The Patrick administration is vowing a strong commitment to fighting homelessness in the wake of the revelation that Massachusetts bucks a trend of improvement nationwide.
''The administration has a comprehensive plan in place,'' said Phil Hailer, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Urban Development, ''and hopefully the results will speak for themselves in the future.''
Among the administration's initiatives:
- Patrick has proposed increases in the 2008 and 2009 state budgets for the Department of Housing and Community Development to expand affordable housing opportunities, Hailer said. DHCD's budget for 2009 is set at $138 million, with further increases for the state's public housing operating subsidies.
"Considering that public housing serves the state's poorest families and individuals who are at risk of homelessness, this increase in operating subsidy is very important,'' Hailer said.
- Patrick has signed a $1.25 billion housing bond bill to serve the state's affordable housing needs over the next five years, $500 million of which is slated to tackle an enormous backlog of public housing repairs and renovations, Hailer said.
''There are situations where you might be able to put a homeless person in public housing, but you may see entire buildings offline; they need to be totally redone,'' Hailer said. "There hasn't been enough funding over the years to keep up maintenance."
- A five-year plan, devised by the Commission to End Homelessness, also is in effect, with the goal of creating six regional pilot homeless prevention networks with $10 million in state-approved aid to rehouse families and provide them with economic stability by 2013.
According to a Housing and Urban Development report issued last month, the number of homeless nationwide decreased approximately 12 percent between 2005 and 2007, with an even larger decline in the number of people who are chronically homeless.
HUD spokesman Brian Sullivan credited investment by many states in permanent housing, as opposed to emergency shelters.
In Massachusetts, the number of homeless rose nearly 11 percent from 2006 to 2007.
State officials and homeless advocates place the blame squarely on high housing costs, an ongoing foreclosure crisis and a weak economy.
"It's a blend of a lot of things,'' Hailer said. "Massachusetts is one of the highest housing-costs states in the country and it's been that way for some time - that's no secret.''
The HUD report indicates there were 15,127 homeless people living in the Bay State as of January 2007.
"If you think it can't be you, think again,'' said Barbara Trevisan, director of communications at the Pine Street Inn in Boston. "People from all kinds of backgrounds have things happen in their lives that can bring them here.''
Robyn Frost, executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, attributes the rise in statewide homelessness to a housing crash that hit the Bay State early - about a year before the rest of the country - and to the rising costs of gas and heating fuel.
"Families are struggling right now with gas costs, heating costs in winter - that really is what's (pushing) low-income households into homelessness rapidly,'' she said. "Many of them are just falling off the abyss.''
But while family homelessness is up, individual or chronic homelessness is declining in Boston, thanks to a number of state government-funded programs, Trevisan said.
"Things are pretty steady here in terms of the numbers that we see,'' she said. "We have been very successful in getting certain chronic homeless people housed, getting them stabilized in permanent or transitional housing, rather than in a shelter bed, and getting them the kinds of services they need.''