The Homeless Numbers Game Continues

The Bush Administration’s last Secretary of the Housing and Urban Development Department pronounced yesterday at the National Alliance To End Homelessness Conference in Washington, DC, that chronic homelessness has been reduced by 15%.

Is this an amazing social feat from an administration that desperately needs to project positive results? Or is it simply another government mirage to justify the billions of dollars invested to help those living on our streets?

Let’s look at Los Angeles’ numbers. In 2005, the number of homeless were supposedly 90,000 people. Two years later it was 73,000. The chronic homeless (homeless more than a year, or four times in the past three years) went down from 34,900 in 2005 to 22,400 in 2007.

Is this a government miracle? Or a flaw in the counting of people who are homeless?

Logic tells us that the only way to truly reduce the number of people who are homeless on the streets is to place them in permanent housing—preferably “Permanent Supportive Housing”, housing linked to support services.

So did Los Angeles build 17,000 Permanent Supportive Housing units in two years? Give me a break. With the loss of existing low income housing (converted to market rate housing) and the building of new affordable housing units, LA barely broke even. And this was for low-income housing, not housing for the homeless.

So without proof that Permanent Supportive Housing was built specifically for people who are homeless, do you think chronic homeless was reduced by 15% in America? (And 35% in Los Angeles?)


(Pic from http://cache.daylife.com)