Reed unveils $2.2B homelessness plan

PROVIDENCE – U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, joined by local advocates for the homeless, today unveiled a $2.2 billion homelessness-prevention initiative.
“Homelessness is a pervasive problem that touches every state across the nation,” he told the 10:30 a.m. gathering at Amos House. Joining him were Eileen Hayes, president and CEO of the South Providence-based shelter and social services center; and Jim Ryczek, executive director of Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless.
“While strides have been made to reduce homelessness over the last couple of years, the current economic decline has halted such progress,” added Reed, who is a senior member of the Banking Committee that oversees federal housing policy. “We have already seen tent cities forming, shelters turning away people in need and most major cities reporting double digit increases in the numbers of families experiencing homelessness.”
Homeless shelters across Rhode Island served 6,773 people – including 1,558 children in the 2006-2007 season – the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless has said. Nationwide, 2.5 million to 3.5 million people are homeless at some point each year, according to the Homelessness Research Institute at the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH).
Over the next two years, the alliance estimates an additional 1.5 million U.S. men, women and children are likely to experience homelessness because of the recession. “This means more trauma for children and adults, more dislocation from schools and communities, and more of a drain on local community services,” the NAEH said.
In Rhode Island, the number of people experiencing homelessness was 43 percent higher in February than in the same month a year ago, according to the latest data from the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless. And the number citing foreclosure as their reason for becoming homeless has tripled over the past eight months.
To tackle the problem, Reed and fellow sponsor U.S. Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., have introduced the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing Act of 2009 (HEARTH Act). Eleven other senators – including Sheldon Whitehouse, the junior senator from Rhode Island, and former presidential candidates Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., John Kerry, D-Mass., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn. – joined them as co-sponsors of the Reed-Bond bill.
“This bill invests $2.2 billion for targeted homelessness assistance grants and provides local communities with greater flexibility to spend the money on programs that work,” Reed said in his statement today.
“We cannot afford to ignore this problem,” he continued. “My bipartisan legislation combines federal dollars with new incentives to help local communities assist families on the brink of becoming homeless. It is a wise investment of federal resources that will save taxpayers money in the long run by preventing homelessness, promoting the development of permanent supportive housing and optimizing self-sufficiency.”
Although the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) provides cities and towns with $1.5 billion to help prevent homelessness, programs assisting already-homeless families “are facing increasingly cash-strapped budgets,” the senator’s office noted.
Reed’s HEARTH Act would: reauthorize the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1987; consolidate three homeless-assistance programs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD); and “allow more funding to flow to communities that can demonstrate a commitment to accomplishing the goals of preventing and ending homelessness,” his office said.
The measure also would:
• Establish a new Emergency Solutions Grant program, allowing cities and towns to use up to 20 percent of funds, or $440 million, to aid people who live in unstable situations, such as severe overcrowding or those who are about to be evicted.
• Give communities greater flexibility in spending on homelessness prevention.
• Require HUD to provide incentives for implementing proven homelessness-reduction strategies, such as rapid re-housing programs for homeless families.
• Expand the definition of homelessness – the basis for determining eligibility for aid under many programs – to include people who will lose their homes in 14 days, rather than the current seven.
• Expand that definition to include people who are fleeing domestic violence and other dangerous situations.
• Designate 30 percent of total funds for new permanent housing for families and individuals with disabilities, and require that at least 10 percent go to permanent housing for families with children.
“We applaud Sen. Jack Reed for being a national leader on the issues of homelessness and affordable housing,” said Ryczek, of the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless.
The HEARTH Act “is a much-needed remedy, as it provides the flexibility and innovation needed to address the dire economic times we are facing and the new problems of foreclosure and family homelessness that we are experiencing. This bill will make a tremendous impact in our ability, here in Rhode Island, to assist those who are becoming homeless due to foreclosure, eviction and unemployment,” Ryczek said.
Hayes, the Amos House president and chief executive, described the measure as “a breath of fresh air and a sign of hope,” that comes “at a time of growing homelessness in Rhode Island.” The HEARTH Act, she said, “may be the answer we have all been waiting for, to finally see the end of homelessness in our state.”

Besides the NAEH, groups endorsing the HEARTH Act include the Consortium for Citizens With Disabilities’ Housing Task Force; the Corporation for Supportive Housing; Habitat for Humanity; the Housing Assistance Council; the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI); the National Association of Counties; the National Association of Local Housing Finance Agencies; the National Community Development Association; the National Housing Conference; the Technical Assistance Collaborative; and the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Information about the U.S. Congress is available at www.gov.com/branch/legislative, while information about legislation pending before the Senate or House of Representatives is available from the Library of Congress at thomas.loc.gov.
The Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless, founded in 1988, is a statewide public policy research and advocacy group. For more information, visit www.RIHomeless.com.

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