Tucson Mayor Robert Walkup this week launched a 10-Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness for his city, the oldest in Arizona. During a press conference at City Hall, Mayor Walkup also recognized the recent award of almost $5 million in federal homeless investments to Tucson from the United States Departments of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, and Labor. The Tucson awards for employment, treatment, and veterans were part of over $160 million in federal investment announced at the Council's meeting on September 29. United States Interagency Council on Homelessness Executive Director Philip Mangano, invited to participate in the press event, joined federal partners from a total of five federal agencies to note the city's accomplishments in competing successfully for federal funds. When Director Mangano thanked the Mayor for his commitment to the 10-Year Planning process, noting that Tucson now joins over 155 cities nationwide who have moved forward with 10-Year Plans, Mayor Walkup vowed that Tucson's plan will be "a national model for the rest of the country."

Federal awards announced at the Tucson event were:

• Department of Health and Human Services. The United States Department of Health and Human Services awarded $2 million each to COPE Behavioral Services Inc., Old Pueblo Community Foundation, and the University of Arizona for treatment services for persons experiencing homelessness. The COPE award will support an Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) team, and the University of Arizona award will be directed to re-entry services. Director Mangano is shown here at left, with (left to right) Old Pueblo Community Foundation Executive Director Nick Jones, Mayor Walkup, and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Regional Director Calise Munoz.
• Department of Veterans Affairs. Southern Arizona Veterans Affairs Health Care System FACHE Director Jonathan H. Gardner and Clinical Director of Rehabilitation Programs Steven Cohen announced $750,000 in awards to Operation Desert Hope, a partnership between Esperanza en Escalante and Comin' Home for chronically mentally ill homeless veterans.
• Department of Labor. U.S. Department of Labor Veterans Employment and Training Services Assistant Director Fred Mendoza announced $200,000 to Pima County Community Services, Employment and Training Department to fund the Jackson Employment Center.

More federal partners were in attendance to support the partnerships of federal, state and local governments with Tucson-based organizations addressing the needs of homeless people, including Social Security Administration District Manager Dan Chavez and United States Department of Housing and Urban Development Field Office Director Sharon Atwell.

One interpretation of the origins of the name "Mississippi" is that it means "gathering of waters," and such a gathering has been in evidence in the state with the first two commitments to 10-Year Plans. Marking the public launch of his city's process - which makes Biloxi the first Mississippi city to move forward - Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway last week announced the appointment of his new 24-member Task Force to End Chronic Homelessness at the Martin Luther King Municipal Building in Biloxi. Stated Mayor Holloway, "I don't know that we have a tremendous homeless issue here in Biloxi, but I do know that I don't want it to ever become an issue."

The Task Force is a partnership of representatives from state and local government agencies, the faith-based community, and business and social service communities in Biloxi. Pictured here are Biloxi Task Force Co-Chair and South Trust Bank Vice President Donald Doyle, Mayor A.J. Holloway, United States Interagency Council on Homelessness Region IV Coordinator Michael German, and Task Force Co-Chair and Back Bay Mission Executive Director Reverend Shari Prestemont.

Building the gathering momentum in the state is the City of Jackson, which has announced an October 29 meeting of its new Working Group to End Chronic Homelessness, under the authority of Jackson Mayor Harvey Johnson, Jr.. Mayor Johnson has designed a Working Group of business leaders, including the real estate industry, downtown association, United Way, and local corporations; faith-based organizations; professional groups, including the Bar Association and Junior League; philanthropy; local education institutions; law enforcement, including the U.S. Attorney's office; city and county agencies, including health care; state agencies; persons experiencing homelessness, and homeless service providers.

Stating that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is in the middle of "a critical transformation" in the way it approaches homelessness, Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey keynoted the "ENDING HOMELESSNESS: From Paradigms to Practice - Eliminating Chronic Homelessness in Massachusetts," the annual conference of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance last week. Referring to the work of the Massachusetts Commission for Homeless Services Coordination created by Governor Romney in 2003 as the predecessor to the state's new Interagency Council on Homelessness and Housing, Lieutenant Governor Healey stated, "When the commission released its report last November, it confirmed what most of us already suspected: the state's homeless services are insufficient. The primary problem, however, is not necessarily related to funding . . . The primary problem with the state's homeless services, as the commission reported, is that they are not sufficiently coordinated, particularly across government departments and agencies. They apply a short-term patchwork approach to a problem that requires a long-term, unified solution."

United States Interagency Council Executive Director Philip Mangano, who made opening remarks at the conference, joined San Francisco 10-Year Planning Council Chair Angela Alioto and Massachusetts Commissioners from the Departments of Mental Health, Correction, Public Health, and Veterans Services for the event.

Calling the state's challenge "steep," Lieutenant Governor Healey pointed to innovations and outcomes that have already resulted from a new approach. Previously, individuals seeking state housing assistance had to fill out a different application for each community in which they were interested in living. An applicant interested in a dozen different communities would have to file 12 different applications. The state's Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) developed a universal application - one standard application form and one emergency application form. Today, applicants can send these forms to the local housing authorities of their choice. DHCD is now working to put the entire system on-line. Lieutenant Governor Healey also described the state's success in ending the use of welfare hotels for homeless families, an initiative that, under the leadership of Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance Commissioner John Wagner, was reported in a prior e-news story.

The Lieutenant Governor highlighted the need for better pre-release planning for persons in state systems, a topic the Boston Globe editorialized on in that same day's edition, calling "promising" and "a bold move" the state's creation of eight new regional prisoner re-entry centers providing assistance with housing, employment, and health-related needs. The state-funded the centers with $9 million in U.S. Department of Justice funds previously destined to create new prison beds. According to Lieutenant Governor Healey, who came to her elected office from a criminal justice background, the state's "smart on crime" approach should also realize savings through reduced recidivism.

"We are working on dropping homelessness from our name. We are determined to end homelessness in Alaska," stated Alaska Coalition on Housing and Homelessness President Gordon Howell at a co-convened meeting of the new Alaska State Interagency Council on Homelessness and the Alaska Coalition on Housing and Homelessness in Anchorage last week. Members of the Coalition addressed the State Interagency Council and expressed their support for a state plan to end homelessness and their goal of partnership. "We are the people on the front line, and we want to support this state effort in any way we can. We are grateful to the Governor for establishing the interagency council. His timing couldn't have been better," said Coalition President Howell.

New York City's Pathways to Housing Executive Director and Founder Dr. Sam Tsemberis keynoted the event, relating the experiences that led him to establish Pathways to Housing after years of working with street outreach teams and drop-in center programs and encountering innumerable barriers in securing housing for his clients who were living on the streets and had disabilities. Established in 1992 and currently housing over 450 individuals, Pathways to Housing moves individuals from shelters and the streets directly into permanent housing. Pathways offer a wide variety of intensive support services based on the Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) model. Success is evident from year 2000 data showing that 88% of the program's tenants remained housed after five years.

Alaska Council members heard from expert witnesses including Social Security representative Paul Brandt on developing protocols for pre-release approval of benefits for prisoners, and the Department of Transportation's innovative "United We Ride" initiative for coordination of public transportation for access to housing and services. The new Alaska Interagency Council on Homelessness met for the first time in July in Juneau, and this second meeting was held in Anchorage as a public hearing to hear the concerns of the community and to focus on developing solutions. Dan Fauske, CEO of the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, serves as the chair of the State ICH and is pictured here at the inaugural meeting with Director Mangano.

FOR THIS ISSUE, the e-newsletter focuses on remarks made by United States Interagency Council on Homelessness Executive Director Philip Mangano, who last week participated in a transatlantic dialogue on housing and homelessness sponsored by the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University.

"We've come to realize through these conversations how similar so many of the issues are in our countries. Similar populations most at risk of homelessness; similar emergency responses; similar barriers to change; similar national strategies to plan and perform. There are, of course, differences in scope, magnitude, strategy, target populations, and focus. There are ample opportunities to learn from one another in these differences as there is in our agreements."

"From a distance we admired your Rough Sleepers Initiative. And when we looked more closely the RSI had public and research results. We wanted to know how, who when, where, and how many. Similarly, when we heard that the Canadians' National Homelessness Initiative, represented here tonight by Jeff Bullard, had new ideas about rural homelessness, we went there."

"For too long the issue of homelessness eluded a performance metric. For too long there was no management agenda attending to the response. As a result, ad hoc, crisis intervention responses reported on inputs, but had little to say about outcomes, results. Slowly, we've encouraged an approach that simply indicates that our investments be research and data driven, performance based and results oriented. And the result we are looking for is the ending of chronic homelessness."

In the City of Long Beach, California, the Department of Health and Human Services last week presented their proposed 10-Year Planning process to Mayor Beverly O'Neill and City Council members in a two-part event. In a morning press event, City officials from the Department of Human and Social Services unveiled the City's 2004 Homeless Assessment. The City Council then convened an afternoon 'study session' where Council Members heard the details of the proposed 10-Year Plan strategy and the planning process. Under this proposal, Mayor O'Neill would co-chair the steering committee for the Plan. The City Council agreed to work with the Health Department over the next two months to reach a final decision on how to develop the 10-Year Plan for Long Beach.

Long Beach's strategic summary prepared for the study session cited potential cost savings in high-cost publicly-funded services (such as law enforcement and emergency room care), as well as housing stability and retention for persons experiencing homelessness as expected results from the planning process. The strategy proposes a mayorally appointed and co-chaired Steering Committee to be coordinated by the City Manager, with a cross-section of public and private partners, and staffing provided by the Health Department.

To ensure coordination and integration with Los Angeles County, the City of Long Beach is participating in the County's plan to end homelessness, entitled "Partnership to End Homelessness - Bring LA Home." Long Beach is one of three cities in the County (also including Glendale and Pasadena) that is developing its own 10-year strategy. In addition to the participation of the Mayor, City Manager's Office, and City Council in the study session, the City Attorney, City Clerk, City Prosecutor, and United States Interagency Council Region IX Coordinator Eduardo Cabrera also took part in the study session.

WITH THIS ISSUE, the e-newsletter continues its focus on innovative initiatives achieving results in ending homelessness. Using clear performance targets backed up by top-level commitment and ongoing specific outcome measurements to track progress, the British Government continues to achieve success in tackling homelessness. Britain's dramatic success in achieving a 2/3 reduction in "rough sleeping" (known in the U.S. as chronic homelessness) has been well publicized. As described here, the success of the Rough Sleepers Initiative has produced other concrete results: opening the door for new initiatives in other areas of homelessness, as well as for new investment, based on the documented outcomes in the Rough Sleepers Initiative. Policymakers and legislators, convinced by the evidence in the Rough Sleepers Initiative, next targeted the needs of homeless families with children.

Britain's recent success in curtailing the use of Bread & Breakfast hotels (B&B) for families (the equivalent of "welfare hotels" used in the U.S.) has turned the corner on the existing practice of placing families long-term in these settings. Just two years ago, encouraged by the demonstrated results of the Rough Sleepers Initiative, the British Government set a target to end the use of hotels within two years, and the B&B unit, part of the Homelessness Directorate within the Office of Deputy Prime Minister, was allocated 35 million pounds in the 2002/2003-budget cycle to use toward achieving the target. The Government committed to restrict B&B placement to less than 6 weeks and for emergency use only.

On May 4, 2004, the British Government declared that the ambitious target established just two years earlier had been met, with Minister for Homelessness Jeff Rooker stating: "If trends in temporary B&B accommodation use had continued, there would now be between 8500 and 9700 families in B&B long term. Local authorities across the whole of England are now making reliance on B&B a thing of the past by preventing homelessness, finding better forms of accommodation, and pursuing innovative ways to offer families with children a better future."

The latest results, achieved through a greater focus on homelessness prevention and access to permanent accommodations, add to the measurable results of Britain's approach and have taken Britain from a March 2002 level of 4000 families with children living in B&B accommodations for over 6 months to a March 2004 figure of just 28 families still living in B&Bs for over six months.

Government research has shown both social and fiscal costs in the B&B system. In 2001, a report issued by the British Government, entitled "More Than a Roof" described how long term placements in temporary B&B accommodations often led to "social isolation" for families and that health and behavioral problems were greater among these homeless children. Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy figures on local authority expenditures across England and Wales also showed that while the use of B&Bs made up just 15% of total temporary accommodations, they accounted for 55% of the costs incurred by local authorities.

Working with local authorities, which have statutory responsibility for meeting housing needs, the B&B unit used the new resources to develop a program of practical and innovative measures to achieve the 2004 target. These measures included (1) allocating 25 million pounds to 44 local authorities to develop alternative temporary accommodations to replace the poor quality B&B hotels, (2) establishing teams of specialist advisors to work with the local authorities to develop more effective prevention programs and increase access to private rental housing and (3) developing agreed upon Action Plans with the top 50 authorities which had the highest number of families with children living in B&Bs.

Local authorities were encouraged to increase the supply of alternative temporary accommodations through private rentals or direct leasing and to use mobility and under-occupation incentives to maximize permanent housing opportunities. Among the prevention efforts promoted were mediation services for families in relationship difficulties, rent deposit guarantees to help families obtain housing in the private rented sector, "landlord advice services" to reduce evictions and "debt and welfare counseling" to help families sustain tenancies. The B&B unit also instituted a series of good practice summits for local authorities. The B&B reduction target has now been incorporated into statute giving families the power to take local authorities to court if they are placed in a B&B for more than the six-week limit.

The recognition of the unsuitability of B&B's as temporary accommodations for homeless families with children and the effort to eliminate their use for this purpose is but one part of the continuing broad approach taken by the British Government to tackle the key issues surrounding homelessness. In addition to the Rough Sleepers and B&B reduction targets, The Homelessness Act of 2002 has placed a new duty on local authorities to undertake a detailed homelessness review leading to specific local authority plans which identify the key local drivers of homelessness and incorporate effective local solutions.

United States Interagency Council on Homelessness Executive Director Philip Mangano last week participated in a transatlantic dialogue on housing and homelessness sponsored by the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University. While in England Director Mangano met with Britain's Terrie Alafat, head of the Homelessness Directorate and Canada's Jeff Bullard, Director of Research for the Canadian National Secretariat on Homelessness to exchange best practices.

"Many people are surprised when we even frame a discussion on homelessness in Oakland County," stated Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, speaking in Pontiac, Michigan, this week as his county kicked off its 10-Year Planning process with an announcement of a November 22 Community Summit. The Summit in the southeastern Michigan county, which includes Bloomfield, Farmington, and Royal Oak, will bring together private housing developers, rental property owners, employers, educators, law enforcement, and county officials. Oakland County Task Force on Homelessness' Tom Stowell reinforced the idea of partnership, stating, "I want to issue a call to action. We need the entire community's help to do this." The Summit is expected to result in an action plan for the county by mid-2005.

Oakland County 10-Year Plan partners will start the November Summit, which will focus on chronic homelessness and emphasize a Housing First strategy, with some data available about homelessness in the county. The South Oakland Shelter estimates it assists 500 people each year, at a cost of about $1,850 per person per month. The Oakland Intermediate School District estimates that 3,000 public school students are homeless in the area.