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Monday, June 24, 2013



A Major Setback


Early this year our congress could not agree (what else is new?) on budget issues and allowed a self-imposed mandate go into effect. The mandate’s original purpose was to compel congress themselves to come to some sort of compromise regarding this country’s budget. Well as we have seen they could not agree for all sorts of reasons. Reasons I will not comment on here. What I will comment on here are some of the results of that failure to act that affect the homeless community in this city and this country.
A few weeks ago I heard a news report from a national news source regarding homeless housing in Minnesota. What happened was 10 or 15 people were approved for subsidized housing and were in the process of finding a suitable apartment when their funding was cut and those people, who have gone all through the process were basically told “sorry” and for the foreseeable future are back on the street. Now keep in mind that those people were “approved” and then not approved. Add to that all the people in the pipeline who not only will have to wait to qualify but will have to wait in living situations they are trying to get out of.
Consider this. Many homeless shelters here in Ft Worth as is the case all over the country rely on federal grants and other federal funding sources to help provide services to the homeless with the goal of getting that homeless person off the street. Services such as job training or retraining, GED classes, housing assistance, medical assistance and just about every other service provided to the homeless community. The result is a return to a situation in the homeless community such as we had 6 or 8 years ago. Shelters will only be able to provide basic services such as a bed and maybe food. Not much else. Overcrowding will start taking place. The number of homeless people not able to get into the shelter or other safe place will rise. As a result, the number of people living on the street will rise. Drug and alcohol abuse will rise. Prostitution will rise. Crime in general involving homeless people as a perpetrator and as a victim will rise.
Basically there will be a return to conditions that existed here and elsewhere 6, 8 or 10 years ago. Conditions where a ride down Lancaster was like a shopping trip for drugs or sex or almost any other thing you may want. Ok, so the city will say they will not allow that to happen to Lancaster Ave. but mark my words, it will happen. The police will take the brunt of the heat to keep crime in the area down and will not be able to keep up. Remember the police get some federal funding too. And with that said the problems will just snowball. Progress in the homeless situation will be setback many years.
Try this one on for size. Many people released from prison used to end up on the street and in the shelters. Federal programs which are now suffering severe cutbacks used to be able to help those people return to society. With the elimination or cutbacks in funding, they will have no other choice but to return to their old life with all those concerns to the community as a whole.
Similar situations are happening all over the country. Because federal funding is necessary in the battle against homelessness, the battle took a big hit. Homelessness is not simple and there is no easy fix. When funding is removed a return to more basic services is inevitable and with that a return to a situation that existed 6 or 8 years ago will be inevitable. Funding is key to the homeless situation. While not the whole problem, Congress and our federal government is part of all this and their inaction will cause a snowball effect that will return the homeless community back to a pre-2005 level. I was there, I saw it and it was not pretty.