Give Them Shelter

Give Them Shelter, Give Them Homes

The Weekly Standard: Homelessness Needs To Be An Issue Again

(Page 1 of 2)

June 29, 2006

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Quote "For years we've been patting ourselves on the back and saying we've been serving the same homeless person. It's time to start looking for permanent solutions." Philip Mangano, director of the federal Interagency Council on the Homeless

(Weekly Standard) This column was written by William Tucker.

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Whatever happened to the homeless? "We haven't heard much — anything, really — about the homeless since, oh, roughly January 20, 1993," Andrew Ferguson noted in January 2001, predicting that with Bush replacing Clinton, the media would soon rediscover them. As if on cue, days later the Washington Post ran a 2,000-word opus on the plight of the homeless in the nation's capital.

But does the reverse hold? If the Bush administration makes progress on homelessness, does it make news? The answer, all too predictably, is no.

At a remarkably underreported conference in Denver in May, advocates for the homeless met to discuss a pattern of falling homeless populations across the country. In the past six months, New York has announced a reduction of 13 percent, Denver 11 percent, Portland 20 percent, Miami 30 percent, Philadelphia 50 percent. The story merited squibs in the Denver Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Rocky Mountain News. The New York Times ran a page 19 story almost a month later. Beyond that, silence.

"All this comes from President Bush," says Philip Mangano, who worked with the homeless for 25 years in Boston before becoming director of the federal Interagency Council on the Homeless. "The president promised in his 2002 State of the Union that we were going to find a cure for homelessness. It's the 'no-child-left-behind' mentality. He doesn't like to see people left behind." Such declarations have been made time and again over the past 25 years without much effect. The difference this time is that Mangano and the Interagency Council seem to have found a successful formula — "Housing First."

Much of the program is admittedly a rah-rah, get-everybody-on-board effort that enlists mayors, governors, church leaders, shelter organizations, social service agencies, civic groups, business leaders, and everyone else to the task. Pep rallies are held; Malcolm Gladwell lectures on the "Tipping Point"; Harvard's Clayton Christensen talks about the "Innovator's Dilemma" and the "Innovator's Solution."

"We're trying to upset the status quo," says Mangano