**HOPE for the Homeless Luncheon Keynote**

**January 6, 2004**

**Shreveport, LA**

I'm so happy to be here in Shreveport this morning. This visit marks my
fourth in Louisiana since I was appointed. And every time I come here
the news gets better, so I'm always glad to come here to Louisiana.

In the tradition I grew up in and still embrace, today is known as
Epiphany. That's the celebration of the Wise Men coming from the East to
find the newborn king.

Well, for the last couple of days wise people have been coming from all
the compass points to acknowledge the new crowned champions.

How does it feel to be the national champions? I'm from Boston, a
lifelong Red Sox fan, so I have no idea.

How lucky and fortunate am I to be here in Louisiana and Shreveport this
week. The Tigers working their stealth on Sunday night and claiming the
national championship. First in the country.

And now here today with you all working your innovation in the creation
of a ten year plan to end homelessness in Northwest Louisiana. First in
the state.

The Tigers and Coach Saban and his staff and all the LSU boosters
deserve a lot of credit. And Shreveport and Mayor Hightower and HOPE and
all the partners involved deserve our appreciation and respect.

Back in 1958 when the Tigers last won the national championship,
pervasive homelessness did not exist all across this region and state
and our country.

There are those of us alive who can remember all the way back and know
that our country's streets and neighborhoods had difficulties, but
pervasive homelessness was not one of them.

Here we are 45 years later and for the last two decades we've seen the
numbers grow, our response escalate, and our morale sink, as more of our
neighbors found themselves without a place to call home. Children,
parents, other adults, youths. Homelessness does not discriminate by
gender, race, or age.

We're frustrated, aren't we? We heard a calling years ago -- 2, 5,
10,15, for some of us over 20 years ago -- a call to respond to an
injustice, something unfair in our community. Some of our neighbors had
no place to live.

We rolled up our sleeves and for the past two decades we've invested our
lives and billions of federal, state, local, business and philanthropic
dollars, but we're told now that the problem is worse than it's ever
been.

All of our best efforts, increasingly sophisticated and strategic, have
not put a tourniquet on the hemorrhaging. Researchers tell us that there
are now more homeless people and programs than twenty years ago.

It was Einstein who taught us that a certain sign of insanity was to do
the same thing over and over again and expect different results. That is
crazy.

Or, as an old minister friend of mine constantly reminds us: "If you
keep doin' what you're doin', you're gonna keep gettin' what you're
gettin." Now Coach Saban understood that and made the changes that
fulfilled the mission.

We are now prepared to do the same to homelessness. Make the changes,
challenge the status quo, to get the job done.

The irony for us is that, even as the numbers increase, we are
developing the innovative initiatives and the strategic partnerships to
approach homelessness

with a renewed intention.

When we first enlisted we knew what our goal was. Now I'm from Boston.
So I was born an abolitionist. It's just in the gene pool up there. You
see a wrong --

you want to right it. You see an evil -- you want to end it.

That was the intent for all of us. We wanted to end the scandal of
homelessness.

And today across this country, from ocean to ocean, from the Gulf to the
Great Lakes, we are being remoralized to get the job done. To accomplish
the mission.

In Washington, the Interagency Council has been revitalized and has
reconvened the federal agencies. 20 departments are now at the table
working together

to make their resources more available and accessible to homeless
people. With a special emphasis on the deeper mainstream and entitlement
resources that offer programs and the homeless customers themselves
resources to remedy their homelessness. HUD, HHS, Labor, VA, SSA, and
others have all recently brought new funds to the table and reformed
existing resources to be made more available.

In recent months there has been a joint HUD, HHS, VA NOFA, a HUD-Labor
NOFA, an SSA NOFA, and more are planned for this year.

A couple of weeks ago we announced the largest distribution of
homelessness funding in the history of our country -- over \$1.2
billion. And your state did well, increasing its funding by 35% over
2002.

And Shreveport did even better, increasing from \$1.6 million to \$2.6
million, a 62% increase over 2002.

In all of these new and increased funding rounds we are working to
demonstrate the continued and deepened commitment we have in Washington
to partnering with you to get the job done. At a time when 47 states
have cut their budgets along with counties and cities, the President
proposed increased funding for homeless prevention and intervention.

And that partnership, exemplified by 20 federal agencies working
together, is extending throughout the country. We are creating a
partnership that literally extends from the White House to the streets,
moving through federal agencies, state houses, city halls, counties, the
private and non-profit sectors to homeless people themselves.

We've worked with Governors across the country to establish state
interagency councils on homelessness to mirror the work we're doing in
Washington to make targeted and mainstream resources more available and
accessible to homeless people. 40 Governors have created such Councils.
We offered participation and technical assistance to everyone in the
country through our Policy Academies to move that process forward.

And we worked to establish partnerships with cities and counties across
the country to establish 10 year plans to end homelessness. Today,
Shreveport enters that partnership which is revitalizing and
remoralizing communities across the country. Nearly 70 cities and
counties have established such plans and you probably know that Baton
Rouge will do so soon.

A few weeks ago I was in New Orleans and met with Mayor Nagin and I
believe he will commence such a planning process in the near future.

What best symbolizes this new spirit across the country was the
conversation we had at the U.S. Conference of Mayors last summer at
their annual meeting.

We were advancing two resolutions for their consideration. One to
support our initiative to end chronic homelessness in the next decade.
The other to encourage cities to create 10 year plans to end
homelessness.

When we met before the votes, we acknowledged that this Administration
has a significant R after its name and that some of our most significant
supporters - Mayors Menino of Boston, Daley of Chicago, and Brown of San
Francisco -- had capital D's after their names. In fact, into their
marrow. The genetic code of their DNA tests reveals nothing but D's.

But what we agreed on was this -- on this issue of homelessness,
[partnership]{.underline} trumps [partisanship]{.underline}. On this
issue there is no D or R or I or G. We're just Americans partnering to
end a national disgrace.

That's the spirit in which those two resolutions passed unanimously. And
that's the spirit we took to the National Association of Counties --
NACO -- and more recently to the National League of Cities who passed
similar resolutions supporting ten year plans and ending chronic
homelessness.

And that's the spirit with which I join today to celebrate your
increased funding and to acknowledge and support your ten year planning
process.

In the spirit of partnership. If there is one thing we've learned over
the past 20 years, it is that no one level of government, no one sector
can get the job done alone. You can't do it alone here in Shreveport or
in Northwest Louisiana. And Louisiana as a state can't do it alone.

Nor can we in Washington.

Nor can the public sector acting alone or any segment of the private
sector whether business or faith based.

But if we're all in it together, partnered, the public sector, private
sector, non-profits, faith based, we'll get the job done.

Moving away from our silos and cylinders and away from partisanship and
ideology -- that can be scary. But it's the collaboration that will
assemble what we need. And that's what you talk about in your plan.

I commend Dock and Terri and Linda and all of you who worked on this
plan. It's sophisticated and one of the most realistic in the country.
Based on a management information system to collect data and results,
embracing a housing first strategy, focusing on prevention at the front
door through appropriate discharge planning, calling for permanent
supportive housing to end chronic homelessness, and using technology to
foster a more integrated service delivery system -- all together with an
expansive and inclusive planning process that included homeless people.
That's smart planning.

Mayor Hightower, you and your fellow Mayors are well served by such
creativity, and your support and endorsement will provide the political
will

to move the plan to implementation.

And, most importantly, you are not alone. You have a host of local
partners. The state's interagency council and policy academy team ensure
state collaboration.

And we know what you need from Washington, and we're working to provide
it.

Together, we are working to change the [verb]{.underline} of
homelessness. Nationally we are no longer content just
[managing]{.underline} homelessness. And now Shreveport is saying the
same. Managing is not our goal. The new commitment is
[ending]{.underline} homelessness.

Today, in announcing and endorsing a ten year plan focused on ending
homelessness, Mayor Hightower, HOPE for the Homeless, and the region
around Shreveport take their place with the visionaries in our country
who have seen the moral common sense of the future and who are
appropriating that realistic vision for the present.

You are to be commended by your city, region, state, and country for
doing so. The realism and practicality of your strategy dispels the
notion that this is a flighty whim of naiveté or foolishness.

Now there will be those voices of skepticism and cynicism just as there
have always been. Insisting that our goals are unreal, unachievable, and
undoable.

"You can't 'end' homelessness," they'll say.

"The best you can do is accommodate and manage it."

There's nothing you can do, they'll counsel.

These people want to be homeless and on the streets.

We've tried everything, they'll counter, and nothing has worked. It's
just another plan, they'll muse cynically, that will sit on a shelf and
gather dust.

You just can't do it. It's unrealistic, foolish, naïve, and
disingenuous, they'll warn.

These voices have been around for a long, long time. They spoke to the
abolitionists, suffragists, and civil rights activists, cynically and
mischievously attempting to undermine moral, civic, and spiritual
advancement.

Well they were wrong back then.

And they're wrong now.

Wrong to believe that the status quo was unchangeable.

Wrong to believe that the vision of moral common sense of the future
could not be realized in the present.

We are now faced in our country with a social disgrace so pervasive that
it quietly takes its place with other social evils we have faced. Some
say it is immutable. Intractable.

The reality is that homelessness is yielding to strategic solutions,
innovative initiatives, and planful partnerships all across our country.

The vision of the 10 year plan created by HOPE and endorsed today by the
Mayor has all those elements. Thoughtful, strategic, planful, inclusive,

and filled with innovation.

Your children and grandchildren will look back on today with pride and
thanksgiving knowing that you had the vision to see what was
self-evident and common sense to them -- that all of our neighbors,
whether here in Northwest Louisiana or across all the compass points of
our country's expanse -- would have "access to safe, decent" housing
affordable to them. In the words of the Council's mission, "A Home for
Every American."

Thank you for your contribution to that goal. I assure you that it will
reverberate across our nation.

Now, this week the Tigers surprised a lot of doubters and made Louisiana
number one, first in the country.

The plan unveiled today may do the same for Shreveport. Some will doubt.
But LSU proved that doubt and reality are two different things.