Homelessness By Any Other Name ...

by Randall Amster

In the ongoing effort to address social problems primarily by talking about them rather than doing anything concrete, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is proposing a set of new definitions of homelessness in order to determine who will be eligible for HUD-funded homeless assistance programs. The proposed changes are in a "public comment" period through June 21, 2010, after which time they will take effect in substantially the proposed form. While this will affect access to certain services, the overall impact is more subtle, and the task of ending homelessness is still in need of much more than simple redefinitions.

Well, it's not all for naught, actually. As blogger David Henderson observed back in March, "If we are to end homelessness, we have to agree on what homelessness means, and how we measure it." In a subsequent piece, it was noted how egregiously HUD undercounts the homeless, potentially leaving multitudes quite literally out in the cold. Most significantly, the proposed new definitions appear to omit people without dependent children who are living in unstable situations, and furthermore extend the time of a required stay in an institution providing temporary residence from 30 to 90 days.

While these changes leave much to be desired, they will at least bring HUD into closer alignment with other agencies' definitions — including the overarching Federal Definition of Homelessness that codes a "homeless person" as "an individual who lacks a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence," or "who has a primary nighttime residence" that is either "a supervised publicly or privately operated shelter;" "an institution that provides a temporary residence;" or "a public or private place not designed for, or ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings." Essentially the federal standard encompasses anyone lacking a stable nighttime residence to which they are allowed to retreat without permission or exception.

In this light, the critical factor becomes housing, primarily its affordability and its fitness for human habitation.

http://homelessness.change.org/blog/view/homelessness_by_any_other_name_