Reed lauded for homeless, affordable-housing efforts

WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Jack Reed was honored by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty with its 2007 Steward McKinney Award, for his leadership in the fight against homelessness.
“Since becoming a member of Congress, [Reed] has worked tirelessly to increase funding for and reauthorize the McKinney-Vento Act,” Maria Foscarinis, the NLCHP’s executive director, said in a statement today.
He was the author of both the bipartisan Community Partnership to End Homelessness Act and the Services to End Long-Term Homelessness Act, which aimed to give communities the tools to place families and individuals in permanent housing.
“Throughout his career,” the group said, “Senator Reed has been a tireless champion for better access to affordable housing, and has led the effort to preserve the low-income tax credit, a tool that has helped fund construction of affordable housing for more than 3 million Americans.”
Studies have found that as many as 3.5 million Americans, nearly 40 percent of them children, experience homelessness each year, the NLCHP noted.
“Homelessness is an extremely complex and pervasive problem that touches every state across the nation,” Reed, a senior member of the Banking Committee that oversees federal housing policy, said in a statement. “No family, no vet returning form Iraq, no mentally ill person, no one at all should have to fall into homelessness in order to get help.
“Only by working in cross-sector alliances are we going to address the root causes of homelessness – a shortage of affordable housing, insufficient income and inadequate social services – and develop realistic, practical and community-based solutions.”
Others honored by the NLCHP yesterday, in a McKinney-Vento Awards ceremony entitled “Envisioning the Future: Reflecting on 20 years of the McKinney-Vento Act,” included basketball player Etan Thomas and U.S. District Court Judge Jay Zainey, both of whom received the Bruce F. Vento Award. Thomas, a forward with the NBA’s Washington Wizards, is a committed advocate for low-income and homeless Americans, including those affected by Hurricane Katrina. Zainey is the organizer of the Homeless Experience Legal Protection Program, or HELP, through which lawyers provide legal consultations and notary services at homeless centers in New Orleans.
The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, founded in 1989 by lawyer Maria Foscarinis, works to end homelessness through impact litigation, policy advocacy and public education. To learn more about the NLCHP and its McKinney-Vento Awards, visit www.nlchp.org.