City Council Thursday 23 September 2010

Short read given to City Counsel on Thursday about the need for better shelters and the change of the status quo.

To be most humanistic and cost effective we have to know what the HOUSING FIRST model really means. It does not mean to put a homeless person in a shelter or in a SRO or in a transition house or in a supportive unit and say that this is HOUSING FIRST and your new home. The homeless must be in a temporary well run shelter system first then they go directly to affordable self-contained market housing with off site supports, if necessary. Get rid of SROs, supportive housing, transition housing and even social housing.

There is a mountain of recent acadmic research to say that HOUSING FIRST is the most cost effective and humanistic way to proceed. See acadminc literate : Pathways New York.

Supportive Housing is best described as a hospic with 24 hour security ie. a minimum security prison.

Market affordable housing units have to be scattered in every housing complex; not ghettorized in one buildings or on one floor or in one section. If supports are necessary the resident can go offsite and access them. Those with deficits will not change unless they want to and there is no hard evidence to suggest that high cost supports (dedicated supportive housing) will change enough behavior long-term to warrant the method or cost.

By scattering housing in for-profit rental communities, we need no money to build more social housing.
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