The winter 2011 issue of The Public Manager kicks off with
a 3-article forum on homeless in the U.S. and what government can
do to make a difference. Having had first-hand
experience on these matters during my long government
career - including assignments with the U.S. Office of Economic
Opportunity (OEO) during the early years of the 'war on
poverty" and the US Department of Health, Education
& Welfare/Health & Human Services (HEW/HHS) - I
was interested to learn what 's different in 2012! Well, these
articles indicate that today's solutions are largely built around a
combination of: 1) sustained, creative intra- and
inter-governmental collaboration, 2) vigilant performance
measurement (at all levels) and 3) smarter governance.
The first article, contributed by U.S Department of Housing
& Urban development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan,
is "Ending
Homelessness in Our Time: Why Smart Government is
Key," offers a very promising overview -
particularly the "teasers" about actual case illustrations across
the country. One would like to learn more about the
innovative efforts already showing results in Cleveland, Chicago,
NYC, Greater KC, Nashville and the State of Utah and
such related apporaches as "HUDstat" and the varied HUD
partnerhsips with HHS, the US Departments of
Labor (DOL), Education (EDUC) and Veterans Affairs (VA). Are there
Web sites where we can learn more about these innovations AND their
measurable performance outcomes? I guess for that, we'll have to
dig further at HUD's Web
site - which I will do and report back in my next
post.
The second article,
Interagency Collaboration Moves the U.S. Closer to
Ending Homelessness authored by Barbara Poppe,
executive director of the US
Interagency Council on Homelessness, drills down
more deeply into the strategic planning,
goals, roadmap building AND numerical measures of
success that have gone into these efforts. The key to
all these multi-farious investments and undertakings at
different levels of government and the private sector is Opening
Doors Across America, "the nation's first (integrated)
strategic plan to prevent and end homelessness" which has four
goals: 1) ending chronic homelessness by 2015; 2) preventing
& ending homelessness among veterans by 2015; 3)
preveneting & ending homelssness for families, youth
& children by 2020; and 4) setting a path to end all
types of homelessness.
Finally, in the third article,
Homes Wiped Away by Natural Disasters, Frances Edwards, former
emergency preparedness director for San Jose CA,
shares poignant lessons from several natural
disaster-devestated communities that demonstrate what
kind of mitigation steps can be put in place to reduce
the extent of homelessness. Some of these measure include:
risk-based zoning, strict building codes, limitations on building
in flood zones and along fault lines, further requirements in wild
land and urban interface zones, etc. Again, further
probing needs to be done to share links to sites that provide
readers with more details on the rich case illustrations Ms.
Edwards refers to (including the Whittier Narrows earthquake of
1987, the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, the Oakland-Berkely Hilss
firestorm of 1991 and Hurricane Katrina less than six
years ago.
Please feel free to share more thoghts and details (including
links) on these and related matters. I will do likewise.