Blog: Homelessness Ends Here

Los Angeles has often been referred to as “the homeless capital of the world” and has a reputation as a bit of a basket case when it comes to addressing homelessness. With more than 70,000 homeless persons on any given night (a third of them chronically homeless), a highly visible concentration of street homeless in Skid Row, and famously uncoordinated public safety net systems, Los Angeles County is often thought of as beyond hope when it comes to successfully ending – or even reducing – homelessness. Despite these great challenges facing Los Angeles, there has been progress in addressing homelessness, especially chronic homelessness, in recent years.

On March 9th, Shelly Geballe, co-founder and current Distinguished Senior Fellow at Connecticut Voices for Children, presented an analysis of the “Federal Budget Overview as it relates to Connecticut” to a room full of funders in Hartford attending a summit on “Government and Philanthropy working together.”

See a breakdown of HUD stimulus dollars by state.

Every day I wade through dismal headlines and discouraging data. Perhaps most troubling is that communities that were once reporting declines in homelessness are now reporting significant increases, particularly among families.

A couple of weeks ago the head of one of the nation's leading funders reiterated it's long-held belief that housing is at the heart of nearly every key social issue funders face - an opinion we very much share at Funders Together. Here in it's entirety is the commentary from Jonathan Fanton, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

I spent a couple days in New Orleans recently learning about the recovery effort from Katrina. It was, in a word, stunning. I was stunned by the endurance of the devastation more than three years since the storms, as well as by the resilience and passion with which residents are rebuilding their great city.

Deciding whether funders need to shift from "grantmaking as usual" in the ongoing economic crisis is probably a foolish question - clearly, grantmaking as usual just won't cut it in the months and years ahead.

While the exact numbers have changed since it was initially created, this recent graphic from the Washington Post provides a fascinating look at the distribution and timing of the http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2009/02/01/GR2009020100154.gif.

Learn more about Funders Together's mission, goals and approaches, including a brief presentation of our Funding Principles for Ending Homelessness.