Press Room

The number of Veterans homeless on a typical night dropped 18 percent as the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) entered the second year of its campaign to eliminate homelessness among Veterans within five years.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation announced today an additional $25 million allocation for social investments – a set of strategies that would use endowment dollars to generate financial returns as well as social returns that advance the Foundation’s mission to improve the lives of vulnerable children and families.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced today competitive research grants totaling nearly $6 million to 13 institutions to explore how housing matters to children, families, and communities. The grants will be used to produce a base of empirical evidence to show how housing affects children’s cognitive, emotional, and behavioral development and how housing choices shape the economic, physical, and emotional well-being of adults.

A radio interview with REDF's Carla Javits.

Hawaii has taken bold steps to house the homeless during the past few years, opening six new shelters since May 2006 and helping thousands of people with no roofs over their heads. Overall, the number of people taking refuge at homeless shelters on Oahu has grown steadily, reaching 5,311 in the last year, up from 3,857 in 2005, according to the Center on the Family at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. But Honolulu's street population shot up even faster.

Housing first isn't going to be a cure for all Anchorage's problems with alcohol. And it's not rehab for the people who live there. But studies show when you take chronic alcoholics off the streets, they drink less, and that means fewer visits to emergency rooms, the sleep-off center and jail. That saves a lot of public money.