aspirational goals. You need quantifiable goals, to focus on what initiatives out there in the country that were field tested, proved in the field, and evidence based, supported by data research.”

He applauded the Obama administration’s aspirational and ambitious goals but warned against proceeding without a comprehensive business strategy for ending homelessness.

“Business people don’t rely on aspirational goals. They rely on tangible, quantifiable goals, and then they hit those goals. In broadening the population without a significant increase in resources, my concern is that we will go back to the old way of looking at homelessness.”

Mangano, who now runs a national nonprofit in Boston working towards abolishing homelessness, served in the first 100 days of the Obama administration.

“They [the Obama administration] have more work to do,” he said.

The “Opening Doors” report can be accessed on the USICH’s website at http://www.usich.gov, while HUD’s 2009 Homeless Assessment report is accessible at http://www.hudhre.info .

DC reporter Caroline May contributed to this article.