Prevent Homelessness Instead of Reacting to It
Over the course of the last couple of years, I’ve gotten more involved in Family Homelessness (homelessness of one or more person with a child/ren) by working with IHN (Interfaith Hospitality Network), a program setup to house homeless families in church congregations and provide case management services. Having spent a short period of time as a homeless person with my two small children, I got an opportunity to see how ineffective these programs are in addressing the needs of the homeless. I went from one government agency to the next, seeking the help that I needed to get back on my feet and was mostly met with limits and bureaucratic obstacles. Had some more progressive policies and programs, like preventative programs, been in place, I probably wouldn’t have struggled so much. While prevention wouldn’t have done anything for my particular reason for becoming homeless, for many families it can mean the difference between becoming homeless and not. We should be preventing homelessness, not reacting to it, by providing support for families before they become homeless with rental subsidies and emotional and potentially psychological support.
The first and foremost reason for prevention as opposed to reaction is the effectiveness of the program offered. The two main types of systems available are ones that assist families with rental subsidies and case management prior to families becoming homeless and providing shelter for the family after they have become homeless as well as case management, medical/psychological support and financial assistance. The effectiveness of each program is discussed by Dennis Culhane, a researcher on homelessness from the University of Pennsylvania, in his paper “Accountability, Cost Effectiveness, and Program Performance: Progress Since 1998,” where he presents “An evaluation of a neighborhood-based homelessness prevention intervention in Philadelphia” , where “at risk” households are given assistance prior to becoming homeless (12-14). These families receive rental subsidies and communication with their landlords prior to becoming homeless, which allows them the stability they need to resolve the issues threatening them with homelessness. Sadly, since the clientele of prevention services rarely enters into the reaction-based homeless programs as a result of becoming homeless, there is really no way to track how effective this prevention system has become. That fact that very few prevention clients become homeless though speaks volumes about its effectiveness. If the program were not effective, we would be seeing these families entering into the reactive programs as a result of becoming homeless. That’s not the case, however, as these families continue to be successful and rarely need other additional services. The reactive programs, on the other hand, aren’t nearly as successful, and the numbers support this belief. All throughout Culhane’s paper, statistics indicate the ineffectiveness of current programs and the increasing rate of homelessness in the United States, a trend that doesn’t seem to be declining anytime soon.
Another factor to consider in utilizing preventive programs instead of reactive is the cost of the individual programs. If we reduce the cost of the programs, we can offer the programs to more clients. The cost of prevention can sometimes, for example, work out to only a few month’s rent while the families in need of services goes about resolving the issues that brought them to the place of needing assistance in the first place, namely finding employment or stabilizing family issues. Reacting to homelessness, on the other hand, brings on the additional cost of providing food, medical assistance and therapy. These costs are significantly larger than the cost of providing assistance prior to homelessness, not to mention, generally, people tend to stay in these programs for longer periods of time, overcoming feelings of shame and low self-esteem as a result of becoming homeless. Providing prevention, however, circumvents the problem of shame and low self-esteem since these families rarely becomes homeless. They will go on feeling good about themselves and will move out of the program a lot more quickly. This scenario will allow the programs to offer its services to other clients in need of help when the time comes and reduce the amount of recurrence of need.
The vast majority of services and programs offered throughout the United States is based on reaction and not prevention. Turning around the status quo, will allow us to implement a program that seems to have a higher success rate and will allow more funding for reactive programs for those who get into the situation of homelessness regardless of prevention or those who didn’t or couldn’t seek assistance prior to finding themselves homeless. Prevention programs appear to be more effective as opposed to reactive programs. Lower numbers of participants entering into reactive programs after preventative lends credence to the effectiveness of the preventive program over reactive. Add to the effectiveness the lower operating cost of preventative programs, and you have a system that actually has a chance at reducing homelessness.
This will be seen by future generations of students at MSUB 38/40 points.
Still hate it tho- make me so nervous!
:crackup: :crackup: :crackup:
:beer:
