It makes economic sense to house the homeless, George Bush's main adviser on the issue tells Carl O'Brien
Something remarkable is happening on the streets of many US cities. For 20 years, the problem of homelessness had been getting worse. Thousands of people who had been sleeping rough had ricocheted between the streets, hospitals, jails and homeless shelters. The scourge of homelessness seemed as intractable as ever.
Yet since a major initiative got under way in 2003, major reductions in street homelessness are being recorded for the first time. The decline is in the order of 13 per cent in New York; 26 per cent in Dallas; 28 per cent in San Francisco, 20 per cent in Miami and 50 per cent in Philadelphia.
"For the last 20 years, we funded programmes, expanded resources and the problem only got worse," says Philip Mangano, executive director of the White House's Interagency Council on Homelessness, who is visiting Ireland to take part in a seminar organised by the Dublin-based Homeless Agency.
"If the status quo had worked, we'd be applauding it, investing in it. Now we're setting a new marker. We're not just managing the problem, we're ending it."
The key to recent progress has been a more business-oriented approach towards solving the problem through concentrating resources on the 10 per cent of long-term homeless people, providing supported housing for them as soon as possible, along with detox and counselling services.Why the focus on this cohort?
Research shows they consume a disproportionate amount of resources and have much more complicated health problems such as mental illness or addiction issues.
One study that Mangano cites to illustrate the cost of long-term homelessness is a research project in San Diego that tracked 15 homeless people for 18 months and found that they cost the city $3 million (€2.3 million), or $200,000 per person. Yet at the end of the study, these same 15 people were homeless, languishing in the same shelters and experiencing the same poor quality of life.
A supported housing place, on the other hand, would have cost $13,000 - $25,000 a year.
"We could have rented ocean-side penthouse condos with sweeping views of the Pacific, provided concierges to attend to their every whim, and it would have been less expensive," jokes Mangano, who speaks about tackling homelessness with a missionary zeal, leavened with good humour and sparkling anecdotes.
The idea isn't necessarily new - Irish charities and agencies have been pursuing a "housing first" strategy for some years. In fact, he applauds the Irish response to homelessness as being at the forefront of countries responding to homelessness from a "results-oriented" perspective.
However, in the US, Mangano's emphasis on cost-benefit analysis, partnership with the public and private sector and marshalling of political will - all under the banner of a 10-year plan to end long-term homelessness - is making waves in the field of homeless services.
He insists, however, that its not all a business model. Mangano, who formerly worked in a homeless food distribution service in Boston, insists there is still room for the compassion which has characterised the traditional response to homelessness.
"You don't leave behind the moral, spiritual and human dimension to tackling homelessness. You've got to keep a good grip on them, because they're fuel for the effort. But when you add the economic impact to the moral and spiritual dimension, then you can drive political will towards solution."