CoC Planning Fund inequalities

With the announcement of the new CoC awards, the pattern of significant inequality in planning grants for CoCs continues.  The current method that allocates 3% of the CoCs award is unfair at two levels:  1)  It doubles-down the bias toward high funded areas even though the connection between funding and homeless prevalence is often tenuous, and 2) It does not recognize the non-linear relationship of size to planning needs. 

Example:

Portland - PIT- 4,200  - Planning $632,000  - $22M CoC allocation

BOS Oregon - PIT - 5,600 - Planning allocation $99,000 - $3M CoC allocation

The NHIP continues to advocate for a planning allocation minimum of $25,000 and maximum of $500,000 with a more fair distribution in the middle.  The current formula particularly hurts Balance of State CoCs who have tremendous costs due to the large geographic areas and diverse communities that must be brought into the process.  The NHIP has requested HUD to change the allocation formula for upcoming funding years.  We urge other communities affected by this inequality.

Homeless services racial inequalities

Last week, HUD disseminated a new tool that allows communities to compare the rates of homelessness by race/ethnicity categories with their population and poverty prevalence.  Joe Savage of the USICH has written a brief blog about the issue for those interested.

With getting into the technical and methodological limitations and difficulties with this type of analysis, the NHIP's primary concern is part of larger problem that has impacted homeless services - mission creep. 

CoCs cannot be held responsible or should not even be concerned about the larger issue of racial inequality in the country.  This is beyond, way beyond, their own mission and purpose - especially since they cannot even handle what is on their current plate.  CoCs cannot impact the trend of single adult households which is the major causal factor in homelessness or the historical inequalities and household changes that impact the African-American and Native American populations.

CoCs and their agencies need to focus solely on:  1) Identification and enumeration of people who have long homeless tenures, 2) Re-housing these persons/families and 3) Keeping them rehoused.  The only current racial inequality with services involves three non-minority populations:  1) Males, 2) White Males and 3) Single adults in general.  These population are underrepresented in receipt of services compared to their homeless prevalence.

Rather than come up with these tools, HUD needs to do a much better job at identifying homeless persons' ethnicities by their correct affiliation, instead of collapsing people in such heterogeneous categories.  We can have six or seven choices for gender - can we not break down Asian, Hispanic, Black and even White?  Greeks have a family structure that is quite different than Scot-Irish and hence likely have much different patterns of social program participation.

And the biannual unsheltered homeless point in time count - that remains a non-priority for HUD and unfortunately too many communities - data an ommunity decisions continue to suffer.
 

SF Mayor wants more an old, failed solution

The new mayor of San Francisco London Breed wants to build an additional 1,000 new emergency shelters beds as a solution for giving people off the street.  This is especially frustrating since the current implementation is not actual working.  Data from the SF Homeless Department show only 24% of exits from their current Navigation Centers exit to some form of housing with only 14 of 204 exits recorded as moving to permanent housing during December.  November data is worse with only 5 of 125 exits (4%) moving to permanent housing  This is not the fault of the shelter staff - this is what shelters do, or rather do not do. The SF point in time count may likely show a decrease in the unsheltered count due to clearing of massive tent encampments since the last count in 2017 although the sheltered count will likely increase due to this campaign to open more shelters.
 

NHIP Editor educates Lion's Club

The NHIP Editor Michael Ullman was invited recently as a guest speaker at the Los Gatos Lion's Club located south of San Jose, CA.  Dr. Ullman presented "10 Things that you might NOT know about Homelessness" to a crowd of about 50 men and women.  The talk aimed to give people a broader understanding of the phenomenon of modern homelessness. 


Have a Nice Day -
The NHIP