Why now?

The time is right to take advantage of a rare consensus about the solution to long-term homelessness, and growing momentum as the Administration, Congress, and communities across the nation have adopted the goal of ending chronic homelessness in ten years.

-- Nan Roman,
President and CEO, National Alliance to End Homelessness

Supportive housing presents a cost-effective solution to the seemingly intractable issue of long-term homelessness. Fast forward ten years. If we fully leverage the opportunities created by this unprecedented Partnership, our poorest, most vulnerable citizens will be living in decent housing with the support they need to be as healthy and independent as possible.

-- Carla Javits,
Past President and CEO, Corporation for Supportive Housing

Ending homelessness is about empowerment. It’s about finding ways to help people to help themselves.  It is about applying diligent and thoughtful guidance that enables each individual and each family to acquire self-reliance and independence.  The people who help make that happen are among the most talented and dedicated and patient that I have ever worked with.

-- Robert Hohler
Executive Director, The Melville Charitable Trust

Chronic homelessness is an issue that cuts across many funders’ interests – from health and health care, mental illness, and child welfare to prisoner reentry, poverty, and community development. No single funder or provider can solve it alone, and we cannot solve it without the involvement of both the private and public sectors.

-- Risa Lavizzo-Mourey,
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
(Source: Grantmakers In Health, Issue Focus newsletter, March 6, 2006)

The fact that people who live on the streets are a major expense for the community is counter-intuitive. So is the notion that permanent supportive housing saves money. Yet, these are the realities being discovered by communities across the country.

-- Philip Mangano,
Executive Director, White House's Interagency Council on Homelessness

A concerted national strategy is needed to prevent homelessness, and to end quickly discrete episodes of homelessness if they become inevitable. That strategy must include new housing resources as well as community-building strategies that address the societal factors contributing to homelessness. Each community must work to supply affordable housing, improve schools, and provide support services for those in need. Only strategies that address systemic problems as well as provide emergency relief can eliminate homelessness in this country.

-- Martha R. Burt, The Urban Institute
From What Will It Take to End Homelessness

We have to do more than just manage homelessness. The intent of this plan is to move from a system focused on providing temporary shelter to a system that moves people quickly into permanent housing and provides social services to address the problems that caused them to become homeless.

-- Richard Daley, Mayor of Chicago
Getting Housed, Staying Housed

People who are chronically homeless and who are not housed create very, very difficult circumstances in our cities. And wouldn’t it make better sense - wouldn’t our sense of fairness and justice be met by providing them with a supportive housing unit? This is not the 1980s when we were bewildered by this phenomenon. We understand it. We know what works. So the question is, do we have the will to actually implement what we know works, and what, quite frankly, doesn’t cost us any more money to do?

-- Darren Walker, The Rockefeller Foundation
July 18, 2006 Interview with National Public Radio,
“Searching for Strategies to Help the Homeless”

The plight of these vulnerable [homeless] families affects the broader community and all concerned citizens. Homelessness and the lack of affordable housing contributes to children failing in school, family violence, and loss of employment.

-- Bart Peterson, Mayor of Indianapolis
Blueprint to End Homelessness:
An Initiative of the Indianapolis Housing Task Force 

It is unbelievable that as a country we allow hundreds of thousands of people to live on the streets, people who are ill, elderly and even children.There is a level of compassion but there is a fundamental failure of the government to respond.

-- West Hollywood Council member Jeffrey Prang
Source: Plan to House Homeless Vets Pending Decision

What unites us all, what powers us all – our board, our staff, our tremendous grantee partners – is the vision of a society where everyone has a place that they can call home – safe, decent, affordable places in healthy, economically sound and supportive communities.

It is a vision we all believe can be achieved. We are sure that some day, sooner rather than later, others will look back upon this time and say: “In such great country with such unbelievable resources what on earth took them so long?”

-- Stephen Melville
Chairman of the Board, Melville Charitable Trust
Remarks upon receiving the National Low Income Housing Coalition Leadership Award, April 27, 2004

For many years I have lived and worked with the conviction that what ought to be, can be, with the will to make it so. May we raise up in this country an army of thinking...That This Job Ought To Be Done, Can Be Done, Will Be Done!

--Jim Rouse
Founder of the Enterprise Foundation
The American City Award Acceptance Speech, People for the American Way, New York, November 1993

We as a society have been able to generate cures for some of the most atrocious diseases, go to places that are out of this world, and invent items that are essential to our way of life. In Houston, our community housed well over 200,000 people who evacuated from the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina because our community and our leaders said we should make sure these families and individuals are housed. With that backdrop, I am confident we can do the same for people who are currently homeless.

-- Anthony Love
President and CEO,
Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County

Although a comprehensive approach to solving homelessness in any community takes a determined amount of political will and ingenuity among dozens of public and private entities, the alternative is drain on taxpayer dollars that far eclipses the kind of investment required for smart local planning to solve the problem.

-- Katie Hong
Co-Chair, Sound Families Initiative
Interim Director, Pacific Northwest programs,
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation