Tacoma's "Housing First" Program
The Tribune’s Niki Sullivan has an article today discussing Tacoma’s first year of the “Housing First” program. The program, as its name would suggest, provides free housing for the chronic homeless without attaching goals or preconditions (ie, being “clean and sober”).
From the article:
Simple, but it works, according to research released last month by Richard Anderson-Connolly and Allison Beller of the University of Puget Sound.
bq. “Research has demonstrated that Housing First saves money, contributes to decreases in social service use and, perhaps most importantly, keeps clients housed,” they wrote in “Tacoma’s Housing First Program, The First Year.”
bq. Specifically, they found that it works in Tacoma, where the city has budgeted $1 million in the past two years to house and manage about 50 homeless people. That amount pays for lodging as well as several full-time caseworkers who visit at least once per week.
The article also alludes to Tacoma’s other efforts to fight homelessness, including banning homeless camps and roadside panhandling.
What do you think? Should we be doing more? Or would you rather see the money going toward something else?
Link to The Tribune
Filed under: General, Open-For-Comment
1 comments
D Douglas Tooley October 27, 2008
Another worthwhile tangent –
As you may recall congress passed a Foreclosure relief program this summer, before the crash.
That program included 4 Billion for community rehab of foreclosed properties. Granted programs have until November 15 to publish guidelines.
Although individual Communities do have programs there are none in Washington State that do – there is a single pool of 30 million, less than 1% of the total nationwide.
Community comment will be short, complete by Dec. 1.
I’m not up on the stats on foreclosures by County, etc, but I’d guess there are areas in Tacoma that rank high, at least relative to the rest of the State.