Press Room

How’s this for an idea: Find the thirty bleakest street cases in the city — the least loved of God’s creatures, the ones cops know by name. The ones purpled with scars, napping under loading docks, towing barges of trash bags, hectoring mailboxes, and yelling at phone poles. Build a handsome apartment building, staff it with social workers 24/7, and ask these lost, limited souls to move in, one tenant per fresh, furnished unit.

The Department of Veterans Affairs laid out Tuesday an ambitious five-year goal of curbing the number of homeless veterans, pledging $3.2 billion to an issue that is more rapidly affecting those who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars than by any from past conflicts.

The Social Innovation Forum, an initiative of Root Cause, has selected One Family, Inc. as one of 25 innovative, results-oriented nonprofit organizations competing to receive access to over $100,000 in cash and services. Over 45 leaders in business, philanthropy, and the nonprofit sector reviewed 135 applications across five Social Issue Tracks for the 2010 Social Innovator Award. The five Social Innovators will be announced and celebrated during an event in Cambridge on Tuesday, December 8, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

On the heels of news that more than 1,000 families in Massachusetts have overflowed the capacity of emergency homeless shelters and are instead living in motels paid for by the State, United Way today announced that the organization will invest $661,100 to advance the Housing First strategies of 13 organizations in Boston, Cambridge, Lynn, Lowell, Quincy and Somerville --communities that have all launched 10 year plans to end homelessness. These new funds will fuel the third year of United Way's strategy to fight homelessness in the region through a Housing First approach, which stabilizes families in permanent housing as a first step to recovery from chronic homelessness.

On any given night, an estimated 43,000 people are homeless in Los Angeles' Continuum of Care, according to the 2009 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Report (HC09), released today by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA). The number of homeless people in Los Angeles, while still the highest in the nation, represents an estimated 38% decrease from 2007.

Tom Keith of Sisters of Charity Foundation of South Carolina discusses the reauthorization of TANF and the implications for South Carolina.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Growth Philanthropy Network and Duke University on Tuesday announced the creation of a first-of-its kind collaboration of philanthropic funders, practitioners, researchers and others designed to make it easier for top-performing social programs to expand widely to communities that need them.

The Obama Administration held the second Full Council meeting of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness yesterday. It was the first meeting chaired by U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, who was elected chair by his fellow Cabinet Members and agency heads at the Council's first meeting on June 18, 2009. Members of the homeless advocacy community including the National Law Center on Homelessness and Policy, National Alliance to End Homelessness, and National Coalition for the Homeless attended and participated for the first time in several years.

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) today joined U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) to introduce the Reducing Emergency Department Utilization through Coordination and Empowerment (REDUCE) Act (S. 1781), which would address Emergency Room (ER) overuse, improve quality of care, and save taxpayers' money. The legislation would establish pilot programs to better coordinate care for frequent ER users.

Fearing another year of shriveled budgets and sky-high need, Charlotte-Mecklenburg leaders are pressing nonprofits to collaborate, or even merge, to improve efficiency and stretch donor dollars.