"How to Help Homeless Families"

[applegrove]

How to Help Homeless Families

By DAVID BORNSTEIN at the New York Times

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/22/how-to-help-homeless-families/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&smid=tw-NYTOpinionator&seid=auto&_r=1

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Each year, these organizations seek to move at least 120 “episodically” homeless families — families that repeatedly lose their housing — into permanent housing. (A randomized trial published in December indicated that Home to Stay’s clients moved out of shelter more quickly than control group families and stayed out longer, but more evidence is needed to see how families continue to fare and where and how the approach works best.)

When I asked Tony Hannigan, executive director of the Center for Urban Community Services, if Home to Stay could have helped Dasani’s family, he said he believed so. “We would look at Dasani’s parents as workable,” he said. “They had an employment history, they were trying to get off drugs, they were committed to staying together. Those are real family strengths and we could have built upon them.”

Home to Stay targets families identified by the Department of Homeless Services because they have repeatedly sought access to shelter. “We begin with a long interview where we look at the family history and their goals and their strengths,” explained Rasmia Kirmani-Frye, director of the Brownsville Partnership, an initiative of Community Solutions that runs one of the Home to Stay programs. “We ask: What’s the real issues beneath the housing problem? What possibilities do they have to increase their income through work or by maximizing benefits?”

Home to Stay uses an evidence-based protocol known as Family Critical Time Intervention, which is designed to motivate heads of families over nine months to build problem solving skills, strengthen their networks, and take advantage of programs to manage things like addiction or mental health issues, mediate family conflicts, or improve their job prospects.





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[Warpy]

1. Step one: raise the minimum wage

Increasing the wage floor increases demand and that increases the pool of available jobs and that allows people to live indoors.

It's not much to ask, but that's the first step to getting there.

[applegrove]

2. Yup. More units will be built.