Blog: Homelessness Ends Here

Welcome to our latest weekly summary of timely, breaking news analysis and observations from the homelessness blog world. We’ve gathered here highlights from various blogs and e-newsletters that we follow, which we thought might be of interest to those in our network. Also be sure to check out our Week in Tweets summary of breaking news from the @FundersTogether Twitter feed.

Let us know in the comments section if we missed any important news this week – or if you have any favorite sources (secret or otherwise) you think we should be following – we’d love to hear from you!

And now for some of the week’s highlights…

Monday

Kicking off the week, in Missing the Boat on Cost Containment, OMB Director Peter Orszag addressed concerns raised by various "naysayers" that opportunities for containing health care costs in the latest versions of the health bill are missing:

Fred Hiatt in today’s Washington Post is the latest of these naysayers, writing in his column that the two biggest steps that can be taken to reduce the rate of health care cost growth — changes in health care’s tax treatment and an independent Medicare commission — are missing.  I agree with Hiatt on the potential substantial benefits in terms of cost containment from these two changes. But a note to readers who have not read their Washington Post the past few weeks: the Senate Finance Committee bill includes both of these measures.

Also on Monday, the National Low Income Housing Coalition's weekly "Memo to Members" featured a new report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University on "Impacts and Implications of the Voucher Program."

The new report shows that vouchers were most effective in improving neighborhood quality for those families receiving welfare who were initially living in neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of poverty, especially those living in public housing. For the subgroup of people living in public or assisted housing, use of the voucher lowered the proportion of families residing in neighborhoods with over 30% poverty by 49 percentage points and increased the proportion living in 20% to 30% poverty neighborhoods by 28 percentage points.

The authors also delve further into the subject of homelessness, building off of the Housing Voucher Evaluation’s confirmations that use of housing assistance reduces homelessness. This new study looks more specifically at characteristics that make people more prone to homelessness. The study finds the best predictor to be initial housing instability, whether that be not having a place of one’s own or moving frequently. Not having a place of one’s own increased the probability of being homeless at some point in the next four years by 8.7 percentage points.

Tuesday

On Tuesday, the Corporation for Supportive Housing released Our Reach, the organization's 2008 Annual Report on progress towards its goal of creating 150,000 units of permanent supportive housing. Highlights of CSH activities included in the reported included:

• Closing 84 loans totaling over $40 million for new supportive housing creation and passing the $200 million mark in lending and grant making, since our inception
• Adding over 5,100 units of supportive housing to the development pipeline
• Adding over 15,000 units of supportive housing through our federal policy efforts
• Leveraging $800 million to support the creation of supportive housing through our state and local public policy efforts

Wednesday

Big news from Los Angeles on Wednesday, where the 2009 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count revealed a 38% drop in homelessness within L.A. County from 2007 to 2009. Many local experts were wary of the figures, but cautiously optimistic about their accuracy. First, in New Homeless Numbers for L.A. What did we expect?, on the Poverty and Inequality Blog, Bill Pitkin writes:

When the 2007 numbers came out lower than 2005, a common justification was that the count became more precise as the methodology improved, implying that the earlier count wasn’t as accurate. Having been briefed on this year’s methodology, I agree that the 2009 count is the most reliable we’ve had yet. But, it still begs the question of whether we’re really seeing declines. As one news article characterizes it, “whether the drop was real or the by-product of fuzzy math in previous years, is hard to say.”

Joel John Roberts at the InForum Blog sounds a similar tune in A 38 Percent Drop In Homelessness In The Past Two Years In Los Angeles... Is It Real?:

I’m sure the food banks, shelters, transitional housing, and drop-in centers around the county will laugh at this announcement. Especially since they are seeing an unprecedented demand for services. Even local cities are seeing more of their citizens in fear of being homeless.

But I have to say one thing. After 13 years of leading a homeless agency here in Los Angeles, I actually think the number of homeless in 2009 is accurate. For the past four years, I’ve always thought the number of homeless in Los Angeles County is about 50,000 people.

My concern, however, is not in the number, but in the announcement that homelessness has dramatically decreased. The cities that actually count every homeless person in their jurisdiction (Long Beach, Santa Monica, Pasadena) are not seeing a 38% decrease. The numbers are usually the same or slightly higher.

Finally, the Huffington Post's new Homelessness Impact Blog continued it's comprehensive coverage of the issue with an overview of  the new Reducing Emergency Department Utilization through Coordination and Empowerment (REDUCE) Act (S. 1781), which would establish state Medicaid pilot programs to better coordinate care for frequent emergency room users and also save taxpayers' money. In REDUCE Act Cuts Health Care Costs, Helps End Homelessness, CSH President and CEO Deb DeSantis writes:

One way to more effectively control costs is to rein in the overuse and misuse of hospital emergency rooms and other costly crisis services. One might ask, "What does this have to do with the goal of ending homelessness?" Actually, years of research have clearly demonstrated that a small subset of patients termed "frequent users," many of whom are homeless, consume expensive publicly-funded, emergency health services at disproportionately high levels. Why?

First, many frequent users are uninsured and emergency rooms are their only health care option. Second, less expensive community care providers have difficulty getting reimbursed by Medicaid for the comprehensive services this population needs.

Finally, a lack of funds for the health, mental health and substance use treatment some people need to maintain stable housing, means that many remain homeless. They "survive" on the streets until their untreated health or mental health issues create a crisis situation, requiring expensive emergency care. Once treated in the ER, they return to the streets, where their health will again deteriorate, resulting in yet another trip to the ER. The cycle will continue because the coordination of multiple health, mental health and housing organizations that would be necessary to fully address -- and successfully manage -- the complex and serious health care needs of many frequent users, is not possible within an emergency room.