WASHINGTON,
D.C. The
Obama Administration held the second Full
Council meeting of the U.S. Interagency
Council on Homelessness yesterday. It was
the first meeting chaired by U.S. Housing and
Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan,
who was elected chair by his fellow Cabinet
Members and agency heads at the Council's
first meeting on June 18, 2009. Members of
the homeless advocacy community including the
National Law Center on Homelessness and
Policy, National Alliance to End
Homelessness, and National Coalition for the
Homeless attended and participated for the
first time in several years.
Secretary Donovan noted that we live in very
challenging times. Even as we see most major
housing indicators improving and responding
to the Administration's comprehensive
approach to stabilizing the housing market,
the country's overall economic situation
continues to put stress on families - and has
resulted in numbers of Americans becoming
homeless for the first time, many of whom are
families with children.
The
first action of the meeting was the
appointment of Barbara Poppe as the new
Executive Director of the Council. For the
past 15 years Poppe has served as executive
director of the Community Shelter Board in
Ohio, which allocates over $12 million
annually to support homeless programs and
services in Columbus and Franklin County,
Ohio. CSB has been nationally recognized in
particular for its innovative Rebuilding
Lives program. Former U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development Secretaries
Henry Cisneros and the late Jack Kemp in
their 2004 report, coauthored with Kent
Colton and Nic Retsinas and published by the
Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard
University: "Opportunity and Progress - A
Bipartisan Platform for National Housing
Policy," cited CSB's program as a model for
the nation in ending chronic homelessness.
Barbara Poppe brings both a deep
understanding of how to make federal programs
work to benefit homeless persons at the local
level and years of engagement at the national
level as an advocate, resource person, and
thoughtful analyst. No stranger to the
challenges and importance of federal agency
collaboration in making federal funds more
responsive to the needs of local communities,
Poppe was invited to represent the 11
grantees of the original HUD-HHS-VA
Collaborative Initiative to help end chronic
homelessness at the 2003 meeting of the
Council where the grants were announced.
Secretary
Donovan also reported that HUD
recently issued its annual Notice of Funding
Availability for its competitive Continuum of
Care homeless programs. Just over $1.4
billion dollars will be awarded to
communities. HUD is encouraging communities
to continue to use these resources to end
chronic homelessness as well as to house
other homeless sub-populations, including
families with children. HUD expects to fund
well over 6,000 projects. This money is in
addition to the $1.5 billion dollars HUD
received under the Recovery Act for the
Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-housing
Program, which have been awarded to states
and communities. Pictured here are Council
Chair Donovan and other Council members with
advocates attending the meeting including
Maria Foscarinis of the National Law Center,
Steve Berg of NAEH, and Neil Donovan of the
National Coalition for the Homeless who
addressed the Council.
The meeting also highlighted emerging
collaborations among federal agencies to end
homelessness. Health and Human Services
Secretary Kathleen Sebelius discussed the
HUD-HHS partnership to strengthen the link
between housing, health care and social
services. Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric
Shinseki updated the Council on the status of
the HUD/VASH partnership creating housing
opportunities for veterans. He also reported
that earlier this month the VA awarded more
than $17 million in grants to community
groups in 19 States, the District of
Columbia, and Puerto Rico that will create
1,155 transitional housing beds for homeless
veterans this year.
Labor Secretary
Hilda Solis spoke about the emerging new
levels of partnership between Labor and VA on
employment for homeless veterans.
Council
members also discussed the 2010
Census with Department of Commerce Under
Secretary for Economic Affairs Rebecca Blank
and received a report on trends in homeless
student data from the Department of Education
which oversees administration of the
McKinney- Vento Education for Homeless
Children and Youth program (EHCY) designed to
work with states and local educational
agencies to improve education outcomes for
children and youth in homeless situations.
Pictured here is Under Secretary Blank with
Cabinet Secretaries Sebelius, Donovan. Solis,
and Shinseki and Council acting director Pete
Dougherty.
Nearly
half a million children were reported
to have received EHCY funded services in the
2007-2008 school year. The Recovery Act
provided $70 million in additional EHCY funds
to the Department of Education which has been
allocated to school districts across the
nation. Zollie Stevenson, Department of
Education Director of Student Achievement and
School Accountability Programs, is shown here
during his presentation to the Council.