Sometimes, yes. Via
David Frum (and not, as he points out, the front page of either the
Times or the
Post), the
latest figures show that homelessness dropped by 12 percent between 2005 and 2007, with a particularly sharp decrease in the "chronically homeless" population. As Frum notes, a large share of the credit should probably go to the Bush Administration's homelessness czar, Philip Mangano, whose innovative approach to the problem earned him
a profile in the
Atlantic four years back:
Mangano believes that many professional activists, though well
intentioned, have given up on ending homelessness. They have accepted
the problem as intractable and fallen back on social work and handouts
as a way to make broken lives more bearable. In doing so, he says, they
have allowed "a certain amount of institutionalism" to take root. The
Bush Administration proposes to solve the problem by beginning with the
hardest cases: the 10 percent who are severe addicts or mentally ill,
and consume half of all resources devoted to homeless shelters. Mangano
believes that by moving these chronic cases into "supportive housing"--a
private room or apartment where they would receive support services and
psychotropic medications--the government could actually save money, and
free up tens of thousands of shelter beds.
And
sure enough, four years later ...
Housing officials say the statistics, which are collected annually from
more than 3,800 cities and counties, may reflect better data collection
and some variation in the number of communities reporting. But
officials also attribute much of the decline to a policy shift promoted
by Congress and the administration that has focused federal and local
resources on finding stable housing for homeless people suffering from
drug addiction, mental illness or physical disabilities, long deemed
the hardest to help in the homeless population.
In
Grand New Party, we cited the Bush Administration's homelessness policy as a possible bright spot in an otherwise lackluster domestic-policy record, and an example of the sort of "applied neoconservatism" that the Right desperately needs - a politics that seeks ways to reform the welfare state in conservative directions, rather than just me-tooing liberalism or demanding government's abolition. It's good to see at least modest evidence that we were right.
I see the difference between accepting homelessness and providing some services that soften the harshness of it vs. getting the homeless into private apartments with social services and meds. But I'm not seeing the difference between the latter and "handouts". Is the idea that these are better targeted handouts? If so, this just seems like better government services rather than gov't services "tilted in a conservative direction". Is the fact that the subsidies are for rent in private apartments, rather than publicly-owned buildings, the difference?
Posted by DKE | July 30, 2008 1:03 PM