Campaign to Combat Homelessness Is Working

Posted by on June 07, 2006

The experimental "housing first" program, which places the homeless directly into apartments, appears to be working, according to a story in Wednesday's New York Times.

The policy has accelerated a national movement that has reduced the number of chronically homeless in more than 20 cities. This movement has been spurred, in part, by Philip F. Mangano, a Bush appointee who has spent the past five years visiting with city mayors and governors.

Mangano emphasizes that it is cheaper to put the chronically homeless right into apartments, and provide medical and addiction treatments there, than to watch them cycle endlessly through shelters, soup kitchens, emergency rooms, detoxification centers and jails.

Read the full story here.