Collaboration Key to Ending Homelessness, Summit Speakers Believe
March 26, 2003
Collaborative efforts - like those being undertaken in Richmond - will help end the "social disgrace" of homelessness, according to Philip F. Mangano, one of three main speakers at the annual Richmond-area summit on homelessness held March 25 at the University of Richmond.
Sponsored by Homeward, a nonprofit organization founded in 1998 to coordinate Richmond's homeless services, the summit brought together representatives of community, faith and governmental agencies that deal with homelessness. It was hosted by the university's Jepson School of Leadership Studies, which adopted Homeward as a 10th anniversary community service project.
In his 20 years of working with homeless programs, Mangano, the executive director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (ICH) has seen "more homeless people and more homeless programs."
"We've wandered in the wilderness" away from our original intent of ending homelessness, he said. Too often, programs are created just to manage homelessness, not to eliminate it.
"The good news is that we're being called back to our original calling." He said President Bush's initiative - to end chronic homelessness in 10 years - seeks "visible, measurable, quantifiable change." A new federal emphasis on prevention, greater access to mainstream funding to supplement appropriations for the homeless, and innovative and entrepreneurial approaches are the primary themes of his office.
Collaboration among agencies and governmental departments and programs "is results oriented," he said. Mangano praised Homeward for its collaborative approach to solving problems, including providing training for services providers, promoting a community voice mail system for the homeless to receive messages from potential employers and working toward a centralized intake system.
"Your work here is energizing and a good model of collaboration," echoed Linda Gibbs, New York City's commissioner of the Department of Homeless Services, which serves 38,000 homeless people in shelters and countless others living on the streets.
Gibbs, along with Patricia Carlile, deputy assistant secretary for special needs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), also spoke.
Carlile said the federal government believes in collaboration and "we want to do it on the federal level." She said HUD has joined with Health and Human Services and the Veterans Administration to fund 70,000 housing units nationwide.
Other speakers included Greg Hofbauer, a Richmond student, who demonstrated a GIS mapping system he created that shows areas in Richmond where homelessness is concentrated, overlaid with shelter, health care and food services programs.
Dean Jarrett, chair of Homeward, said his organization believes everyone deserves the right to be self-reliant. "It is the community's duty to provide easily accessible resources for basic human needs and to create a flexible, compassionate and efficient regional system" to deal with homelessness.