Several months ago, I accompanied a group of Dallasites to Los Angeles to tour a number of housing developments designed to provide permanent housing to chronically homeless individuals, most of whom were also disabled and consumers of high levels of public resources while "living" on the streets of the city. The fact is, providing housing is less expensive than maintaining the status quo. Of course, providing housing is much better than shelter or "camp ground" living for the homeless.
The combination of leading an outreach effort to the homeless with the guarantee of a home and surrounding that home with services unlocks a door to actually reducing chronic homelessness on the streets of our major urban areas.
LA's approach involves "biting off" 50 of the hardest to house homeless persons in a number of the various cities inside LA County.
To read fascinating reports on the effort click here and here (with interesting video reports).
Clearly, Dallas can learn from our West Coast fellows.
No comments:
Post a Comment