I. National Policies
a. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA)
i. Act that funds various causes, such as child care, child support, child welfare, education, food stamps, housing, jobs, Medicaid, nursing, homes, nutrition, Supplemental Security Income, and Temporary Assistant to Needy Families (TANF).
ii. Because teen parents now need to live with and have the support of a guardian, they are further limited to what services they can receive. In fact, the chances that the young adult obtains any welfare services are low because with a guardian they will be less qualified for multiple services. A majority of teen parents will not be adopted and therefore will not be qualified for this assistance.
iii. This policy was only beneficial when it was introduced because the states had ample funding to start the welfare programs that were necessary. However, this produced a huge setback. It replaced the Aid to Dependent Children. Because of this, homeless adults were better off, but the homeless youth were left out.
iv. While these welfare reforms have been politically popular, they may serve to make if even more difficult for homeless youth who have children to receive welfare benefits. Youth without children, even those who are legally emancipated minors, have virtually no access to public assistance in most localities. It is our view that, if the goal is to serve homeless youth better, expanding eligibility for benefits, rather than further restricting them, may be the better policy course. (Robertson 3-20)
b. Runaway and Homeless Youth Act (RHYA)
i. This act provides homeless youth with three programs: The Basic Center (BC) Program, The Transitional Living Program (TLP), and The Street Outreach Program.
1. The BC Program provides financial assistance to satisfy the needs of runaway and homeless youth and their families. This includes emergency shelter, food, clothing, counseling, and access to health care.
2. TLP supports projects that provide homes to homeless youth aged 16 to 21 for up to 18 months.
3. The Street Outreach Program provides funds prevention and outreach efforts designed to move youth off the streets
ii. Like the PRWORA, one problem is funding. According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, “grantees serve only a fraction of the more than one million youth who run away or are homeless” (Policy: Legislative Updates: RHYA)
iii. Another issue of why this policy is not effective is because it directs all its attention to temporary financial solutions for the homeless youth. It does not research and determine the root cause of youth homelessness and try to solve that issue.
iv. Local nonprofit organizations lack the capacity to offer early intervention and prevention or residential stability to the majority of youth who need it. The Congressional Research Service recently issued a report noting that federally funded programs serve only a fraction of the nation’s homeless youth population. In 2007, federally funded programs made over 700,000 contacts with youth through street outreach programs but served 47,400 (less than 10 percent) with shelter and housing. (Policy: Policy Focus Areas: Youth)
c. The Interagency Council on Homelessness (ICH)
i. Attempt to count all the homeless people as well as those who have housing, in an attempt to receive more money from the Federal Government. According to the ICH website, census data are used to “distribute more than $400 billion in federal funds to local, state and tribal governments each year and to make decisions about what community services to provide” (Census Lays Plans).
ii. Will count the number of homeless at emergency shelters and sleeping facilities, soup kitchens, food vans, highway overpasses, bridges, and places where homeless people are known to frequently habituate (Census Lays Plans)
iii. In 1990 the census attempted to do the same thing, counting people in all different types of shelters, low cost motels, people “sleeping in abandoned buildings, bus and train stations, all-night restaurants, parks, and vacant lots” (The Nature of Homelessness). They learned from these results and were able to modify the methods used to collect data on homelessness for the 2000 census.
iv. They have learned new methods of modification that will be used in the 2010 census to glean a count for homeless people that accurately represents the true number of homeless in the city. While these new methods may increase funding to help fight homelessness by a small margin, it will not be nearly enough to end homelessness in Detroit. Even after new strategies were implemented to count more homeless people, the economy and loss of jobs in Detroit outweighed the effect of governmental aid money and homelessness has continued to rise. This method has failed in the past because it has not gone to the root of the problem.
v. The key to ending homelessness as identified in my interview paper is homelessness prevention. Counting the number of homeless people in a census is not a preventative measure.
d. McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1986
i. This act was put in place by the Reagan administration and contained 15 programs designed to help homeless people, one of which was the Interagency Council on Homelessness
ii. authorizes Emergency Food and Shelter Programs, provides emergency shelter and transitional housing programs, makes available surplus property available to homeless aid organizations, authorizes programs of the Departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services, and provides for the Food Stamp program and Veterans Job Training Act (CPD - Homeless Assistance).
e. American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009/Housing Preventing Rehousing Program
i. This act “…distributes the $787 billion as follows: tax benefits, contracts, grants, loans, and entitlements” (Devaney, 2010).
ii. Different levels of federal, state, and local agencies received some of the $787 billion to use for substantial needs. “The City of Detroit, under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, received $15.2 million” (Crawford, Citywide Policy Briefing 2009), from the federal policy to specifically use in Detroit for residents that were labeled as homeless, in extreme debt, or to find temporary housing.
iii. The problem lies with how this policy was marketed. Officials were misinterpreting the governmental policy and were telling any Detroit resident who was in low-financial standing to show up at Cobo Hall and apply for the funding. However, to even be considered, the applicant must be “…considered homeless, in risk of losing current household and no appropriate subsequent housing available, and have the ability to maintain housing after receiving assistance” (HUD, 2009).
iv. The policy requires the applicant to have legal proof of meeting these requirements and many more “hidden” requirements throughout the policy. To gather all the proper information, it would take a modest amount of time for residents to ensure they had the proper proof. Nevertheless, almost all applicants found out minutes before the deadline and were left to fill out the application knowing that their needs would almost definitely not be met.
v. “A rumor about the...giving away of $3,000 in stimulus money spread throughout the community and created pandemonium outside the Cobo Hall” (Channel 4 News, 2009).
vi. “The policy was never fully explained to us. We did not know of the requirements and therefore could not give the proper information to those that we aid.” (Nick Monterosso, 2010) This policy failed because of the strict provisions and lack of informing citizens of the requirements that needed to be met in order to be eligible to receive aid. The disregard for communication between structures, institutions, and agencies led to an unsuccessful implementation of this program.
vii. “The Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program only designates $15.2 million to help the Detroit residents who are homeless or near homelessness. These are “Funds that can help about 3,400 families who are homeless or on the verge of homelessness” (Salters, 2009).
viii. Where this policy does not succeed is where politics comes into significant effect. The federal stimulus plan, allocating funds to a city program, to use on a specific local population leads to the questions of what structures, institutions, and agencies are involved in the distribution of this grant. The implementation of this program represents a failure in the policy and those involved with it as well. City government workers and city officials were completely unprepared for the application process at Cobo Hall for those applying for federal aid.
ix. For city government and local officials the implementation of the policy caused a dangerous scene for those whom the policy was targeted to help. It is understandable that there are bureaucratic boundaries and obstacles for officials to overcome when it comes to implementing a policy; nevertheless, for the policy to fail because of a lack of cooperation is absolutely unacceptable.
II. State/Local Policies
a. Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness
i. Beginning in 2006, a plan was set in motion by each county in the state of Michigan with the goal of ending homelessness within 10 years. Michigan is the first and only state to have developed a plan for every single county within its boundaries
ii. The program would provide a way for these children to get out of poverty and homelessness
iii. While a Ten Year Plan to end homelessness is an excellent idea in theory, the success of the children trapped in homelessness is so closely dependent on the state of the education system in Detroit that unless there is major improvement in the school system, there is little chance for the children to make it out of homelessness. It is hard to solve one particular problem without running into a wall created by another problem in the city.
Works Citied
“TANF Issues Analysis.” Inside the National Council of Churches. Web. 16 Mar. 2010.
Robertson, Majorie J., and Paul A. Toro. Homeless Youth: Research, Intervention, and Policy. 1999 August. Print.
“Policy: Legislative Updates: RHYA.” National Alliance to End Homelessness. Web. 16 Mar. 2010.
“Policy: Policy Focus Areas: Youth” National Alliance to End Homelessness. Web. 18 Mar. 2010.
"Census Lays Plans to Ensure Homeless are Counted — 2010 Census Leaving No One Behind." United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH). Web. 23 Mar. 2010.
"CPD - Homeless Assistance - McKinney-Vento Act - HUD." Homes & Communities. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 14 Nov. 2007. Web. 23 Mar. 2010.
A Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness in Detroit, Hamtramck, and Highland Park, Michigan. By Candace Williams, Jerome Rutland, and Verda Sharp. National Alliance to End Homelessness, Oct. 2006. Web. 23 Mar. 2010.
Crawford, Sylvia. "City of Detroit News Release." City Invites Applicants for Temporary Financial
Assistance 9 Sep. 2009: 1-3. Print.
Devaney, Earl. "Overview of Funding." The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
U.S. Government, 03/12/2010. Web. 16 Mar 2010.
Detroit Backpedals on Cobo Chaos ." Detroit Local News. Channel 4 News Station, 08 Oct 2009.
Web. 16 Mar 2010.
Salters, Iris. "Individuals Lend Helping Hand to Homelessness." Detroit News
27 Feb 2009, Print.
