For the latest example of politics trumping progress, we bring you this year’s McKinney allocations from the federal government to local communities.
You may have caught all the fanfare from the Interagency Council on Homelessness (ICH = The White House) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development as they worked the media into a frenzy of numbers, studies and press conferences when they announced the “winners” of this year’s homelessness funding. San Francisco media got the added extra bonus of having the head of the Bush administration front squad come to town to announce that San Francisco got everything it asked for, yet inexplicably they defined it as “extra” money?
Of the $1.4 billion touted over and over again as the answer to homelessness in the next 10 years, 75 percent of the money went to keeping currently existing programs afloat and only 5,300 new program slots were created for homeless people nationwide. The overwhelming majority of these slots went to single adults through “chronic” initiatives being pushed by HUD and the White House.
Oh yeah, and the Public Housing operating budget and Rural Housing Development budget got cut some more.
Neglected by the Bush administration and unreported by the media were the communities whose funding had been reduced and those who got nothing at all. Twenty-two communities that went through the whole laborious process of applying for homelessness money from the federal government received no funding this year for their programs. And because of a bureaucratic accounting dispute between HUD and the City of Los Angeles Housing Authority, $13 million in Shelter Plus Care supportive housing grants were denied to that community. Los Angeles, by the way, has the largest homeless population in the nation.
We can and must demand that the Bush administration stop this blood sport that lets some communities win and some lose, that gives money to some but not to others. Every community that goes through the process of applying for homelessness funds, and documents its need, should receive funding. If HUD or anyone else tries to tell us “there is not enough money to go around,” the answer should be for our representatives in Congress to allocate more, not for some communities to get less and some none at all.
This is a blood sport pure and simple. Through the ICH, millions of our tax dollars are used to promote a Bush administration agenda of dumping the federal government’s responsibility for the creation and subsidization of permanent affordable housing for all poor people. Their agenda has turned homeless funding into a three-card monte game, where the federal government will let you see the red card just often enough to keep you playing before it wipes you out.
Local governments have shown time and time again that when it comes to funding for poverty programs, they will not advocate for us. They are not going to bite the hand that is starving us, as that hand might have the red queen in it the next time… or the next time… or the, you get the idea.
When public policy has become so pathetic that even the mayors are playing a game they know they will eventually lose, yet they keep playing it anyway, the time has come for local communities to band together and speak for themselves.
So why are so many mayors playing the game? Why are they climbing all over each other laying their 10-year plans on the card in the middle and then calling double or nothing when they lose? It’s simple, really. With virtually no affordable housing funding available, the McKinney three-card monte scam is the only game in town and no mayor wants be one of the anonymous 22 that got nothing, or worse yet, screwed like L.A. was. As one mayor said recently when we talked about this dilemma: “You may be right, but you don’t control the purse strings. ICH does.”
Mayors are not going to challenge HUD. They will continue to play the game and HUD will continue to deal the cards.
Our federal representatives, on the other hand, aren’t dependent on HUD or the White House. They are elected by us. They need to hear us, respond to us, and deal directly with us. And we need to deal directly with them. We need them to tell HUD, “No more three-card monte! Restore funding for affordable housing, and you know what you can do with the cards.”
