Today’s Boston Globe has a column written by Lt. Gov. Timothy P. Murray about the progress made in ending homelessness by emphacizing housing over shelters. Tim Murray’s column A new approach is being managed by a new division of state government, Division of Housing Stabilization within Housing and Community Development manages housing now – ending homelessness has been moved from welfare to community development. This makes sense. Division of Housing Stabilization website
As Tim Murray says in his editorial-style column:
Preventing homelessness means keeping children stable in one school, almost guaranteeing better academic performance. It saves school districts the cost of transporting children back to their previous school, if their family chooses, and it enables people to find and keep jobs more easily because they are not being shuttled between relatives’ or friends’ houses and shelters. Moreover, helping people stay in their homes costs a fraction of what it costs to house a family in a shelter or motel.
According to Murray, there has been a fundamental change in philosophy and approach in dealing with homelessness:
….we have shifted our approach on homelessness from a sheltering model to a “housing first” model. We have overhauled the state’s existing emergency shelter system and reorganized the state agencies that provide homelessness services.
For those who track statistics, the intractable nature of homelessness is documented here: homelessness statistics
One of many problems in the past had been when my homeless clients were offered housing that meant their children would have to change schools – sometimes multiple times, losing academic years in the process; or my clients who did not have cars would lose the very jobs they were using to claw their way back to independence. This has also been addressed in changing the regulations as to what constitutes safe and appropriate housing. New housing regs in the CMR
This initiative involves private grant money, stimulus money, and some state money – but also a major change in attitude and in who administers the “housing first” program, and the attitudes written into the program itself. Viewing getting our residents into housing as community development – not welfare – is a revolutionary change in attitude.
My thanks to Lt. Gov. Murray for his work on this program and a clear, commonsense column.
We have an excellent Lt. Governor in Massachusetts. If you want Deval for the next Supreme Court vacancy, we’ll be just fine.
and it doesn’t have to be an SC placement. Just about anything would do.
AmberPaw, thanks for posting this info…our Lt. Governor has the ability to rise above the political brick throwing on the hill to get some things accomplished on several important fronts…if his homelessness initiative gets young children out of one-room motel placements it will be a giant step forward…he is on the right track.
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Why not? Give out anything people need and let the “rich people” pay for it. But please remember that the easier you make it for poor people (free food, healthcare, cars, houses, college…) the more people who are working for these things will question why they are “wasting their time” when they can just get it for free from Uncle Sam.
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p>I’ll take a line from Michael Graham and say “life is suppose to suck for poor people”.
This is not a matter of “give aways” – not only do these people pay a portion of the rent [portion of income whether earned of SSI] but most are working poor. Try following links for a change…and actually reading posts.
than housing assistance to prevent homelessness. Most housing assistance costs a few hundred and shelter costs a few thousand per month.
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p>Are you suggesting that the responsible taxpayers should be more interested in spending money to punish people for being poor, rather than investing in our communities, infrastructure and children’s futures.
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p>Lt. Governor Murray continually proves himself to be a caring effective leader with a clear vision to move Massachusetts forward.
This is a much better idea than waiting for people to be on the street and then putting them in shelters.
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p>It is so hard to pull yourself up and back into a reasonable life when you’ve lost everything and then have to try to function out of a hotel room. I can’t even imagine it. With housing, there is a kitchen, living area and bedrooms. They can cook food, sleep well, and have hope. The children will have stability.
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p>What an amazing way of using taxpayer dollars in a smart
and forward thinking way.
I predict this will be one of those things where after a few more rounds of refinements, we’ll be able to point to Mass. as a leader in this area. You all know I was not a Tim fan back in the day, but I agree with others here: he’s a solid governmental official.
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p>To tweak him a little bit: this was a big Silbert issue back in 06! Proof that that LG race was chock full of substance!
Think Tim should challenge Deval in the primary?
After my leg amputation last year, I became homeless. I ended up being warehoused in a nursing home for two months. At $356 a day. And my frickin’ nursing home could STILL run out of drinking straws on a Sunday. I had my aide spend $3 at a store for 300 straws once.
I applied to 39 different cities and towns for disabled housing. No one had an opening.
We need to stop talking, discussing, consulting, and BS’ing about the problem.
STOP TALKING AND START BUILDING!