Ending homelessness via homes

Thanks to The Dallas Morning News for publishing the Op-Ed essay in yesterday's edition written by new U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Steve Preston and Jedd Medefind, Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

Mr. Preston and Mr. Medefind pointed to CDM's "Destination Home" effort as an example of how to cut into the homeless problem in our country. We enjoyed having both of them on a tour last week.

This is the sort of good news needed as we continue to address the difficult challenges of homelessness.

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Death with dignity. . .at home

Lowrance Bonner died last Wednesday evening. . .at home.

Mr. Bonner lived in the nice apartment provided by Central Dallas Ministries' Destination Home program, our effort to place the homeless in housing first, thanks to a grant from the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

Once a person moves into his or her new home, services and activities are offered freely and enthusiastically. However, participation in these offerings is not a requirement to live in the housing we provide. Our philosophy, our experience and our national research teach us that what homeless people need first and foremost are homes.

Lowrance Bonner lived in such a home. Clean, bright, freshly painted and furnished. His one-bedroom apartment was his home.

I did not know him personally. I regret that.

I mourn his passing. I wish he had not experienced the massive heart attack that took him away from us.

As I regret his death, I am grateful that he died at home, in his home, and not on our tough streets.

"Housing first" is all about dignity and respect. Mr. Bonner experienced both during the last months of his life. I very glad that he had his home here among us before moving on to an even more permanent, even more supportive home.

Thanks to HUD and to millions of American taxpayers for making his home here possible.

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Our landlords and our formerly homeless friends

Yesterday afternoon, I met with the owners of the two apartment complexes in North Dallas where we provide housing for formerly homeless, disabled neighbors via our growing "Destination Home" program.

"Destination Home" is funded by the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) through our local area continuum of care. Our effort fits in with the local 10-year plan to end homelessness.

The purpose of my meeting with the property owners was to explore the possibility of our leasing 55 more units of housing thanks to our most recent grant award from HUD.

Here's the wonderful news.

As we discussed our next agreement, one member of the management team of the company said, "You know, when we started this arrangement, I thought the whole thing was crazy. But, now I have to tell you, we are eager to take anyone you refer to us."

Another team member chimed in, "The formerly homeless tenants not only are not a problem, they are fitting in well with community here. We are grateful that they live on our properties."

Just more confirmation. Housing first as a strategy for cutting deeply into homelessness in the United States works, and big time.

We cut a deal to place 55 new friends in permanent suppotive housing. It won't be a problem. It will be one more step toward a solution.

One more time: how do we solve the problem of homelessness?

Homes.


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Brad Pitt. . .where to work most effectively

What follows is a letter from Andre F. Shashaty, Editor of Affordable Housing Finance, a trade journal of affordable housing developers and financeers. The catchy title got my attention. The essay is vastly more important, and the advice he gives Mr. Pitt is priceless.

No one can criticize Brad Pitt for what he has been doing in New Orleans. The only problem with his approach is that it simply isn't enough. While private, personal and group charity will always play an important role in community renewal, the scale of our problems in New Orleans and in every other urban center in the nation demand much, much more.

We need change in the worst way in terms of a national housing policy.

After you've read the letter, let me know your reactions.

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Who needs Brad Pitt?
BY ANDRE F. SHASHATY
AFFORDABLE HOUSING FINANCE • MARCH 2008

NEW ORLEANS—Visiting this city for the first time since Katrina, I was not that shocked by what I saw. After all, I’m from Youngstown, Ohio, which suffered a storm of its own, only an economic one.

In the Lower Ninth Ward, where actor Brad Pitt says he plans to build 150 homes, I felt New Orleans had a slight advantage over my hometown. It had the Army Corps of Engineers on hand to tear down all the dangerous hulks that used to be homes.

The problems this city faces are not that different than those of Cleveland, Youngstown, Detroit, or other cities that have been facing decay and decline for years. And if the home mortgage foreclosure disaster keeps getting worse, as it appears it will, other recently healthy urban areas will soon join this unfortunate club.

Sure, presidential candidates and congressmen are playing at housing policy as they realize the economic impact of the housing market slump, but they are tossing out possible solutions like baseball mascots tossing Cracker Jacks into the bleacher seats.

A year or three ago, those of you in the tax credit business could stick to your knitting and ignore the huge gaps in American housing and urban policy. Many of you wrote off the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and stopped dealing with that hellhole years ago.

But guess what? Your comfort zone is no longer a safe hiding place. Tax credit deals have been getting harder to put together for a while, but now we are reaching a critical phase as equity repricing continues for a second year and costs and allocating agency mandates keep increasing.

It’s time to wake up and smell the formaldehyde. We are at a crisis point in housing and urban affairs in this country. It’s no longer about complaints that our progress is too slow. Rather, as former Enterprise Chairman Bart Harvey told me, we are at risk of watching much of the progress we have made over 20 years disappear.

In 10 months, a new president takes office, and he or she will have a thousand things to worry about. We all know the fundamental nature of the nation’s housing woes and how an effective housing policy could help the economy, our children’s health and education, our transportation systems, and on and on.

But we also know that the folks in Washington and the folks advising the president-to-be have no idea what to do about any of this. It’s our job to tell them.

You have fought on the front lines of housing development. You’ve confronted NIMBYism. Now it’s time to go out and fight on the political front lines to elevate housing to be a key election-year issue and a top priority for the first 100 days of the next president’s term.

I wish Mr. Pitt good luck in his venture, but if he really wants to help New Orleans, he’d be in Washington, not the Ninth Ward.

He’d recognize that what’s needed is a new national housing commitment, and he’d lead a march on Washington. Imagine what might happen if he traveled across the United States, stopping at troubled neighborhoods and highlighting the scope and breadth of our housing and community development problems, arriving in Washington just in time for the inauguration of the next president.

Maybe that is too much to hope for, but we have to think big and act boldly to make the need clear. There hasn’t been a chance like this since the Tax Reform Act of 1986, and it’s up to us to take advantage of it. Read our story on what the next president needs to do about housing on page 24. And then get out there and take political action.

The time you invest in the next 12 months will determine what happens to this industry and the people it serves for many years to come.

[For more, visit http://www.housingfinance.com/.]


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HUD

A couple of weeks ago, John Greenan and I visited the Dallas Friday Group luncheon. This unique lunch group meets once a month for lunch and a guest speaker.

Alphonso Jackson, Secretary of the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) spoke the Friday we attended.

Mr. Jackson knows Dallas. He served for several years as the President and CEO for the Dallas Housing Authority, where he served with distinction and considerable professional acclaim.

After his election in 2000, President Bush named Jackson HUD's Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer. Then, on March 31, 2004, the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed Jackson as the nation's 13th Secretary of HUD.

One of Jackson's priorities as Secretary has been to promote programs and means for increasing home ownership in the nation.

I've found myself objecting to a number of HUD's funding policies, not because of the focus on home ownership, but because such programs have been funded by removing money previously reserved for the poorest of our citizens who cannot buy homes, but who remain in need of high-quality, affordable housing.

Still, it was interesting to hear the Secretary and to visit with him briefly over and after lunch.

We are grateful for HUD. We've been working with them in various capacities since 1996 here in Dallas. Today we have a number of housing grants that allow us to open new doors for better housing to the individualas and families with whom we work.

We are especially grateful for HUD's local expression, the Dallas Housing Authority. Ann Lott, DHA's current CEO, is a great partner.