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Responses to "First Things First" Article


Government Actions

Although we cannot definitively say that these results were caused by the article, several events occurred rapidly after the story was published:    

  • The day after the story was published, a newly appointed staff director for the Massachusetts Commission to End Homelessness began her job. The commission had been mandated by the legislature in 2006, with a deadline of June 30, 2007, to complete a comprehensive housing plan to end homelessness in the commonwealth. However, as our article reported, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick’s administration had never appointed members or convened the commission, much less started writing a plan — until our article appeared.  
  • Two weeks after the story was published, the final FY 2008 state budget doubled funding for the Commonwealth’s major Housing First initiative, adding momentum to the effort to end homelessness through permanent residential solutions.
  • Almost a month after the story was published (and a month after the deadline to have submitted a plan), the Massachusetts Commission to End Homelessness at long last had its first meeting. 
  • Six weeks after the story was published, The Boston Globe published an editorial (August 8, 2007) entitled “A Future Without Homelessness.” The editorial urged Gov. Patrick and the new commission to “meet its self-imposed deadline and come up with a comprehensive plan.” The editorial echoed our article’s conclusions in these key statements: “Committing the state to ending homelessness is a vital step”; “A key piece involves creating a careful transition away from shelters and toward providing more supportive housing,”; and “Ending homelessness once seemed like a pipe dream. Now it appears to be a job that Massachusetts can do.”
Blogs and Web Sites
Letters to the Editor (Boston Globe)

“Homeless Still”

June 26, 2007

IN THEIR otherwise excellent article, "Housing First,"  Florence Graves and Hadar Sayfan note people often forget that "widespread urban homelessness is a recent problem that began in the early '80s," but they fail to give credit where credit is due. Ronald Reagan cut the budget of the Department of Housing and Urban Development by 75 percent. When the federal programs disappeared that had created financial incentives for private investors to set up and maintain affordable housing such as single-room-occupancy buildings, affordable housing disappeared also. Two million people ended up on the streets. The programs have never been restored.

Jane Collins
Medford
 

“At the Heart of Homeless Policy”

July 1, 2007

FLORENCE GRAVES and Hadar Sayfan's article on the "housing first" model as a way to end chronic homelessness serves as a reminder that there is a lot more that society could be doing to end, rather than just manage, chronic homelessness. Getting people out of our state's shelter care system and into permanent supportive housing should be at the heart of homeless policy, and should be reflected in funding mechanisms that support "housing first" concepts. These include funds to support care managers, drug and alcohol counseling, mental health services, and rental subsidies.

Unfortunately, there will always be a place for shelters in a continuum of homeless services. The real agenda for this segment of our state's health and human services sector must be to address the root causes of homelessness by providing the array of supports Graves and Sayfan described.

Martin D. Cohen
President MetroWest Community Health Care Foundation
Framingham
 

I AM consistently surprised by those who are opposed to the "housing first" model even before they have a complete understanding of the model and its underlying objectives.

I spent about two years operating an outreach program working with homeless people living on the streets in Cambridge and Somerville. Some of those people had lived on the street or in area shelters for more than 20 years. Now I manage permanent supported housing programs. Many of the tenants in our programs are the same people I worked with on the streets.

In my experience, housing people is more complex and just plain more work than sheltering them. It is certainly more work than letting them flounder on the streets.

However, if the end result is that the Commonwealth is able to save money and provide housing to the homeless simultaneously, what is there to dispute? 

Gordon Calkins
Program Manager Shelter Inc.
Cambridge