Drive to end homelessness assesses "a wonderful start" (Seattle)

[lindisfarne]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2003064931&zsection_id=2002111777&slug=homeless16m&date=20060616

More than 900 homeless people have moved into permanent housing in King County since a 10-year plan to end homelessness was announced last year.

The King County Committee to End Homelessness said government and private agencies have built or funded 1,300 new housing units in the plan's first year. The committee has called for the creation of 9,500 units within the decade.

"The progress report shows that in just 10 months we've made tremendous progress," said Bill Block, project director for the committee. "That is a wonderful start."

The committee, a coalition of government agencies, nonprofits, business and religious organizations, wants to end homelessness by providing stable, permanent homes rather than managing the population primarily with food banks and temporary shelter.

<snip>
Of about 1,300 new units in Thursday's progress report, 563 were built in the past year, 391 were funded for future construction and 387 units were converted into housing for formerly homeless individuals and families in Bellevue, Federal Way, Duvall and downtown Seattle. Block did not have estimates on how much all the units cost.

<snip>

[Cybergata]

1. There are just so many reasons to love Seattle,

and their big liberal heart is right up on top of the list of reasons. Way to go Seattle! We have some cheap housing being constructed here in Albuquerque near where I live, but nothing as grand as this. Way to go Seattle! :loveya:

[Jed Dilligan]

2. Good for them but

They won't "end homelessness." There's three people lined up for the spot of every one they take off the streets. "Ending" homelessness is mostly a government scam to justify 1. big social-service budgets that mostly benefit system employees and 2. continuing to criminalize homelessness.

I'm all for public housing but the idea that it will "end" homelessness is a big lie. Homelessness exists because society just doesn't have a place for large numbers of people, a dwelling doesn't solve the whole issue, and new people will always hit the streets. Ending all this crazy incarcerating of people would cut the numbers much faster than if we built a million housing units.

[oscar111]

3. how to end it for good

three groups in the hmless:
1. addicts: need funds to treat them all: funds to end the despair that drives them to selfmedicate with street drugs: access to legit RX pills for depression: jobs for all to end despair

2. mentally ill: need restoration of funds for state mental hospitals, now cut in half by RR and GOP followers: need funds for clinics

3. just plain poor: need JFA jobs for all.. see sig. : need "living wage" for the employed yet still poor due to lousy wages: need LBJ's "war on poverty" again: need fund to subsidize building of affordable homes, or have the government do the building with no private builders. A new WPA would be a fine thing to do the building.

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HISTORY LESSON: there were virtually NO homeless between 'fourty one, and RR's cuts in the early 'eighties. So there is no need for homelessness. Social programs and good minimum wages and a good mental health system, can end it as was done right here in the US.