Calling for a fact check on the homeless problem

[hfojvt]

I hate doing this and may find it is against the rules, but I think it is important for us to have accurate information. An OP is read by lots of people. My reply #66 questioning its accuracy will not be widely read.

This is not meant to call out the other poster, but to discuss the numbers presented there, numbers which seem to have been accepted by all other readers of the post, but which I find to be inaccurate after trying to verify them.

The numbers are these

"In 1978, HUD’s budget was over $83 billion.

In 1983, HUD’s budget was only $18 billion."

That quote does not seem to be true, instead I found that HUD's budget was 2.6 billion in 1970, 7.48 billion in 1975, and 12.6 billion in 1980 and then 20.2 billion in 1990 and 30.8 billion in 2000. So the $83 billion was not the budget of HUD in 1978 unless somebody is confusing two numbers. The 1978 budget in 2006 dollars compared to the 1983 budget in 1983 dollars or something.

There probably have been cuts, but they do not seem to have been as drastic as suggested here, unless transfers to states was cut in some other part of the budget. My source is here:
http://www.census.gov/prod/www/abs/statab1951-1994.htm

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Don't know about the thread, but the source of the information quoted is here.

"The WRAP report points out that in 1978, before Reagan took office, the annual budget for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was $83 billion. In 1983, during the middle of Reagan's first term, the HUD budget had been recklessly slashed to only $18 billion. The nation has never recovered from this deliberately manufactured crisis in affordable housing.

Due to the immediate growth in homelessness triggered by these cutbacks, Congress passed the Stewart B. McKinney Act in 1987, providing a paltry $880 million in annual homeless assistance, an amount so small that it could never in a thousand years offset the massive damage caused by Reagan's gutting of the HUD budget. Since 1987, McKinney homeless funding has never risen above $1.4 billion annually."

http://www.createpeaceathome.org/streetspirit/2006/october2006/housingcuts.htm

Or the actual report can be obtained here: http://www.wraphome.org/wh/index.php

The footnotes cite The Executive Office of the President for the numbers.

[Breeze54]

2. What does it matter? He slashed the budget and created 1.2 MILLION homeless people!

Besides, I posted a Common Dreams article in answer to your inquiry on that other thread.

The numbers in the article almost mirror the exact same numbers.