U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

39–908 PDF 2008

REAUTHORIZATION OF THE McKINNEY–VENTO

HOMELESS ASSISTANCE ACT, PART II

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

HOUSING AND COMMUNITY OPPORTUNITY

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

OCTOBER 16, 2007

Printed for the use of the Committee on Financial Services

Serial No. 110–70

(

(II)

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES 

BARNEY FRANK, Massachusetts, Chairman

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania 

MAXINE WATERS, California 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois 

NYDIA M. VELA ́ ZQUEZ, New York 

MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina 

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York 

JULIA CARSON, Indiana 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

DENNIS MOORE, Kansas 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

RUBE ́ N HINOJOSA, Texas 

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri 

CAROLYN MCCARTHY, New York 

JOE BACA, California 

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts 

BRAD MILLER, North Carolina 

DAVID SCOTT, Georgia 

AL GREEN, Texas 

EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri 

MELISSA L. BEAN, Illinois 

GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin, 

LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire 

KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota 

RON KLEIN, Florida 

TIM MAHONEY, Florida 

CHARLES A. WILSON, Ohio 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut 

JOE DONNELLY, Indiana 

ROBERT WEXLER, Florida 

JIM MARSHALL, Georgia 

DAN BOREN, Oklahoma 

SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama 

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana 

DEBORAH PRYCE, Ohio 

MICHAEL N. CASTLE, Delaware 

PETER T. KING, New York 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

RON PAUL, Texas 

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio 

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois 

WALTER B. JONES, JR., North Carolina 

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois 

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

TOM FEENEY, Florida 

JEB HENSARLING, Texas 

SCOTT GARRETT, New Jersey 

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida 

J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

STEVAN PEARCE, New Mexico 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

TOM PRICE, Georgia 

GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky 

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina 

JOHN CAMPBELL, California 

ADAM PUTNAM, Florida 

MICHELE BACHMANN, Minnesota 

PETER J. ROSKAM, Illinois 

THADDEUS G. McCOTTER, Michigan 

KEVIN McCARTHY, California

JEANNE M. ROSLANOWICK, Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

(III)

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HOUSING AND COMMUNITY OPPORTUNITY

MAXINE WATERS, California, Chairwoman

NYDIA M. VELA ́ ZQUEZ, New York 

JULIA CARSON, Indiana 

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts 

EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri 

AL GREEN, Texas 

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin, 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota 

CHARLES A. WILSON, Ohio 

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut 

JOE DONNELLY, Indiana 

BARNEY FRANK, Massachusetts 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

STEVAN PEARCE, New Mexico 

PETER T. KING, New York 

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois 

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

SCOTT GARRETT, New Jersey 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky 

JOHN CAMPBELL, California 

THADDEUS G. McCOTTER, Michigan 

KEVIN McCARTHY, California 

(V)

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on: 

October 16, 2007 ............................................................................................... 1

Appendix: 

October 16, 2007 ............................................................................................... 69

WITNESSES 

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2007

Bassuk, Ellen L., M.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical 

School, and President, National Center on Family Homelessness .................. 54

Burt, Martha R., Ph.D., Senior Principal Researcher, Urban Institute .............. 59

Carter, Nancy, National Alliance on Mental Illness, Urban Los Angeles .......... 57

Culhane, Dennis, Ph.D., Professor of Social Policy and Practice, University 

of Pennsylvania .................................................................................................... 28

Gallo, Dora, Chief Executive Officer, A Community of Friends, Los Angeles .... 50

Gomez, Elizabeth, Executive Director, Los Angeles Youth Network .................. 35

Johnston, Mark, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Special Needs Programs, 

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development ..................................... 3

Loza, Moises, Executive Director, Housing Assistance Council ........................... 52

Mangano, Philip F., Executive Director, United States Interagency Council 

on Homelessness .................................................................................................. 5

Marquez, Mercedes, General Manager, Los Angeles Housing Department, 

City of Los Angeles .............................................................................................. 30

McNamee, Arlene, LCSW, Executive Director, Catholic Social Services, Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts ....................................................................... 32

Nilan, Diane, President/Founder, HEAR US, Inc. ................................................ 56

Roman, Nan, President, National Alliance to End Homelessness ....................... 37

Van Leeuwen, James Michael, Ph.D., Project Manager, Denver’s Road Home . 25

Yaroslavsky, Zev, Chairman, Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors ........... 8

APPENDIX 

Prepared statements: 

Bassuk, Ellen L. ............................................................................................... 70

Burt, Martha R. ................................................................................................ 77

Carter, Nancy ................................................................................................... 92

Culhane, Dennis ............................................................................................... 98

Gallo, Dora ........................................................................................................ 104

Gomez, Elizabeth .............................................................................................. 111

Johnston, Mark ................................................................................................. 123

Loza, Moises ...................................................................................................... 128

Mangano, Philip F. ........................................................................................... 141

Marquez, Mercedes ........................................................................................... 152

McNamee, Arlene ............................................................................................. 161

Nilan, Diane ...................................................................................................... 182

Roman, Nan ...................................................................................................... 189

Van Leeuwen, James Michael ......................................................................... 201

Yaroslavsky, Zev ............................................................................................... 208

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

Waters, Hon. Maxine: 

Statement of Family Promise .......................................................................... 213

(1)

REAUTHORIZATION OF THE 

McKINNEY–VENTO HOMELESS 

ASSISTANCE ACT, PART II 

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HOUSING AND

COMMUNITY OPPORTUNITY, 

COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES, 

Washington, D.C. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:07 a.m., in room 

2128, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Maxine Waters [chairwoman of the subcommittee] presiding. 

Members present: Representatives Waters, Cleaver, Green, Sires, 

Murphy; Capito, Biggert, Shays, Neugebauer, Davis of Kentucky, 

and McCarthy. 

Ex officio: Representative Frank. 

Mr. GREEN. [presiding] Good morning, friends. I would like to 

call this hearing of the Subcommittee on Housing and Community 

Opportunity to order. 

I would like to thank the ranking member, Ms. Capito, who will 

be joining us shortly, for her efforts to help us—she is here now—

have this hearing this morning. 

I would also like to thank the chairwoman, the Honorable Maxine Waters, who is not with us. She has another hearing. We know 

that wherever she is, she is not only doing the work of the House, 

but she is also doing God’s work. She is truly a person who is committed to the homeless in this country. 

I would like to also thank all of the witnesses who are here with 

us today. At this time, I will make a brief opening statement, and 

then we will hear from the ranking member, and we will proceed 

in this fashion, and then hear from the witnesses. 

Friends, this is the second of two hearings on the reauthorization 

of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. 

This year marks the 20th anniversary of this Act. When Congress passed it 20 years ago, the legislation was thought to be the 

first step to help us end homelessness in America. 

We are here today to examine some additional steps that should 

be taken to end the plight of homelessness in America. With limited funding, the homeless assistance program has not been as beneficial as it can be, although some good things have happened. 

We will hear from witnesses today who will give us both sides 

of the story, and help us to make intelligent decisions about how 

we should proceed with ending homelessness in America. 

2

I would like to share some information with you about homelessness in America. Right now in this country, where 1 out of every 

110 persons is a millionaire, we have approximately 3.5 million 

people, 39 percent of whom are children, who are likely to experience homelessness in the course of a year. 

In our country, where we have houses for our cars—we call them 

garages, of course—on any given night, between 700,000 and 

800,000 men, women, and children are without homes or do not 

have shelter. 

We live in a country where we are spending $229 million per day 

on the war, and we have approximately 200,000 veterans on any 

given night who are homeless. 

In my county, Harris County, Texas, 28 percent of the homeless 

persons are veterans: 66 percent have no income at all; 59 percent 

are homeless because they have lost a job; 57 percent have a history of substance abuse; 55 percent have a history of some sort of 

mental health problem; 11 percent have experienced domestic violence; and 24 percent have been incarcerated. 

Obviously, these numbers do not add up to 100 percent, which 

means we have overlapping. We literally have persons who are veterans, who may have some mental concerns to be dealt with. Persons who are suffering domestic abuse, who may have also a substance abuse problem. 

The problem is pervasive and merits our consideration. Today, as 

we look at the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, there are 

four programs that are authorized by this Act: The emergency shelter grants, known as ESG; the supportive housing portion of the 

program; the shelter plus care program; and the Section 8 moderate rehabilitation assistance for single room occupancy dwellings. 

All four of these are parts of the Act that we will be looking into. 

There are two bills that we are considering. HUD has indicated 

that there may be a third bill. We have not seen evidence of it thus 

far, but there is an indication that it will be introduced. 

We have H.R. 40, which is the Homeless Emergency Assistance 

and Rapid Transition to Housing Act of 2007. This is being sponsored/introduced by Representative Carson and Representative 

Davis. 

We also have Senate Bill 1518, the Community Partnership to 

End Homelessness Act of 2007, introduced by Senators Reid and 

Allard. These two bills are the subject of discussion today. We look 

forward to hearing from the witnesses. 

At this time, I will yield to Ranking Member Capito, who is doing 

an outstanding job. She will be recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mrs. CAPITO. I want to thank Mr. Green for recognizing me and 

for chairing this committee today, and for his steady hand and 

great guidance in this area and other areas of housing. Thank you 

for that. 

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome Mr. McCarthy 

from the full Financial Services Committee to the Subcommittee on 

Housing and Community Opportunity. He has just joined us. He is 

a good California Representative; welcome to your first Subcommittee on Housing hearing. 

I just briefly want to say that we learned 2 weeks ago many of 

the issues concerning the reauthorization of the legislation before 

3

us. I look forward to the many witnesses who are going to be before 

us today. I thank you all for traveling to Washington. I look forward to the hearing. 

Thank you. 

Mr. GREEN. I will now recognize Mr. Cleaver for 3 minutes. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you and Ranking Member Capito for having this hearing. 

Very quickly, I would just say that I am very much concerned 

about this issue because of the de-institutionalization. We are finding that there are any number of men and women on the streets, 

sleeping under bridges, or sleeping along—in my State—the Missouri River. 

Each August, we do a stand down and miraculously, this year, 

we had about 600 homeless veterans show up—600. There was 

nothing in the newspapers. Nothing on television. Of course, they 

do not have either. 

Somehow, the word is able to circulate and they show up. We 

give some of them their one haircut of the year. We give them a 

breakfast. They see a dentist. They spend most of the day out there 

getting services. 

That is stop-gap. That is something that we do, and maybe it 

makes us feel better than the service we provide. 

The truth of the matter is we have to do something about this 

problem. This is the most powerful nation on the planet, and I 

think it is embarrassing that we have millions of Americans, particularly those who have gone out and fought for this country, 

sleeping under bridges and in cardboard boxes. 

I would reserve the rest of my time, Mr. Chairman, to raise questions with our witnesses. Thank you. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Cleaver. 

At this time, we will hear from the first panel. We would like to 

welcome you. Our first witness will be Mr. Mark Johnston. He is 

the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Special Needs, U.S. Department 

of Housing and Urban Development. Welcome, sir. 

The second witness will be Mr. Philip Mangano, the executive director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness. 

The third witness will be Mr. Zev Yaroslavsky, the chair of the 

Board of Supervisors of Los Angeles County. 

We will now start with Mr. Johnston. We will recognize you for 

5 minutes, and will proceed with the witnesses as announced. 

STATEMENT OF MARK JOHNSTON, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR SPECIAL NEEDS PROGRAMS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT 

Mr. JOHNSTON. Congressman Green, Ranking Member Capito, 

and distinguished members of the subcommittee, I am Mark Johnston, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Special Needs Programs 

at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

It is a privilege to represent the Department at this hearing 

today. I ask the subcommittee to accept the Department’s written 

statement for submission to the hearing record. 

Mr. GREEN. Without objection. 

Mr. JOHNSTON. Thank you. 

4

I am pleased to be here to discuss the Administration’s proposed 

consolidation of HUD’s three competitive programs into a single 

Continuum of Care program to alleviate homelessness in this country. 

I also want to thank the members of the Financial Services Committee for introducing the HEARTH Act, which includes a number 

of provisions supported by the Administration. 

We look forward to working with the committee on this important effort with the ultimate goal of getting a bill to the President’s 

desk. 

Consolidation of these three programs would provide more flexibility to localities, give grant-making responsibility to local decisionmaking bodies, allow more funds for the prevention of homelessness, and dramatically reduce the time required to distribute 

funds to communities. 

HUD developed the Continuum of Care planning and grant making process in 1994. The continuum is an unique and comprehensive public/private partnership. It calls for all stakeholders within 

a community to be involved in shaping solutions to homelessness. 

These stakeholders include local government, nonprofit providers, businesses, foundations, and homeless persons themselves. 

The over 3,900 jurisdictions which participate in the Continuum 

of Care process represent over 95 percent of the U.S. population. 

Our bill would codify this approach, which was created by HUD 

through administrative means. A significant enhancement in this 

bill would add prevention as a new eligible activity under the statute. Prevention is a key part of solving homelessness and is an important element in our bill. 

In addition to preventing homelessness for those who are at risk, 

HUD now addresses, and would continue to address in the new 

program, the needs of persons who are already homeless, including 

the chronically homeless. 

The Administration set a goal of ending chronic homelessness. 

Through the Continuum of Care grants, HUD funds have been 

working to achieve this goal. 

The congressional requirement that 30 percent of HUD funds be 

used to provide permanent housing has contributed to these efforts. 

Through the consolidation process, HUD remains committed to 

targeting its homeless assistance resources to homeless families 

and individuals who are in most need of housing and services. 

HUD’s preliminary review of proposals to expand the definition 

of ‘‘homelessness’’ indicates that the number of people who would 

become eligible for HUD’s programs would increase significantly. 

Expanding the definition of ‘‘homelessness’’ beyond the current 

statutory definition would cause HUD’s homeless programs to lose 

their focus on reaching those who literally have nowhere to sleep 

tonight. 

Further, the definition need not be expanded because with homeless prevention as a new eligible activity, communities could for the 

first time use Continuum of Care funds to serve those at risk of 

homelessness. 

The Continuum of Care approach encourages local performance. 

The grant application continues to have a performance section, the 

core of which is the Government Performance and Results Act indiVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:45 Feb 19, 2008 Jkt 039908 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\39908.TXT HFIN PsN: TERRIE
5

cators, by which Congress assesses HUD for the area of homelessness. 

HUD’s GPRA efforts related to the Continuum of Care program 

have been touted by OMB as exemplary for other Federal programs 

to emulate. 

HUD’s Continuum of Care program was rated ‘‘Effective,’’ which 

is the highest possible rating by the Program Assessment Rating 

Tool or PART. That rating underscores the efficacy of the Continuum of Care approach embedded in the HEARTH bill and the 

Administration’s proposal. 

Performance will continue to be a key element of the new consolidated and more flexible program. Overall, consolidating the three 

Continuum of Care programs into one and codifying it in the statute will allow for greater local flexibility, which will enable improved local performance and effectiveness in using HUD’s homeless programs. 

Thank you very much for inviting me to be here today. I look forward to more discussions on this critical issue. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Johnston can be found on page 

123 of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Philip Mangano. 

STATEMENT OF PHILIP MANGANO, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

UNITED STATES INTERAGENCY COUNCIL ON HOMELESSNESS 

Mr. MANGANO. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, Ranking Member Capito, and members of the subcommittee. 

I am pleased to be here with so many who have done so much 

for homeless people, and pleased especially to be here on this panel 

with Mark Johnston, who has a long and distinguished career on 

this issue at HUD, and with County Chair Yaroslavsky, whom I 

have gotten to know in recent years. His deep and deliberate commitment to see change and results in Los Angeles County is commendable and needed. 

I bring you greetings from the full Council, 20 Federal agencies, 

and specifically from HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt, who is the 

Cabinet Chair of the Council this year in the rotation recommended by Congress. 

In my 27 years of involvement in this issue, I have never been 

more confident that Dr. King’s great insight is applicable to homelessness, that the long moral arc of the history of our American experience, as he reminded us, bends toward justice, righting social 

and moral wrongs. 

He had seen that in his own lifetime as segregation was overcome and in the history of our country’s abolition of slavery and the 

expansion of suffrage. That is our context, moving that arc into the 

lives of our homeless neighbors. The reauthorization of McKinneyVento offers us an opportunity to move beyond what we were satisfied with 20 years ago to appropriate new ideas, resources, and results in bending that arc. 

Over the past 5 years, the United States Interagency Council has 

been ‘‘constellating’’ a national partnership with one goal, one objective, and one mission: ending the homelessness of our poorest 

neighbors. 

6

When the President set a new marker in front of the country 

asking us to end the homelessness of those who were the most vulnerable and disabled, those the researchers identified as experiencing chronic homelessness, the Council set out to bring Federal 

and State agencies together, along with local communities and the 

private sector. 

When we did that, some were skeptical. Now 4 years later, 20 

Federal agencies meet regularly in Washington; 49 Governors have 

created State Interagency Councils on Homelessness; and more 

than 300 local communities are partnered through their mayors 

and county executives in Ten Year Plans to End Homelessness, a 

partnership supported both by the U.S. Conference of Mayors and 

the National Association of Counties. 

With 6 consecutive years of increased Federal resources and 

more State and local resources, investments are being made to create results. That has precipitated an unprecedented involvement of 

the private sector in those local plans, and most importantly, more 

than 30 cities across our Nation, coast to coast, large and small, 

are reporting decreases in street and long term homelessness for 

the first time in 20 years. 

We are at a new place; the arc is bending. There is much more 

work to do for both individuals and families, but we have learned 

a lot in the past 20 years that is informing us as we move forward 

with reauthorization. 

We have learned that no one level of government and no one sector can do it alone. That if good intentions, well-meaning programs, 

and humanitarian gestures could get the job done, homelessness 

would have been history long ago. 

That field tested, evidence-based innovations can end homelessness, especially permanent supportive housing, along with employment and appropriate services. 

That jurisdictional leadership in business-oriented community 

based Ten Year Plans creates results. That cost benefit analysis reveals the economic impact and consequences of chronic homelessness. Crisis interventions, emergency rooms, or police sweeps are 

not the solution. They are expensive and ineffective in solving the 

problem. 

Prevention of homelessness is cost effective and requires many 

approaches for both individuals and families, and consumers have 

a role in planning and partnership. 

In the reauthorization, we support the following in the Administration: One, the Administration proposal along with the two congressional bills support the consolidation of homeless assistance 

competitive grants at HUD. That would provide flexibility for local 

communities, more focus on prevention, and customer friendly applications for the field. That just makes sense. 

Two, we should maintain and increase our emphasis on homeless 

veterans in every activity of the reauthorization. They deserve our 

priority. 

Three, we are close to completing the research on homeless families, which will become the basis for policy development and investment. Policy should wait for research and data. 

7

Secretary Leavitt opened the Council’s mission and priorities in 

his call for renewed attention to families and youth, beginning with 

research and an inventory of current Federal resources. 

Four, as the central anecdote to end homelessness, the 30 percent set-aside of HUD’s resources for housing instigated the creation of tens of thousands of housing units specifically targeted to 

homeless people. That set-aside should be maintained. 

Five, and finally, having worked on behalf of homeless people, including in street outreach and shelters in a city creating initiatives 

for homeless families and advocacy, the definition of ‘‘homelessness’’ as it now stands at HUD, has been instrumental in targeting 

our finite resources to those who are the most vulnerable and disabled. 

That targeting and focus has not included doubled-up families, 

not under Secretaries Kemp, Cisneros, Cuomo, Martinez, or Jackson. 

There are needs there, but as Senator McKinney said last week, 

‘‘While it is admirable to want to address all people who are in 

need, I am concerned that this could lead to a thinning of resources.’’ 

We should instead be examining the use of mainstream resources 

of the Federal and local governments to respond to the needs of 

doubled-up families. In doing so, many more billions of dollars are 

available, as indicated in an 1999 GAO report on homelessness. 

We would also avoid the stigma of homelessness being applied to 

more mothers and their children. 

Finally, we are seeing results in our investments through Ten 

Year Plans. Again, 30 cities across our country have seen decreases 

on their streets and in their shelters. That is the trajectory of our 

national goal, to put to work for homeless people jurisdictional 

leadership, innovative ideas, and increased resources to the mission 

of reducing and ending homelessness in our country, beginning 

with those on our streets long term and in our shelters. 

What seemed intractable at the beginning of this decade is now 

yielding to strategic solutions and informed investments. 

McKinney-Vento reauthorization offers a new opportunity to reevaluate and re-invest in what works. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Mangano can be found on page 

141 of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. Our next witness 

is a friend and a colleague from Los Angeles. He is listed as a 

member of the Board of Supervisors, but he actually is the chair 

of the Board of Supervisors. 

I have known Zev Yaroslavsky for many years. When I served as 

chief deputy to a city councilman, he was elected to office. He 

served on the City Council for a number of years before going to 

the Board of Supervisors, and has a great reputation for dealing 

with the homeless issue in the greater Los Angeles area. 

I am delighted that you could be here today, Zev. Thank you very 

much. 

8

STATEMENT OF ZEV YAROSLAVSKY, CHAIRMAN, LOS ANGELES 

COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS 

Mr. YAROSLAVSKY. Thank you. Madam Chairwoman, and Ranking Member Capito, thank you for the invitation to testify before 

your subcommittee. 

Members of the subcommittee, I will just abbreviate my prepared 

remarks and give you a little taste of one county in the United 

States and how homelessness impacts it. It happens to be the biggest county in the United States, with over 10.3 million people and 

an annual budget of $23 billion. 

On any given night in Los Angeles County, the overall homeless 

population is approximately 73,000. If the homeless were their own 

city in our county, they would be one of the largest cities in our 

county. 

There are three overarching factors contributing to homelessness 

in Los Angeles: First, a pervasive lack of permanent affording 

housing, not only a lack of supply but a diminution of supply, as 

we see an epidemic of demolitions of affordable housing taking 

place; second, insufficient resources and funding to help clients 

achieve and sustain self-sufficiency; and third, severe psycho-emotional impairment of clients related to and exaggerated by substance abuse and/or mental illness. 

In recognition of these serious issues, our county has invested an additional $100 million this past year, over and above the many 

tens of millions we already spent on human services in a new 

homeless prevention initiative intended to strengthen homeless and 

housing services in our county. 

The goal is to enhance the regional system of care, connect all 

of the county’s homeless programs, establish comprehensive services to prevent homelessness, and move homeless individuals and 

families to safe, permanent, affordable housing. 

In Los Angeles, approximately 22,000 persons are chronically 

homeless—22,000. Unfortunately, chronic homelessness is a complex, persistent, and long term problem. Perhaps the greatest barrier in addressing chronic homelessness is a lack of permanent supportive housing to address multiple issues of the chronically homeless. 

Studies show that supportive housing programs which link permanent affordable housing with supportive services to chronically 

homeless persons in need of public assistance and/or services effectively reduce homelessness. 

This housing model improves housing stability and reduces the 

use of high cost public services. Additionally, placement of homeless persons with severe mental illness in permanent supportive 

housing is associated with reductions in hospitalizations, incarcerations, and subsequent use of shelters, emergency rooms, psychiatric, and detoxication programs. At the end of the day, this 

saves the public taxpayer a lot of money. 

In Los Angeles County, there is a growing interest in and commitment to the establishment of permanent supportive housing as 

a key strategy to reduce regional homelessness. 

The linkage of housing and supportive services requires partnerships which facilitate collaboration and coordination between housing development efforts in the 88 cities that make up our county, 

9

supportive services of the county, and resources of other governmental agencies and private entities. 

The complexities of pulling together housing developers, capital 

funders and organizations that can supply and finance the provision of permanent housing with supportive services will require extensive coordination and integration among the entities involved. 

One of the county’s mandates is to promote State and Federal 

legislative and regulatory policy change that enable the creation of 

adequate funding streams for permanent supportive housing, to include but not limited to, pre-development and operational expenses, 

and additional resources for county supportive services for homeless individuals and families, and those at risk for becoming homeless. 

For these reasons, Los Angeles County strongly supports the inclusion of resources to advance the development of permanent supportive housing, which incorporates funding for ongoing support of 

services for chronically homeless persons, including those who are 

elderly, disabled, and mentally ill, in the reauthorization of McKinney-Vento. 

The county strongly supports provisions that would expand the 

use of grants to fund homeless assistance and homeless prevention 

services, increase resources to advance the development of permanent supportive housing, including ongoing funding for supportive 

services, and appropriate $2.5 billion for homeless assistance 

grants in Federal Fiscal Year 2008. 

Madam Chairwoman, if I could just take one more second on a 

personal note. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Yes. 

Mr. YAROSLAVSKY. I got really focused on this issue several years 

ago, viscerally as opposed to intellectually focused, when my 

daughter, who was in a summer between the years at the Kennedy 

School getting her master’s was working for the City of Oakland 

in the Department of Human Services. 

She called me one night and she said, ‘‘Dad, an interesting thing 

happened to me today, I wanted to share it with you.’’ I asked what 

it was. She replied, ‘‘I was walking up Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley and there was a homeless person sitting on the curb. I sat down 

next to him and I talked to him for 20 minutes, and we talked 

about issues and what was troubling him, the whole 9 yards. 

‘‘At the end of 20 minutes, I opened my purse, dad, and I was 

going to give him a couple of bucks, and he said, ‘I do not want 

your money. You have given me something far more valuable. You 

have given me respect and dignity, for which I am appreciative.’ ’’ 

Then she said, and this is what lowered the boom on me, she 

said, ‘‘Dad, we sat there for 20 minutes and not one person of the 

dozens and dozens who walked by ever made eye contact with either him or me.’’ 

The reauthorization of this bill, Madam Chairwoman, is America’s way of saying we are going to make eye contact with this issue 

and with these people. These are individuals, people. We have 

73,000 homeless in Los Angeles County. Let us start with one. 

Each one is God’s creation. Each one is a human being with a story 

about whom a book could be written. 

10

This is our opportunity to make eye contact with each and every 

one of them. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Yaroslavsky can be found on 

page 208 of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very, very much. That was 

powerful testimony. 

I would like to thank each of you for the testimony that you have 

given today, and I now recognize myself for 5 minutes for questions. 

It has struck me as I have observed effective programs, especially permanent supportive housing, that one of the keys to success is the provision of flexible, accessible supportive services. 

However, it seems that a particular homeless individual or family often requires a range of services, and further, does not always 

fit into the neat categories that public administrators of services 

fund and construct in distributing their funds. 

I wonder if I might hear about any lessons learned or keys to 

success in overcoming these sorts of bureaucratic and administrative obstacles to efficient services funding? 

This is kind of a convoluted, almost question. Let me just say to 

Zev, we are confronted with this homeless problem in Los Angeles, 

which you have so adequately described. Go to downtown Los Angeles, right near City Hall, onto some of the side streets, and it just 

blows your mind. 

I know both county elected officials and the city elected officials 

have done a number of things to try to eliminate homelessness and 

to provide services to get people off the streets. 

It seems to me there is a discussion going on about resources 

being provided to the temporary facilities, because people need 

some place to sleep at night, as opposed to resources going to permanent housing for the homeless. 

There seems to be a debate going on somewhere underneath all 

of this. Can you share with me and unfold for me what is happening? Even though we are talking about the entire country, right 

now, I am focused on Los Angeles, Los Angeles County. 

What is going on with this debate? 

Mr. YAROSLAVSKY. Madam Chairwoman, I think there are a lot 

of people in recent years who focused on shelter, if I can steal a 

line from Mr. Mangano. It was really in the spirit of managing 

rather than solving the problem. 

I think we need to make the distinction between managing and 

solving the problem. Shelter is managing the problem. Permanent 

housing is solving the problem. 

If you want to end homelessness, you have to take the ‘‘less’’ out 

of ‘‘homeless.’’ You have to provide a home, then you are not homeless. If you do not provide a home for the homeless, they are going 

to be homeless. 

It is just that simple. The goal has to be—I think our county’s 

thinking has evolved very rapidly, thanks to seeing what is going 

on in other parts of the country and even in our own county has 

evolved very rapidly into believing that our focus needs to be on 

permanent supportive housing. That is the only way to solve the 

problem. 

11

That is not to say that in the short term that we are not going 

to have winter shelter programs, for sure, we will. It is not to say 

that between now and the time we wrap up more supportive housing in some of the 88 cities of our county, starting with the City 

of Los Angeles, which is our biggest city, but there are others that 

are quite large, as they ramp up their supportive housing construction and hopefully stop the demolition of affordable housing so that 

we do not compound our problem, while that is being ramped up, 

that we will provide temporary or transitional housing. 

Our goal has to be and I think our thinking is permanent supportive housing. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much, Zev. I really appreciate that. 

Now Ranking Member Capito, for 5 minutes. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

First of all, I would like to ask Mr. Johnston a question. You 

talked about consolidating programs within HUD and how that will 

make the process much more fluid, and easier to access. 

We had a penel 10 days ago, with someone from my district, 

West Virginia, representing rural America and rural homelessness. 

It is a lot different from Los Angeles. How will this consolidation 

help those folks who are trying to meet the challenge of rural 

homelessness? 

Mr. JOHNSTON. A very good question. A couple of observations. 

The first is that we recently did an analysis to look at rural America in terms of how well do with getting HUD competitive homeless 

funding. 

We looked at all continuums across the country versus those continuums that are rural. The same percentage of rural continuum 

applications that score high enough to get our funding is essentially exactly the same as the percentage of all continuum applications that score high enough to get our funding. We have a very 

high scoring level to receive this funding because there is so much 

demand. 

I was very impressed that in rural areas, they compete frankly 

very, very well. 

I think one of the benefits of the proposal, both in the HEARTH 

Act as well as the Reid Bill and the Administration’s proposal, is 

to add prevention as an eligible activity. 

In many rural communities where there are not shelters and certainly people are not on the streets, there certainly is still a need 

to be addressed. We think adding prevention as a new eligible activity, which is not allowed currently under law, would go a long 

way to address the needs within rural communities. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Thank you. Mr. Mangano, you represent an interagency outlook, a more overarching outlook on homelessness. It 

seems the crux of a lot of the debate that we are going to be having 

as we move through this legislation is the definition of ‘‘homelessness’’ and whether to expand it and include other forms of homelessness or other definitions. 

When you look at the different agencies, like the Department of 

Education has a different definition than HUD, do you see this as 

a problem having conflicting definitions within very large Federal 

agencies? 

12

Mr. MANGANO. As this issue became more pointed in our country, 

actually the Council convened its member agencies, the 20 Federal 

agencies, and we looked through the various definitions that are 

available at the different Federal agencies. 

What we discovered was actually the majority of Federal agencies, including Veterans’ Affairs, HUD, FEMA, and a variety of 

other agencies, the majority of Federal agencies use the definition 

that HUD uses, and there are other Federal agencies, Agriculture, 

the Health Care for the Homeless program at HHS, Justice, and 

Education, that use other definitions. 

In fact, in terms of the conversation on this, the definition that 

HUD uses is the most commonly used definition with Federal agencies. 

I think we are faced with the notion of finite resources targeted 

to those people who are the most vulnerable, and the efforts that 

have been made across Administrations for many, many years, 

from my earliest involvement in this issue back in 1980 to today, 

every HUD Secretary has had the exact same position on this, 

which is the definition of HUD is the appropriate definition for the 

investment of HUD resources. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Thank you. One final question. You had mentioned 

in your remarks that you are doing a survey. I think you said, do 

not let the policy get in front of the facts or something of that nature. 

Are you all conducting right now a survey of homelessness? Is 

my understanding correct? 

Mr. MANGANO. That was specifically on family homelessness, 

part of the effort that we have been making on the issue is to conform the creation of policy to the President’s management agenda, 

which asks that any Federal investment be data and research-driven first, performance-based, and then results oriented. 

We need to start with the data and the research. We had very 

good data and research on people experiencing chronic homelessness which led to the President prioritizing that as one of our objectives. 

Now we are gathering the data and research under the leadership of Secretary Leavitt, who is the chair of the Council this year. 

We are gathering that data and research on families. 

In fact, outside of government. Dr. Culhane, who will be on a 

panel coming up, has completed some research specifically on 

homeless families, and there is a federally funded research effort 

going on specifically on homeless families as well. 

I think our sense is we need to gather together that research and 

the data that is associated with it, and what investments are already being made from the Federal Government with regard to 

homeless families, take a look at all of that, and then out of that, 

create policies, and then make the investment in those policies. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. I recognize the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Cleaver, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

One of my concerns is frankly HUD has not, in my estimation, 

been as strong an advocate in many areas as many of us would 

have liked. Whenever I hear HUD talking about consolidation, I 

13

tremble. As you know, we had to fight off consolidation last year, 

18 department heads into the Department of Commerce. That creates some paranoia, Mr. Johnston. 

Is there a word of comfort? 

Mr. JOHNSTON. There is. There are several words of comfort, actually. 

Mr. CLEAVER. I would like a word. 

[Laughter] 

Mr. JOHNSTON. All right. If you look at HUD’s request, that is 

the Administration’s request for homeless funding over the last 5 

years, you are going to see increases every year. 

We have had a 41 percent increase in funding for HUD homeless 

programs since 2001. Just in the last 2 years, we have had a 20 

percent increase. We put our money where our mouth is in a sense. 

If you look at our 2008 proposal, which would consolidate these 

programs, it came attached to a budget that will increase significantly the homeless budget at HUD. 

The 2007 level is at $1.44 billion. We are asking for nearly $1.6 

billion. 

We do not look at consolidation as a way to save money. We are 

looking to put more money into this very good investment. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you. We are friends. Thank you. 

[Laughter] 

Mr. CLEAVER. The final question is, would you agree that there 

is some confusion in the Federal Government about what the word 

‘‘homeless’’ means? We have homeless programs in a number of 

Federal agencies. I am not sure that we know what it is. I am not 

sure that there is a definition used by the United States Federal 

Government to define ‘‘homelessness.’’ 

We have the Department of Education. We have Veterans’ Affairs. We have Labor, Homeland Security, and FEMA. 

Is there something that all of us can agree on, and if not, do we 

need this committee to define ‘‘homelessness?’’ 

Mr. JOHNSTON. From my vantage point, there are essentially two 

Federal definitions of ‘‘homelessness.’’ Both are provided by Congress. 

One is provided to the Department of Education and is also used 

by Health Care for the Homeless at the Department of Health and 

Human Services, which includes persons who are living outside, 

persons who are in homeless facilities, and most significantly, persons living doubled-up with others. 

The definition that is provided to HUD in statute and is also 

given to the other agencies that Mr. Mangano referred to, is a little 

bit narrower than that. It includes number one and number two 

but not number three. That is persons living outside, and persons 

living in homeless facilities. It does not add persons living doubled 

up. 

I think it was intentional that Congress did that, that expanded 

the definition for Department of Education, for instance, and not 

for HUD. 

From my perspective, at the Department of Education, the mandate is a very important and narrowly targeted focus of helping ensure that children attend school. 

14

For HUD, the definition implies and requires HUD to have a 

very broad mandate, that is to provide emergency shelter, transitional housing, permanent housing, and a whole array of supportive services, such as mental health treatment, drug treatment, 

day care, food, etc. We are also charged by law to not just serve 

one narrow slice of the population but all homeless persons. 

I think from my perspective, it is intentional, and I think it 

makes sense, that there are two essentially different definitions of 

‘‘homelessness.’’ 

I think the bridge to narrow that gap is homeless prevention. If 

in the consolidation bill, you were to add homeless prevention as 

an eligible activity, then those persons who are doubled-up, who 

are not homeless, could still get the assistance they need. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Chairwoman WATERS. You are welcome. Mr. Shays, the gentleman from Connecticut, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. I would like to ask all three of you about 

this issue which we sometimes do not seem to want to talk about. 

I really wrestle with how I integrate my concern for the homeless 

and what I feel my obligations are for the homeless, and that is illegal immigrants. 

It astonished me. One of you mentioned all the reasons for homelessness, and illegal immigration never came up. Is that because it 

is a topic we do not talk about or is that because you think it is 

irrelevant? 

I would like to ask each of you. 

Mr. JOHNSTON. I guess I will begin. It certainly is not an irrelevant topic. We do not have great data on illegal immigrants, for instance, using systems. We do hear anecdotally in a variety of emergency shelters in this country, especially near the border, that illegal immigrants are likely being assisted. I do not really have specific hard information to provide you. 

Mr. SHAYS. Why did it not come up in your dialogue? Let me go 

to the next witness, please. 

Mr. MANGANO. In my travels around the country and in my conversations with people who operate homeless programs across our 

country, this is not an issue that has been one of the most pronounced or visible issues in their experience. 

There is not good data on this issue. There have been certainly 

reports more in border areas of our country that this is more of an 

issue in homeless programs. In general, this is not a highly reported activity in shelters and homeless programs across our country. 

Certainly, it exists. It is not one of the more visible expressions 

of homelessness. 

Mr. YAROSLAVSKY. Let me just speak anecdotally because we do 

not have any statistics per se on that issue. Anecdotally, in Los Angeles, even in Los Angeles, I might say, I think the percentage of 

homeless who are illegal immigrants, my bet is it would be a relatively small number. 

Mr. SHAYS. What is a small number? 

Mr. YAROSLAVSKY. I do not know. Fifteen percent or less. 

Mr. SHAYS. Your point would be that the homeless in California 

and parts of California— 

15

Mr. YAROSLAVSKY. I said Los Angeles. 

Mr. SHAYS. Los Angeles, would be less than 15 percent. Why 

would you make that statement? 

Mr. YAROSLAVSKY. Because I know my city and I know my county, and I spend a lot of time on the streets of my county. I see who 

our folks are. I see who comes in for services. 

Mr. SHAYS. Municipal hospitals, what is the number of homeless? 

Mr. YAROSLAVSKY. That is a different issue. 

Mr. SHAYS. What is it? 

Mr. YAROSLAVSKY. What is what? 

Mr. SHAYS. What is the number of illegal immigrants in municipal hospitals? 

Mr. YAROSLAVSKY. I am not sure I could give you an accurate figure, but it is much higher than 15 percent. 

Mr. SHAYS. Why would this be anecdotal? Why would we have 

to ask a question like—none of you mentioned it. Is it because it 

is just a taboo subject? Is it just because it is irrelevant? I need 

to understand why. 

Mr. YAROSLAVSKY. If I can be blunt, the reason it is not raised 

is because it really is not relevant. 

Mr. SHAYS. Tell me why it is not relevant. 

Mr. YAROSLAVSKY. Because it is not a significant portion of the 

problem. 

Mr. SHAYS. How do you know that? 

Mr. YAROSLAVSKY. I want to be responsive. I am just trying to 

collect my thoughts so I can be directly responsive. 

Mr. SHAYS. Sure. 

Mr. YAROSLAVSKY. Almost 25 percent of the homeless on the 

streets of our county are veterans—veterans. I would take that 25 

percent and put them aside. We see through the number of people 

who come through our service agencies all over the county, not our 

hospitals, but our homeless service agencies, our human services 

agencies, some of our mental health facilities, they are local people. 

Many of them are citizens. Most of them, I would suspect, are citizens. They have served their country. 

Mr. SHAYS. Do not get on a separate topic. It is like distraction 

here. We know that we have a primary problem with veterans, but 

do not use veterans to disguise the fact that it is an anecdotal comment, because we do not understand, and I want to understand 

why we do not try to understand what the problem is. 

I am not saying that we will not deal with it. We are saying—

it is like we do not want to know, my feeling is, because it is a bigger problem than we want to admit. That is where I come down. 

Mr. YAROSLAVSKY. I understand. Congressman, I think the reason—it is very hard to get information and statistics about homeless in general. We just completed our second census of homeless 

in Los Angeles County, just announced last week. That is where 

the 73,000 figure comes from. 

I am not sure the 73,000 figure is accurate. It is based on extrapolations and assumptions and formula’s. 

We do not know the number of homeless, let alone what the demographics of the homeless are. 

We do know this, that when we have homeless come into our 

agencies, a good percentage of them have mental issues. A good 

16

percentage of them have substance abuse issues, etc. A good number of them have issues relating to serving in combat. 

I have honestly, Congressman, served in public office in Los Angeles County for 32 years, and this is the first time that the question of homeless illegals has ever come up. It has come up in emergency rooms and it has come up in a lot of other contexts. It has 

never come up in the context of homeless. 

Mr. SHAYS. It seems to me like a very logical question to ask and 

then to confront, and hopefully, with humanity and caring. Thank 

you. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. 

Let me just say I would dare say if that question was asked of 

anybody from any city, they would not know what that number will 

be. We do not inquire of individuals who are seeking homeless 

services whether or not they are legal. It is not documented, in 

California or Connecticut. 

The other thing is anecdotally, we do know that in many of our 

communities, illegals/undocumented double up an awful lot. We 

have cases of not only several families living together, but even in 

the garages on the property where the front house may be full. 

I think doubling up is more of a response to the family members 

who do not have homes rather than going to a public shelter, if 

that helps you at all, Mr. Shays. 

Mr. SHAYS. I agree. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. Mr. Sires, for 5 

minutes. 

Mr. SIRES. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Mr. Johnston, I share Congressman Cleaver’s concern, when you 

say consolidating and restructuring. I guess it must come from the 

fact that we were both mayors of cities, and when we hear that 

word, we find out that only means that you dump it on the municipalities, on the local municipality. 

You talk about restructuring. You talk about consolidating. Do 

you have any guarantees that this is not going to happen, where 

all these problems are going to be turned over to the municipalities 

and just abandoned? I have past experience. That is why. 

Mr. JOHNSTON. Let me give a little bit of perspective on our proposal. When the McKinney programs were created in 1987, they 

were separate independently appropriated programs. 

HUD on its own initiative administratively collapsed them in a 

Notice of Funding Availability, three of these programs, the programs that we seek here to consolidate. 

The communities would no longer have to apply three different 

times to get some funding. They would not have to choose from one 

program if they did not really want it. 

We are simply trying to codify what we are doing on a regulatory 

basis and have been doing for about 12 years. In addition to making it simpler, to simply apply to one program, we would be eliminating the eight or nine different match requirements that are currently in the law, that are all at different levels. 

In just the Supportive Housing Program, there is a match requirement of 100 percent, if you want to build something. There is 

a 25 percent match requirement for operating costs. There is a 20 

percent match requirement for services. 

17

We would love to eliminate all the complexity in these programs 

and simplify it with a simple 25 percent match requirement. 

This proposal is simply furthering what we have been trying to 

do for many years administratively and change the law to make it 

much more flexible for communities. 

Let me just throw out one example. Back in 1987, the law did 

and still does say that if you want to develop a housing project, you 

can only use $400,000 from HUD to do it. To do that today in Los 

Angeles or any other city would be an impossibility, and is an impossibility, to develop an entire project with $400,000 from HUD. 

We do not want to disincentivize housing. We want to encourage 

housing. We would eliminate a number of disincentives that were 

not intentional but now that we are here many years later, since 

1987, we would like to improve upon. 

The other point I wanted to emphasize, which was discussed a 

little bit when Mr. Cleaver asked his question, if you look at our 

history on this program in the last 6, 8, or 10 years, this is a bipartisan issue. This is not a partisan issue. 

Helping homeless people is something everybody wants to do. If 

you look at this Administration’s request, from the very first one 

forward, we always ask for increases, and we have proposed a consolidation for 3 years now, and every year, we have asked for an 

increase. 

This year, we will be going up well over $120 million above the 

current funding level. We are committed to making good change 

and providing the resources to do it with. 

Mr. SIRES. I also had the experience where a large percentage of 

the homeless were veterans, and the problem with housing is certainly a big problem since HUD walked away, I think, from the 

housing for veterans, and they just turned that over to the local 

housing authorities years ago. I do not know if you are aware of 

that. 

Mr. JOHNSTON. I have been at HUD since 1989. I am certainly 

aware of HUD’s policies on the issue of homelessness. 

Mr. SIRES. And you did not use any of the money from housing 

authorities to fix up veterans’ housing that was built after the war? 

This is the experience I had. 

Mr. JOHNSTON. In our homeless programs, the homeless programs that we are referring to today for consolidation, we have always used these programs to help all homeless populations, including veterans. 

We highly value the need to provide housing and services to 

homeless veterans. We have a great relationship with the VA. I am 

talking with my counterpart at VA on a weekly basis. We have 

done joint initiatives with the Interagency Council on Homelessness, where we provide the housing and the VA provides the services. 

We provide tailored kinds of programs to accommodate the special needs of veteran specific projects. 

We are very committed and have been for a long time in providing resources to homeless veterans, whether it is a project specifically just for veterans, and we fund many, many dozens of 

those, or if it is a program that will serve veterans among another 

population, we serve those as well. 

18

Mr. SIRES. I am concerned, we are getting a lot of veterans back. 

We are going to have to really look at that in the future. Most of 

the problems with the veterans is mental in many cases. We need 

to address that. 

Mr. JOHNSTON. I represent HUD on the Secretary of the VA’s Advisory Committee on Homeless Veterans, and work with them on 

a regular basis. That is certainly an issue that is coming up. 

At this point, the data that the VA has indicates the numbers 

are very, very small, but no doubt, that number is going to increase 

somewhat. 

Mr. SIRES. Thank you very much. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. I would now like to 

recognize our newest member, Mr. McCarthy. I understand you 

were welcomed to the subcommittee earlier by Ms. Capito, and I 

welcome you also, and recognize you for 5 minutes. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Mr. Johnston, you struck me, not in your written statement, but 

something you said off the cuff on an answer about something that 

is missing is preventive, ahead of time. 

I would like you to elaborate on that, but also I would like you 

to answer, from your perspective, since you have been there since 

1989, what assistance do you find the most effective to this population, and what do you find as assistance that is the least effective 

in this population that we are assisting? 

Mr. JOHNSTON. In terms of prevention, currently under the statute through the emergency shelter grants program, prevention is 

an eligible activity. The statute, however, limits it to just 30 percent. That program is funded at about $160 million, so relatively 

little of that set of funding can be used for prevention. 

We would like to open up prevention in the much bigger consolidated program. For instance, the combination of these three programs that we would like to consolidate this year represent about 

$1.3 billion. We would allow up to 30 percent of those funds to be 

used for prevention. 

As I go around the country and I know Mr. Mangano has done 

the same, we see time and time again where people have slipped 

into homelessness for a whole variety of reasons. 

If they could have been assisted before then, through mediation 

in the courts, through paying the utilities, through helping on the 

rent for a couple of months, and that person would not have 

slipped into homelessness, it would have cost HUD a lot less, just 

in terms of pure budget. 

Of course, for that person, it is a very traumatic effect, to slip 

into homelessness, to live on the streets for just one night is horrific. 

We would very much like to expand the eligible activities of prevention because it would be very humane for people not having to 

come into a shelter and also it would reserve our funds to address 

it in a much more effective way, both through prevention and 

through permanent supportive housing. 

In terms of your second question as to what is most effective, 

HUD realized many years ago that emergency shelter is absolutely 

not the solution to homelessness. 

19

If you look at how HUD allocates its funds now through the 

homeless programs, only about 10 percent of our entire homeless 

appropriation goes to emergency shelters, because we realized that 

long term solutions are really needed to solve the problem. 

The vast majority of funds go to long term housing as well as 

supportive services. 

I was looking yesterday in preparation for this hearing at what 

percent of our new awarded funds go to permanent housing versus 

other activities, and it was about 87 percent, as I recall, of all of 

our new funds go to permanent supportive housing. 

I do want to emphasize ‘‘supportive.’’ We recognize that HUD, 

while we want to be the houser, we recognize there are services 

that are very difficult to get from other Federal agencies, so a significant portion of our budget is used for vital services that providers cannot readily get somewhere else. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I yield back. 

Chairwoman WATERS. You are certainly welcome. The gentleman 

from Texas, Mr. Green. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and I thank you 

and the ranking member for having this hearing today. 

Mr. Johnston, sir, your comment caught my ear, emergency shelters are not a solution to homelessness. I concur with what you 

said. However, for that one person who receives the emergency 

shelter, for that person, for that period of time that he or she would 

be without shelter, it is a solution to the problem at hand. 

My assumption is that you would not want us to eliminate emergency shelters. You were just emphasizing that for some reason, 

and it may have escaped me, so would you kindly emphasize why 

you were emphasizing that point? 

Mr. JOHNSTON. Certainly. We absolutely value the need for emergency shelter. As the representative from L.A. County mentioned, 

in the winter times, when you have an influx of persons that need 

shelter, you need immediate assistance there. You have to have facilities ready to accept them. 

My emphasis was, however, that emergency shelter, while it will 

be the solution for the short term, for that 30 days or so that they 

are in a shelter, it is not a long term solution for that individual. 

They need long term housing and long term care to address their 

issues, such as helping them with job training, helping them get 

off the drugs, helping with their mental health issues. 

While many of those services can be provided in emergency shelters on a short term basis, it is very difficult to transition right out 

of an emergency shelter into full self sufficiency. 

Mr. GREEN. HUD is proposing a bill, but the bill has not been 

presented; is that correct? 

Mr. JOHNSTON. We transmitted the bill this summer. We realized 

that the House and the Senate both have active bills on the same 

issue. We have been working closely with the Senate on their bill, 

and we would love to work closely with the House on your bill, and 

frankly, work with what is already there, rather than introducing 

a third competing bill. 

We do think there are some strong provisions in our bill that 

would strengthen the provisions in the Senate and House bills. 

20

Mr. GREEN. Your position is that you will not be introducing a 

bill? I question you on this because you say some provisions in our 

bill, but at the same time, you say that you would want to help us 

with the two bills that we have before us. 

Are we to expect a bill or are we to expect a proposal? 

Mr. JOHNSTON. We transmitted the bill. It has not been introduced. At this point, we are not actively pursuing to introduce it. 

We would rather work with the committee. 

Mr. GREEN. HUD has at some point indicated that there would 

be a long term plan for ending homelessness; is this correct? A 10 

year proposal, I believe. 

Mr. JOHNSTON. I will begin this response and then I know Mr. 

Mangano will also want to insert himself here. 

The Continuum of Care, which I refer to as our process for allocating grants and for planning at the local level, has a Ten Year 

Plan to end chronic homelessness. That is married with an initiative that the overall Interagency Council under the leadership of 

Secretary Leavitt and Executive Director Philip Mangano have espoused and have worked very closely with elected officials. 

I am going to turn now to Philip for any additional comments 

that he would like to make. 

Mr. MANGANO. We have been working together again with States 

and local communities around the country. Forty-nine Governors 

have moved forward with State Interagency Councils, many of 

them are moving forward with Ten Year Plans. Local communities 

are making their partnership with us tangible in the creation of 

Ten Year Plans. 

Part of that effort is to find out what is happening in communities to more inductively understand what the Federal response 

should be. 

Even thinking about Congressman Shays’ question earlier in 

terms of the issue of illegal immigrants, which has not come up in 

any of the 300 plans, the notion is to gather information from both 

States and localities so that in fact Federal resources are invested 

and targeted into inductive plans which actually begin at the community level. 

Part of the effort that is being made in Washington among the 

Federal agencies in the Interagency Council is to use that information to come up with a national plan that will be part of a national 

partnership, a national Ten Year Plan, but that plan would be informed and part of a larger effort at every level of government, no 

one level of government can do this, no one plan will effect what 

we want to see in this country. 

Every level of government is moving forward with planning. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you. I yield back the balance of my time. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. I recognize the gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Davis, for 5 minutes, for questions. 

Mr. DAVIS OF KENTUCKY. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I 

have a question first for Mr. Johnston. I just have one question for 

you. 

Can you provide the committee with recent statistics proving 

that chronic homelessness has decreased? 

Mr. JOHNSTON. We could. 

21

Mr. DAVIS OF KENTUCKY. I would appreciate that, if you would 

share that with us. We might have a difference of opinion from our 

perspective here versus what we see out in our districts and on the 

street versus the numbers. 

Also with those numbers, I would appreciate it if you would 

share the criteria for calculating those metrics, what defines somebody who is decreasing, which leads me to my next question for 

Mr. Mangano. 

You mentioned you had concerns about the proposal of expanding 

the HUD definition of ‘‘homelessness,’’ in terms of including long 

term voluntary arrangements of people living together for cultural 

preferences. 

I am coming to this not simply as a co-sponsor of legislation with 

other members sitting here, but having worked with families in crisis since the early 1980’s. 

One thing that I have to say candidly that I have personally seen 

is most of the homeless that we would see or we would deal with, 

for example, we had one of our agency leaders from Kentucky testifying week before last, a single parent, oftentimes a woman coming 

from a battered or abusive relationship, with no means of support, 

and small children, versus the traditional image that we have with 

folks on the street. 

The Departments of Education, HHS, and Justice define ‘‘homelessness’’ to include people in doubled-up situations, some of these 

unconventional situations, as long as it is not fixed, regular, a voluntary choice, for example, to reduce rent, not on a long term basis. 

The definitions, I think, that we are discussing that we would 

like to see changed in legislation do not really reflect a cultural 

preference decision or something that would be long term. 

Are you aware of this distinction in definitions between what we 

would like to see and what I think the break in dialogue might be? 

Mr. MANGANO. Certainly, both in my written testimony and earlier in my oral testimony, I spoke to the definition issue. One of the 

things that the Interagency Council did was bring together all of 

the Federal agencies to talk specifically about this issue. 

What we discovered was that the majority of Federal agencies actually use the same definition, and there are several other definitions that are used, one at Agriculture, one in Health Care for the 

Homeless program in HHS, Justice, and one at the Department of 

Education. 

In that dialogue with those Federal agencies, I think the common 

consensus was there were appropriate reasons for the expanded 

definition at Education, specifically as Mr. Johnston mentioned earlier, for the well being of those children, and in Agriculture and 

Health Care for the Homeless, for very specific reasons. 

Again, the majority of Federal agencies, including the primary 

agencies that devote McKinney resources to the issue of homelessness, Veterans’ Affairs and HUD and most of HHS, actually utilize 

the definition that is currently used by HUD. 

I think there are other reasons to be assembled on this issue. I 

think the Mayors have indicated at the U.S. Conference of Mayors 

when this issue came up, they felt it was an issue that needed to 

be tabled, primarily because no analysis has been done with regard 

22

to the cost. No analysis has been done with regard to how many 

people that would actually mean coming into the system. 

What State Senator McKinney from Connecticut talked about 

last week was in fact the idea of diminishing the current resources 

that are used, all of them are accounted for, all of them are already 

invested, so if there would not be a substantial increase, and we 

do not understand what that substantial increase would be because 

the analysis and the research has not been done, then we would 

actually be diminishing the resources that are already targeted. 

Mr. DAVIS OF KENTUCKY. If I could reclaim my time, I would suggest politely that the Mayors who were making that recommendation probably have not spent a lot of time working down on the 

front lines. We do not have an organization in our State that I have 

met with or groups I have volunteered with that did not recognize 

this as a very substantial problem. 

I grew up in a single parent household myself and came to the 

edge a couple of times. I think the perspective here that is getting 

missed is by saying that in effect what we are saying is somebody 

who is escaping an abuser or some other type of what ought to be 

a transitory recovery situation, that we are not going to provide the 

Continuum of Care and we are going to invest in folks that frankly 

do not have a high likelihood, and I am not saying we do not take 

care of them, but we would invest money in folks who statistically 

do not have a likelihood of recovery and we are leaving out what 

I would consider, at least for my small piece of the pie, the largest 

single population of homeless are not going to be affected by this. 

I think you do not have any choice but to change this definition. 

Mr. MANGANO. I think in our discussions with all of the Federal 

agencies, there was a real care and concern about those families. 

It is not that there are not needs there. It is not that there is not 

a response that is necessary. 

The concern was that the Federal resources targeted to homeless 

people are very limited, and in the GAO report of 1999, for example, it talked about the much deeper resources of the Federal Government being available and accessible and to be targeted anew to 

people experiencing homelessness, I think the consensus among 

those Federal agencies was that it is the deeper Federal resources 

that should be matched up with the needs of people who are doubled up, not trying to bring those doubled up people into homelessness with all of the stigma that might associate with that, but in 

fact to invest mainstream resources in those lives. 

It is certainly an issue that needs to be responded to. It certainly 

requires resources. I think part of the concern was that there were 

deeper resources that could attend to that issue. 

Mr. DAVIS OF KENTUCKY. Madam Chairwoman, with your indulgence, if I could just continue for one more minute. 

Coming back to the statement that Mr. Johnston made, that I 

think is a corollary to this when we are talking about resources. 

You made mention that the overwhelming majority was put into 

permanent housing facilities. 

Mr. JOHNSTON. Of the new money. 

Mr. DAVIS OF KENTUCKY. Of the new money. You said 87 percent. In relation to this, and I think it is fine to do inductive studies among the agencies, but I think the providers, particularly the 

23

successful public/private partnerships that are working at a community level who, I think, have generally been very good stewards 

of the resources that they receive, have found a lot of disconnects. 

You can pay for permanent housing but we cannot have counseling support or job training or some of the other things providing 

for the Continuum of Care. 

I just want to say in closing, as a priority for me personally, and 

I think probably speaking for other members of the committee as 

well, what we want to see enacted in this legislation is making 

sure that the Continuum of Care is there for flexibility in use of 

the resources, and also specifically coming about with this re-definition, so it really gets to the root of the problem. 

I think it is both compassionate and also conservative because 

what we are going to do is help people get a leg up, become productive in the community, and be able to support their families, which 

is what the overwhelming majority want to do, be successful and 

build a future for themselves. 

Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I yield back. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. I understand, Mr. 

Sires, you would like to have 30 seconds to bring up an issue that 

is very important to you. 

Mr. SIRES. Yes, Madam Chairwoman. Thank you very much. 

I was just wondering the percentage of homeless women, do you 

see that as a trend that is increasing? I noticed that when I 

served—do you have any statistics? 

Mr. MANGANO. In the research that has been done from 1987 

until recent research done by HUD, the percentage of homeless 

families has remained fairly fixed as a percentage of the total number of homeless people. 

There will be three of the Nation’s leading researchers who will 

be testifying in further panels. They have conducted some of that 

research that indicates what the percentages are of homeless families versus homeless individuals. I am sure they will be able to respond. 

My understanding from the research is that while the numbers 

may have increased on the family side, the reality is that percentage remains the same percentage as it was years ago. 

Mr. SIRES. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Mr. YAROSLAVSKY. Madam Chairwoman, if I could just shed light 

on that question. In a recent census that I referred to earlier, my 

staff just handed me the sub-demographics, adult women in 2005, 

I would not hold these numbers to be etched in stone, but on an 

order of magnitude, you can get an idea, 11,200 adult women in the 

2005 census; 9,598 in the 2007 census. 

If the trend is an indicator, it has diminished somewhat. 

I would caution one thing, and again, this is anecdotal, it is more 

than anecdotal, I do not know what is happening in your parts of 

the country, but in Southern California, notwithstanding the housing market situation, we are seeing a rash of demolitions of older 

units that are rent controlled and are relatively affordable, and in 

their place are coming market rate, either market rate apartments 

that are very expensive, or condominiums. 

The people who are being evicted from those affordable or rent 

controlled units are vulnerable. They are on the bubble. 

24

In the conference that Mr. Mangano co-sponsored with me in Los 

Angeles 2 weeks ago, I asked our deputy director of welfare for the 

county how many homeless people have come in and out of the system in the last year that touched his department? He said 3,500 

had left homelessness, but 3,200 had come into homelessness in 

that same period of time. 

I asked who were those 3,200? He said those 3,200 were largely 

people who were either the reasons indicated earlier, spousal separation, in which case, the spouse may have taken the kids with 

them, or they were evicted from their units because they were 

going to be demolished for some other development, and the overwhelming majority of those 3,200 new homeless people in our county that came through the Welfare Department were as a result of 

that. 

It is something we need to watch. It will affect people who otherwise—this is on the prevention side—one of the ways you can prevent homelessness is not to lose a considerable portion of your affordable housing stock. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. I would like to 

thank all of our witnesses who have served on this first panel, and 

the Chair notes that some members may have additional questions 

for this panel which they may wish to submit in writing. Without 

objection, the hearing record will remain open for 30 days for members to submit written questions to these witnesses, and to place 

their responses in the record. 

Thank you. This panel is now dismissed. I would like to welcome 

our second panel. Thank you very much. 

I am going to start with the second panel introductions of some 

witnesses who are here from my City. I am going to leave for a 

short period of time. My colleague, Mr. Green, will be chairing. 

Allow me to introduce Ms. Mercedes Marquez, general manager, 

Los Angeles Housing Department, City of Los Angeles. I want to 

recognize Ms. Marquez, with whom I and my staff met in Los Angeles during the August recess. 

I was very impressed by her dynamic efforts to engage the Los 

Angeles Housing Department in the fight to remove the City’s and 

County’s dubious distinction as the homeless capital of the country. 

In particular, the Housing Department is partnering with the 

City’s Housing Authority to create a real permanent supportive 

housing pipeline. I expect when Mayor Villaraigosa rolls out this 

affordable housing plan, Ms. Marquez will be at the center of other 

innovative initiatives. I thank you for being here today, Ms. 

Marquez. 

I would also like to introduce Ms. Elizabeth Gomez, executive director of the Los Angeles Youth Network. The Los Angeles Youth 

Network is a private nonprofit organization providing services to 

runaways homeless, and foster care youth. 

Ms. Gomez has worked with youth since 1980 and her specialized 

training includes comprehensive program development for runaway, homeless and foster youth. She serves on community advisory boards as well as private and state boards, and has presented 

frequently at national conferences regarding youth issues, youth 

development prevention, crisis intervention, suicide intervention, 

strength management, and program development. 

25

I thank you very much. I am going to ask Mr. Green if he will 

take the Chair while I go to another committee that I am serving 

on, and I will return shortly. 

Mr. GREEN. [presiding.] Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Continuing with the introductions, we have Dr. Dennis Culhane. 

He is a Ph.D. professor of social policy and practice at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Ms. Arlene McNamee, executive director of Catholic Social Services, Diocese of Fall River in Massachusetts. 

Next we will have Dr. Jamie Van Leeuwen, Ph.D., project manager for Denver’s Road Home, City and County of Denver. 

Finally, we have Ms. Nan Roman, who is the president of the 

National Alliance to End Homelessness. 

I believe I covered everyone. Did I miss anyone? 

Because I am told that we may have some scheduling concerns 

with Dr. Jamie Van Leeuwen, we will hear from Dr. Van Leeuwen 

first. I beg the others to indulge us given that we have these concerns, and then we will go back to the regular order announced. 

Doctor, if you would, please. You will be recognized for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF JAMES MICHAEL VAN LEEUWEN, PH.D., 

PROJECT MANAGER, DENVER’S ROAD HOME 

Mr. VAN LEEUWEN. Thank you, Congressman Green. 

Mr. GREEN. Excuse me just a moment. Pardon my interruption. 

The chairman of the full committee has arrived, Chairman Barney 

Frank, and he will be recognized. The Chair recognizes him for 5 

minutes. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize for my 

lack of etiquette, but you get what you can, you know. 

I did want to thank you for being here and thank so many old 

and new friends who are here. I do want to emphasize it is very 

important that we go ahead with this. I really take pride in the 

fact that we are going ahead and dealing with the homeless in an 

integrated way, and we are including in that places where people 

can live. 

We are remembering that we cannot resolve the problem of 

homelessness or diminish it without building some homes. 

I want to thank so many friends, and in particular say I am very 

delighted that Arlene McNamee is here, who has been in the southern part of my district where the economic issues are the greatest, 

representing the Diocese of Fall River, a great advocate for dealing 

with housing problems or social service issues in an integrated 

way. 

I just wanted to welcome Arlene McNamee and Nan Roman and 

all the other friends, and say thank you. I have other duties, but 

I did want to make clear how important this is, and to promise people that this will be on the agenda, and I know that Chairwoman 

Waters is dedicated to this, and this bill will be coming to the Floor 

as part of the package. 

I just welcome everybody here. I would say as long as you are 

up here on the Hill, if you get a chance, please go talk to the Senate. 

[Laughter] 

26

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you. The chairman is always recognized upon 

his arrival. We will now continue with Dr. Van Leeuwen. 

Mr. VAN LEEUWEN. Thank you, Congressman Green, Chairman 

Frank, Ranking Member Capito, and distinguished members of the 

subcommittee. 

On behalf of Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and the U.S. Conference of Mayors, I want to thank you all for the opportunity to 

testify in support of the reauthorization of McKinney-Vento. 

In this testimony, I want to provide an overview of the work that 

we are doing in Denver as it relates to our Ten Year Plan on homelessness, and our well-established partnership with the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness and the U.S. Conference of Mayors. This testimony is also supported by the National Community 

Development Association. 

I want first and foremost to acknowledge the leadership and 

partnership that Denver shares with the U.S. Interagency Council 

on Homelessness and the U.S. Conference of Mayors, in our efforts 

to forge collaboration and build strategic alliances allowing us to 

more effectively respond to the homeless in Denver. 

This overview assesses both our progress as well as the cost savings we are experiencing as a result of our coordinated responses 

to assist the homeless in Denver. 

Denver’s Road Home, which is our Ten Year Plan in homelessness, began in 2003 in response to an increasing rise in homeless 

persons in the City and County of Denver. 

Through that, we developed a strategic and comprehensive plan 

with eight measurable goals, objectives, and outcomes, combining 

accountability with compassion. 

The plan was approved by the Denver City Council and Mayor 

Hickenlooper in 2005 and went into implementation as of July 1, 

2005. 

From the beginning, the citizens of Denver were promised a plan 

with achievable and sustainable goals, with measurable action 

steps as well as a plan that emphasizes collaborative efforts and 

accountability. 

What this translates to is we are 2 years into our implementation in Denver. Through our point in time count, through the Metropolitan Denver homeless initiatives, we have experienced an 11 

percent reduction in overall homelessness, and a 36 percent reduction in chronic homelessness in the City and County of Denver. 

This translates to about 789 new units of housing, 2,455 homeless have been assisted in finding work, 2,003 individuals have had 

increased access to public benefits and treatment services, 563 families receiving eviction assistance, 132 homeless persons entering 

housing through our street outreach collaboration, and 233 families 

being partnered with our faith based mentoring teams. 

While our accomplishments are significant, we also know there 

is a lot more work that needs to be done. We have 3,900 men, 

women, and children in our City who remain homeless at the time 

of this testimony. 

There are over 600 homeless households with children totaling 

1,563 individual people. Of these households, 465 are single parent 

families. 

27

The most commonly reported reason for homelessness in Denver 

was loss of a job followed by relationship or family break-up and 

substance abuse. 

In terms of the cost savings, I want to spend just a brief moment 

on that. We know that permanent supportive housing is demonstrating proven outcomes in our ability to transition the homeless off the streets and into housing. 

It costs Denver taxpayers over $40,000 per homeless person per 

year to live life on the streets. To operate one bed at a shelter, it 

is costing Denver $18,000 annually versus $15,000 to maintain one 

unit of permanent supportive housing. 

When taking into consideration Denver Cares, the primary detox 

center for the City and County of Denver, the 25 highest users 

logged an accumulative total of 2,657 admissions last year, an average of 100 nights per homeless individual in our detox facility. 

After moving these individuals into 1 year of permanent supportive housing, we experienced a 79.6 percent reduction in admissions, to an accumulative total of 541 admissions per year. 

We went from 2,657 admissions to detox for these 25 highest 

users to 541 admissions when they moved into housing, permanent 

supportive housing, combining service requirements with accountability. 

The Colorado Coalition for the Homeless in their study looked at 

the chronically homeless, and after 1 year in housing, 77 percent 

of those chronically homeless were still in housing. Their incomes 

went from $185 at entry to $431, and emergency service utilization 

was 44 percent fewer days than at enrollment. 

We know that by putting the homeless into housing, especially 

the chronically homeless, that we are not only able to improve the 

quality of life but also significantly decrease the costs they are impacting in terms of our service delivery. 

I want to thank you all for the opportunity to address this subcommittee. I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Van Leeuwen can be found on 

page 201 of the appendix.] 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Doctor. Because time is of the essence 

as it relates to you, we will ask questions of you at this time, taking you out of order. 

I have one quick question. Should agencies that deal with the 

homeless be required to ascertain whether or not a person is a citizen, and if so, why, and if not, why? 

Should agencies be required to ascertain citizenship? 

Mr. VAN LEEUWEN. Right now, it has been a dialogue that we 

have been having with our homeless providers, and referencing the 

previous question, Congressman, we are still trying to get a better 

sense of how much that issue is impacting our agencies. 

Right now, they ask for citizenship in order to move them into 

housing and follow the laws that are in the State and in the City 

and County of Denver. 

In terms of whether or not they should do it, we know that we 

are assisting them in accessing the services in terms of food and 

basic shelter, and really before I can answer that question, we really do not have the data to tell us whether or not this is an issue 

28

in the City and County of Denver or in other cities around the 

country. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you. The ranking member is recognized for 5 

minutes. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Thank you. I am going to hold my questions for the 

rest of the panel. Thank you. Thank you, Doctor. 

Mr. GREEN. Representative Davis is now recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. DAVIS OF KENTUCKY. Just one quick question. In the last 

hearing, for those of you who were here to listen to that, there was 

quite a lot of talk about Federal agencies, and I get the sense that 

what I am hearing is that the Federal agencies will determine the 

winners and losers, that the Federal agencies are typically in these 

areas very far away from the front lines. 

I just wonder if you might comment briefly on whether you feel 

that critical decisions like this should be made at a local level with 

a little bit more flexibility in addressing this Continuum of Care 

issue based on what you have been working on. 

Mr. VAN LEEUWEN. I know that on behalf of Mayor Hickenlooper, 

the jurisdictional leadership via our Mayor and having that flexibility of asserting that jurisdictional leadership has made a significant difference in terms of our ability to carry out the initiative 

that we have in Denver. 

When you look at Denver’s Road Home and the accomplishments 

that we have been able to achieve over the last 2 years, the silver 

bullet has been political will at the local level, and having the 

Mayor going and reaching out to our homeless providers and really 

putting that piece of this is about quality of life, but this is also 

about the fact that we need to hold our nonprofits accountable and 

we need to hold our homeless accountable. 

If we create these services, we need to make sure that they are 

being used cost effectively as we transition them off the streets. 

Mr. DAVIS OF KENTUCKY. Thank you. I yield back. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Doctor. We greatly appreciate your sharing your time with us and the information you shared as well. We 

wish you well as you make your exit. 

Mr. VAN LEEUWEN. Congressman, I appreciate your sensitivity to 

my schedule today as well. Thank you. 

Mr. GREEN. We will now move to Dr. Dennis Culhane. I am looking at the door because I am told that Representative Cleaver may 

come in at any moment. As he is not here, we will continue. 

Dr. Culhane, we will now hear from you for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF DENNIS CULHANE, PH.D., PROFESSOR OF SOCIAL POLICY AND PRACTICE, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 

Mr. CULHANE. Thank you, Congressman Green, Ranking Member 

Capito, and distinguished members of the subcommittee. 

I want to commend you for taking up the reauthorization of the 

McKinney Act, which is now in its 20th year of existence. Many 

lessons have been learned, especially in the last 10 years. I would 

like to reflect on some of the lessons which have been learned as 

I address some of the issues that I know are before the committee. 

29

First, with regard to this issue of definitions of ‘‘homelessness,’’ 

it is my understanding that the different definitions that exist in 

the Federal agencies actually reflect the appropriate missions of 

those agencies. 

For example, with regard to HHS and the Department of Education, I think it is important to distinguish between mainstream 

resources for homeless individuals and targeted resources. 

The HHS and DOE definitions are purposely broad because they 

are intended to ensure access to mainstream resources, that being 

public education in the case of DOE, and transportation to education, as well as health care services through HHS, for these 

broader populations. 

With regard to HUD, however, their definition relates to the targeted resources, dollars that are focused on making sure that people who are literally homeless have access to emergency shelter. 

Unfortunately, right now, based on a report that was given to the 

Congress this last spring, nearly half of the homeless people today 

are literally living on the street, and are not in shelters, and are 

not currently being served. 

I think that suggests to me that we should be very careful about 

expanding the definition to populations who are in conventional 

housing, however substandard or unfortunate those conditions may 

be, when we have 300,000 people on the streets today who are not 

accessing these resources at all. 

I also would note that the McKinney resources, as you know, are 

not an entitlement. There is not a proportionate increase in the resources from adding new people to the pool who are counted as 

homeless. In effect, by not increasing those resources, we would be 

diluting the value of the program. 

Right now, there are about 2.5 million people who experience 

homelessness annually in the United States. That means that 

there is an average of about $750 per person from the McKinney 

Act that can go to those persons. If we increase the number of eligibles three-fold, we may reduce the per person amount available 

three-fold. 

It is also worth noting that there are major problems with trying 

to certify eligibility and trying to measure results if we include people who are less visible and in these conventional housing units. 

With regard to the issue of prevention, I think it is very important that we do try to serve people who are near homeless. However, research has not shown that broad based community interventions to prevent homelessness actually reduce the number of 

people who come into the shelter system. 

That does not mean that those resources do not do something 

that is effective for families in need, but it does not reduce the 

number of people who become homeless. 

Given the limited resources that are provided by the McKinneyVento Act, I think it is important that if we do add prevention that 

we are careful to make sure those dollars are used to leverage 

mainstream resources like in TANF, in the mental health system 

and elsewhere that can provide and expand services and housing 

for these populations. 

I would encourage you to use the McKinney-Vento resources for 

demonstration projects because as yet, we do not have the research 

30

and results to direct a new Federal prevention program. We do 

need demonstration projects to test what would work and what 

could work and then to have those results drive policy. 

With regard to the issue of meeting the challenge of family homelessness, we now know clearly from research that homelessness 

negatively impacts children and families. I think it would be wise 

for the new McKinney Act to consider as a statement of principle 

that no family should be homeless for more than 30 or 60 days. 

Long shelter stays have no established benefit yet they consume 

most of the resources in the shelter system. 

My colleagues and I recently completed a study finding that a 

relatively small proportion of families, 20 percent, used 50 percent 

of the resources. They are staying in shelters on average more than 

a year, and the cost of having those folks in shelters could translate into 4 or 5 years of a permanent housing subsidy for those 

families. 

The McKinney resources cannot solve the affordability problem, 

but they can be used to leverage TANF dollars and child welfare 

agencies into doing relocation and transitional rental assistance, a 

bridge, if you will, to permanent subsidies when necessary. 

Of course, HUD needs to have more resources to provide those 

permanent subsidies to address the housing affordability that 

underlies this problem. 

One of the other things that has been learned in the last 10 

years is that the permanent housing set-aside has been associated 

with significant results. We cannot justify the continued use of resources for emergency shelter and having people warehoused in 

shelters when we know those same resources can provide a permanent solution to homelessness. It would not be ethical. The research also shows that it is not economically efficient to do so. 

The set-aside has been crucial to producing these results, and I 

would urge the committee to codify the set-aside into law. 

Another lesson that has been learned in these past few years is 

that jurisdictional partnerships have been very important to advancing solutions for this population. In particular, the chronic 

homeless initiative through the work of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness has helped communities to develop Ten Year Plans. These Ten Year Plans have brought new research and new accountability to homeless programs, more than 40 

studies have recently been done by communities, as Denver, as Dr. 

Van Leeuwen noted, looking at the high costs associated with 

chronic homelessness, and the reductions in costs that are associated with having folks placed in permanent housing. 

Those kinds of results have the opportunity to drive more resources into the system. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Culhane can be found on page 98 

of the appendix.] 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, sir. 

We will now move to our next witness, Ms. Marquez. 

STATEMENT OF MERCEDES MARQUEZ, GENERAL MANAGER, 

LOS ANGELES HOUSING DEPARTMENT, CITY OF LOS ANGELES 

Ms. MARQUEZ. Good morning, Congressman Green, Ranking 

Member Capito, and members of the subcommittee. 

31

On behalf of the City of Los Angeles’ Mayor, Antonio 

Villaraigosa, thank you for the opportunity to let you know how 

grateful we are that you are taking up the reauthorization of 

McKinney-Vento. 

My name is Mercedes Marquez, and I am the general manager 

of the City of Los Angeles Housing Department. Along with the Office of the Mayor, the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, 

the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, I am responsible for 

the administration of Federal homeless assistance programs in the 

City of Los Angeles. 

Particularly, it is my responsibility to create and maintain, build 

and support a production based system of permanent supportive 

housing in the City of Los Angeles. 

In 2006, Mayor Villaraigosa launched the first permanent supportive housing program in the City of L.A. He has committed now 

for the third year in a row that half of our $100 million affordable 

housing trust fund be specifically directed to the homeless program 

for permanent supportive housing. 

That means that in less than 3 years, we will have $150 million 

specifically dedicated to the construction of permanent supportive 

housing. 

In addition to that, the City has committed to expanding the 

Homeless Section 8 program and is providing an estimated value 

of $129 million in rental assistance to homeless individuals and 

families. 

Moreover, a portion of this funding is supporting a partnership 

with the County of Los Angeles to move 500 families out of Skid 

Row and into affordable housing elsewhere in the City. 

We have already had discussion about the different statistics in 

Los Angeles. We are unfortunately the homeless capital of homelessness in the country. It is true that approximately, at last count, 

22,000 folks in the City of Los Angeles find themselves homeless 

on any given night, and 13,000 homeless children currently attend 

the Los Angeles Unified School District schools. Against this backdrop, we support the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. 

Because my responsibility is particularly on creating a supportive system of construction, I am going to focus my particular 

comments on those issues within the Act that support a production 

based system. 

For us, it is very important that you maintain a set-aside for permanent supportive housing for all homeless people with disabilities 

and sustain this housing inventory with adequate program funding. 

At the moment in the City of Los Angeles, our permanent supportive housing fund is funded both with CDBG, with HOME dollars. I use general fund money from the City of Los Angeles, municipal bond financing income that comes to the Housing Department. I am now in a partnership with the Department of Transportation to contribute land to the effort, as well as working with our 

Department of Water and Power for energy efficiencies. 

You can see that we use everything and everything we can to 

make these programs work. It is important for us that a set-aside 

be maintained in order to continually fund it. 

32

The most important thing about creating a production based system is it is a business like any other. Developers must know that 

the funding stream is consistent, that the rules are clear and fair. 

It is only in that way that they will continue to make the type of 

investment that is necessary, the holding costs for land, architectural fees, environmental assessments to move forward with building the housing. 

It is important for us to be able to project out years ahead of 

time the funding levels that we will be able to provide with the 

rules that are applied so that people will invest. 

Having a set-aside is important. It is also incredibly important 

that you extend from 12 months to 24 months the amount of time 

necessary to fulfill all of the requirements for the obligation of 

funds, including site acquisition and control, the provision of 

matching funds, environmental reviews, and the completion of construction and rehabilitation of supportive housing projects. 

It is very difficult to work within the system. I have to match 

every dollar for dollar with State leveraging. Our programs follow 

this different State cycles of funding, and it is very difficult to do 

all that, get it all in line and actually build the housing. 

If we only have a 12-month period, we are pretty much excluding 

our construction based program of providing supportive housing. 

We really need that. 

In addition to that, ensure the coordination with the low income 

tax credit program. Since we do leverage in the City of Los Angeles, while permanent supportive housing is more expensive to 

build, for every dollar that the City is investing, we are in leverage 

securing approximately $3.25. 

In order for us to work within tax credit programs, different 

State funding and Federal funding guidelines, we need the 24 

months and we need the rules to match the low income housing tax 

credit program, so we can all make it work together. 

We would also echo what we have heard many people on both 

panels now say, that we do not support the expansion of the definition. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Marquez can be found on page 

152 of the appendix.] 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you. 

We will now recognize Ms. McNamee for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF ARLENE McNAMEE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

CATHOLIC SOCIAL SERVICES, DIOCESE OF FALL RIVER, 

MASSACHUSETTS 

Ms. MCNAMEE. Thank you, Representative Green. I would like to 

thank Chairwoman Waters and Ranking Member Capito for devoting the time and attention of the subcommittee to this important 

matter. I wish to express my appreciation to Chairman Frank for 

inviting me to share my experience in serving homeless families 

and single adults in his district. Representatives Carson and Davis 

deserve our deepest gratitude as well for introducing the HEARTH 

Act. 

We wish Representative Carson a speedy recovery, and she is in 

our thoughts and our prayers. 

33

My name is Arlene McNamee, and I am the executive director 

of Catholic Social Services of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, and I also serve on the Board of Directors of Catholic Charities USA. 

CSS is the largest provider of services and shelter for the homeless outside of the Greater Boston Region. Last year, we served a 

total of 42,523 individuals with a range of services including food, 

medicine, financial assistance, and housing case management advocacy and counseling, services that often function as a means of preventing homelessness. 

CSS provides services and shelter for more than 348 homeless 

families and individuals each night in housing programs that include emergency shelter, transitional housing for homeless women 

and children, women returning from prison, 70 permanent housing 

units for families, and 65 units for singles who were formerly 

homeless. 

My testimony will reinforce the following three points: First, 

HUD is not keeping its commitment to provide affordable housing 

for the extremely-low-income households; second, reauthorization of 

the McKinney-Vento Act must expand HUD’s definition of ‘‘homelessness’’ and restore the ability of local communities to act on all 

they have learned since the last reauthorization; and third, the 

HEARTH Act will best enable communities to put into practice all 

we know about preventing and ending homelessness among all 

households—urban, suburban, and rural. 

HUD must re-establish a commitment to produce and subsidize 

and preserve affordable housing for the poor. Last week, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts reported that 1,800 families were in 

homeless shelters. According to the Massachusetts Coalition for the 

Homeless, more families are in shelter now than at any time since 

the inception of the State’s family shelter program in 1983. 

This is not a function of overabundance of shelter beds. This is 

a result of a dwindling supply of affordable housing options for the 

very poor. 

In order to begin to reverse the growing problems of homelessness, the Federal Government must be an active partner in the creation of affordable housing. We must enact the National Housing 

Trust Fund to bring these solutions to scale. 

The chronic homelessness 30 percent set-aside carved out of the 

McKinney-Vento programs is applied without regard to the number 

of chronically homeless individuals in each community. HEARTH 

rejects HUD’s current practice of prescribing solutions aimed at big 

cities like New York and San Francisco, directing dollars away 

from small towns and rural areas. 

Most Americans are living in cities like mine, with populations 

of 90,000 to 250,000. Our needs are different than that of big cities, 

and we need to have control over our problems. 

The eligibility criteria associated with the set-aside is exclusionary and burdensome. Take, for example, the Donaldson family. 

After Mr. Donaldson lost his job and fell behind in his rent, the 

landlord placed him in what amounts to a servitude, requiring him 

to work as a janitor in order to maintain housing for his wife and 

four children. This, of course, interfered with his plan to find a new 

job, further driving the family into poverty. 

34

After the landlord began to verbally abuse him in front of his 

wife and children, Mr. Donaldson went to the local shelter for help, 

but the shelter was full. Donaldson did not quite qualify for the our 

HUD funded permanent housing program. 

For 2 weeks, this family of six lived in a car until they could 

complete the necessary paperwork to qualify under the current 

HUD definition for the housing program. While they met one part 

of the current definition, which was living in a car, they did not 

have the documentation for a disability. 

This story begins to illustrate the need to expand HUD’s definition of ‘‘homelessness’’ and restore local flexibility. 

Research coupled with practice teaches us that families are best 

served in their own homes, and that to prevent homelessness 

whenever possible is the best option. 

We have learned that each family and individual does not neatly 

fit into HUD’s rigid categories. HUD must expand its definition of 

‘‘homelessness’’ to include families who are doubled-up and living 

in motels for lack of other options. 

While doing outreach to a local motel, one of our workers found 

a mother with two children, ages 4 and 11. The 11 year old daughter was severely disabled and suffering from advanced cerebral 

palsy. As such, she was lying motionless on a mattress on the floor. 

Placing a mattress on a floor is a common practice of protecting 

children with CP from falling out of their beds. 

Without money for a wheelchair that was left behind when she 

fled her abuser, the mother had to carry the child wherever she 

went. This and her fear of being located by her abuser prevented 

her from leaving the motel room. 

Sadly, this family did not qualify for our permanent supportive 

housing program because the current definition states that the 

head of the household must have the disability. In fact, because 

they are living in motels, they are not considered homeless by 

HUD, and not entitled to McKinney-Vento services at all. 

Finally, children living in families who are doubled-up or living 

in motels suffer in unimaginable ways and are at risk of similarly 

poor outcomes to those of homeless children. 

Congress must expand the HUD definition of ‘‘homelessness’’ to 

include persons who are sharing the housing of others due to loss 

of housing, economic hardship, or similar reasons, and those who 

are staying in motels because of lack of adequate alternative accommodations. 

We ask that the committee weigh heavily the findings of practice 

wisdom and research and reject HUD’s overly prescriptive Federal 

policy which aims to standardize the response to homelessness. 

HEARTH consolidates the separate HUD programs and codifies 

the Continuum of Care and restores the local flexibility necessary 

to operate properly. 

Lastly, HEARTH extends the HUD definition to include persons 

who are sharing the housing of others due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or similar reasons, and those who are staying in 

motels because of a lack of adequate alternative accommodations. 

HEARTH makes the Continuum of Care approach responsive to 

all communities by restoring local flexibility, streamlining the apVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:45 Feb 19, 2008 Jkt 039908 PO 00000 Frm 00040 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\39908.TXT HFIN PsN: TERRIE
35

plication process, adding double upped and multiple families to 

HUD’s definition, allowing more money to be used for prevention. 

HEARTH is the optimum approach and we urge the committee 

to support HEARTH and thank the 79 co-sponsors of this bill. 

Please refer to my written testimony for further comments, and 

I would like to thank the committee and Chairman Frank for this 

opportunity. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. McNamee can be found on page 

161 of the appendix.] 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you. 

Ms. Gomez is now recognized for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF ELIZABETH GOMEZ, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

LOS ANGELES YOUTH NETWORK 

Ms. GOMEZ. Thank you for having me here today. As we talked 

earlier, I am a little bit different in my representation in that I am 

a local service provider providing services to runaway, homeless, 

and foster care youth. 

Today, I am here as a representative of the National Network for 

Youth, the Nation’s leading organization on youth homelessness. 

It is an honor to testify. It is the first opportunity in the 33 year 

history of the National Network to appear before this committee. 

Our absence before this body is indicative of the inattention to 

youth and public policy regarding housing and homeless assistance. 

An analysis of community plans to end homelessness conducted 

by the National Alliance to End Homelessness concludes that only 

49 percent of such plans have youth specific efforts. 

In Los Angeles, while we have been invited to the discussions, 

our appeals for accommodations to address the unique developmental needs of homeless youth go unheeded. 

Therefore, we are very grateful today and thankful that we are 

here to talk about the needs of homeless youth. 

As many as 3 million youth and young adults experience a homeless situation annually. In Los Angeles, as was stated earlier, a recent count shows that 20,000 of those homeless are under the age 

of 18; 11,000 between the ages of 18 and 24; another 3,000 of unaccompanied minors. 

Some sit innocuously in classrooms in Jordan or Hollywood High 

School and sleep on the couches of their classmates if they are 

lucky. Others go to work at minimum wage jobs and sleep in shifts 

in efficiency apartments or motels, just to make ends meet. 

Many of these young people end up homeless as well on the 

streets and go back and forth to these efficiency apartments or motels. 

Other children hang out on the streets of Hollywood, Santa 

Monica, Pasadena, South L.A., and yes, the infamous Skid Row, or 

Cardboard City, as it has been called. 

A fortunate few make it to a homeless youth organization such 

as the Los Angeles Youth Network. 

A primary source of funds for us, the youth providers, is the Federal Runaway and Homeless Youth Act. This is a great resource. 

However, the Runaway and Homeless Youth programs have their 

limits. Emergency shelters can only serve youth up to age 18, grant 

awards that are capped at $200,000, funds are not available for 

36

supportive services only, and Congress appropriated in 2007 only 

7 percent of what was appropriated to the McKinney-Vento Act. 

Runaway and homeless youth agencies must look for funds in 

other areas, thus we return to the McKinney-Vento Act as it is a 

program that Congress established for all homeless people, and I 

emphasize the word ‘‘all.’’ Young people, youth, should be included 

in that process. 

We receive about $42,000 for supportive services, a 50 percent reduction over the years, a loss attributed to our county’s shift toward permanent supportive housing, due to the Federal chronic 

homeless initiative. 

I know of many other organizations that we work with that are 

in similar situations. No other public agency has stepped up to replace those funds. 

It is one of the reasons the National Network for Youth supports 

the HEARTH Act. The bill would restore flexibility to communities 

to use HUD’s McKinney-Vento funds as they determine most appropriate. Also, it would revise the HUD definition of ‘‘homelessness’’ to include additional living arrangements, common among 

homeless youth, and recognized as ‘‘homelessness’’ by Congress several times already. 

The Senate reauthorization bill misses the mark on many counts, 

although we do favor the prohibition on HUD funded family shelters and family housing from denying admission of a whole family 

or a youth member of the family on the basis of age. 

This practice is harmful to families, stigmatizes the youth and is 

a causal factor for youth homelessness. 

The current HUD McKinney-Vento programs are critical to 

reaching some homeless youth. They could support more youth, 

however, if we rolled back the current restrictive administrative 

policies, strengthened the laws so that all homeless subpopulations 

may have equal access to funds, and increased authorization and 

appropriation levels. 

The HEARTH Act meets these needs. 

The reauthorization of the HUD McKinney-Vento Act must be 

considered as just a part of a larger effort. We must take bold steps 

such as those offered in H.R. 3409, the Place to Call Home Act. 

This bill by Representative Hinojosa seeks to end youth homelessness, and we urge the subcommittee to give attention to the permanent housing provisions of that bill in a future hearing. 

We also urge everybody on the committee to visit youth programs 

in their local communities so they can meet the young people in 

our Nation who are part of the homeless population, as important 

as any other group, and who are just as desperate for a safe place 

to call home. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Gomez can be found on page 111 

of the appendix.] 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you. 

We will now recognize Ms. Roman for 5 minutes. 

37

STATEMENT OF NAN ROMAN, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL 

ALLIANCE TO END HOMELESSNESS 

Ms. ROMAN. Thank you so much. Thank you to the members of 

the subcommittee for your leadership and congratulations on the 

passage of the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Affordable 

housing is ultimately the solution to homelessness. 

The HUD McKinney-Vento programs have been well-run over the 

past 20 years, well-administered by HUD, and well-delivered by a 

network of nonprofit and faith based providers. 

Over these past 20 years, we have also learned a lot about what 

works. The reason it is important to reauthorize McKinney, I 

think, is to take advantage of what we have learned about what 

works and to apply it more broadly. 

Our goal in reauthorization should not be to have an expanding 

shelter system that more and more people enter with no clear way 

out. That would be going backwards. Our goal should be to use best 

practices to reduce the number of homeless people and create a system that is all about preventing homelessness and moving people 

back into housing fast. That, I think, would be the path forward. 

Furthermore, it is important to keep a balance in the program. 

It is not a matter of ending homelessness among children say or 

chronically homeless people first. The program has to address the 

needs of all homeless people in a sensible and balanced way. It is 

not one or the other, while retaining a focus on best practices to 

improve outcomes. 

What have we learned in the past 20 years that would help us 

to achieve these goals? 

I think we have learned that permanent supportive housing 

works for people who are disabled. It solves the problem of homelessness. The 30 percent set-aside, which is a national set-aside, 

not local, works to make sure that a proportionate amount of resources goes to that group. 

Some focus on chronic homelessness work because by definition, 

this is a group of poorly served people whose interests must be protected. 

We cannot just focus on the chronic population. Rapid re-housing 

works for at least 80 percent of families and children. Permanent 

housing provides a stable base for children, education, services, and 

employment. Shelter does not. 

What we want to do is get children and families back into housing faster and not prolong their homelessness. 

The other 20 percent of families and children have more serious 

problems including disabilities. Some are chronically homeless. 

They should be included in the definition. Chronic homelessness, 

they need long term housing subsidies and services assistance. 

Other things we have learned is that data are important. Rural 

areas present different challenges. The Federal response should be 

different in rural areas. Prevention works but it has to be tightly 

targeted to those at eminent risk. 

A key learning of the past 20 years is that places that are making progress in reducing numbers are targeting better and more 

tightly. 

In this regard, I want to speak to the HEARTH Act’s proposal 

to broaden the definition of ‘‘homelessness’’ to include people who 

38

are doubled up for economic reasons. That broad inclusion, I think, 

is a bad idea for several reasons. 

First of all, we have actually—there are currently, as has been 

said, 744,000 people who are defined by HUD as homeless. Only 

slightly more than half receive shelter. We are not meeting the current needs of people who are defined as homeless by HUD. 

We have looked at the American Community survey data to try 

to estimate what expanding the definition would mean. We estimate that it would mean 3.8 million more people would be eligible 

for assistance than are currently assisted or defined as eligible. 

That is 5 times the current number of people who are eligible. We would need $7.8 billion on a pro rata basis to provide services 

to those people at the same fairly misery level of services we now 

provide to people who are eligible. 

Second, ‘‘doubled up for economic reasons’’ is probably way too 

broad. Many people are doubled up for economic reasons, but they 

are not homeless. They are stably housed. Their housing may not 

be optimum, but the homeless system has nothing to offer to remedy that situation. 

Section 8, the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and 

other housing programs should address their housing needs and we 

need more of those. CDBG, TANF, Child Welfare, and other service 

programs need to address their service needs. 

There are doubled-up families who are not stably housed, who 

are couch surfing or moving from one home to another. They are 

literally homeless and they should be included in the definition. 

For most doubled-up families who cannot get help from the 

homeless system, the problem is not that they are not eligible for 

assistance. The problem is that we do not have enough resources 

to help them in the system. 

Calling 5 times more people homeless will not help that problem. 

It will just exacerbate it. 

We can do a better job of helping homeless families with children, youth, veterans, and single adults. In my view, the Community Partnership to End Homelessness Act in the Senate provides 

a great legislative template for achieving the balance and sensible 

approach it takes to meet all of these needs. 

I urge you to look at it closely. I think it has arrived at some 

pretty creative solutions to these conflicting needs and opinions, 

and is a good road map for moving forward. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Roman can be found on page 189 

of the appendix.] 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you all for your testimony. I will now recognize myself for 5 minutes. 

Dr. Culhane, you indicated that you thought a 30 day rule would 

be appropriate. Would you please restate your 30 day rule? 

Mr. CULHANE. I am just suggesting, sir, that in the statement of 

principle, we should be committing ourselves to the goal that families should not be homeless for more than 30 or perhaps 60 days. 

The idea that families should be lingering in shelters for a year, 

a year-and-a-half, or 2 years, as is now actually permitted, and in 

some cases, actually encouraged programmatically, that should be 

done away with. 

39

Mr. GREEN. Thank you. Would everyone agree with this? If not, 

I would like to hear anyone with an opposing point of view. 

Ms. Gomez? 

Ms. GOMEZ. I think for young people, for youth, we have a very 

different perspective. You cannot put an unaccompanied 16-yearold into permanent housing. They cannot even sign a lease. There 

is a group of young people who based on their developmental needs 

do need to stay in emergency shelter longer because they also do 

not have resources. They might not have a family to go back to. 

They might not have a relative that we found, and they might not 

have appropriate resources to transition to stability. 

Rather than putting them on the street, you keep them in shelter 

until you can find an appropriate housing situation. 

Mr. GREEN. Yes? 

Ms. MCNAMEE. Representative, I would just like to make sure 

that Dr. Culhane is only talking about emergency shelters and not 

transitional. 

Mr. CULHANE. I am including both because we do not see a benefit in the research for families who stay in transitional versus 

emergency shelters. 

We do not see a benefit associated with those longer stays. Families who are housed, regardless of how long they stay and whether 

they are in emergency shelters or transition shelters, do well in 

housing, and that should be our goal. 

Mr. GREEN. Ms. McNamee? 

Ms. MCNAMEE. Thank you. Our finding has been that there are 

certain populations of women and children who really do need the 

transitional step prior to going to permanent housing. In that case, 

it typically has been women who have come from domestic violence 

situations where they really need time to reconstruct their lives 

and time to sort of—the word I would use which is not very therapeutic—be. Meaning where the pressure is off. There is someone to 

assist with supporting the child care because the children have also 

been traumatized. 

They need to establish their identity. They need things like licenses, cash, apply for benefits, all of which are pretty difficult, and 

they are usually very afraid to be by themselves for the first 3 to 

4 months of leaving a domestic violence situation. We have had 

them leave and come back. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you. Doctor, back to you again. You indicated 

that prevention dollars do not diminish the number of persons who 

are going into shelters, I believe you said. 

Would you care to elaborate on that? I would like to get some responses from other members of the panel as well, more specifically, 

Ms. McNamee. 

Mr. CULHANE. I was speaking specifically with regard to 

untargeted prevention dollars. There have been several efforts to 

experiment with community based homelessness prevention programs where dollars are given to families to avoid eviction and to 

deal with rent arrearages. 

These programs, we find, are very successful in that very few of 

the families end up becoming homeless. However, there is no net 

impact on the shelter system. It is not clear that these families 

would be homeless if they did not get that assistance. 

40

The issue, as I heard it described by one of the providers who 

deals with these programs, is that trying to find the families who 

would become homeless is worse than trying to find a needle in a 

haystack. It is like trying to find a piece of hay in a haystack because the families are all so similar, the need is so widespread. 

For that, I was suggesting that we really need to look at the safety net programs that should be preventing homelessness in the 

first place and why they are not working. Why is TANF not effective in providing adequate income to families so that they do not 

become homeless? Why does the mental health system and the substance abuse treatment system—why are they not effective in providing appropriate treatment and support so people do not become 

homeless? 

Mr. GREEN. Because my time is running out, I am going to have 

to beg that I move to another person. Ms. McNamee, would you 

care to respond? 

Ms. MCNAMEE. The issue of TANF supporting, people in fact get 

sanctioned off TANF or their time period is over. They are part of 

the population that is becoming homeless because they were never 

able or probably will never be able to sustain reasonable employment or to earn sufficient income to maintain an apartment. 

It is not that people are not working. It is that they do not have 

enough money to afford the housing stock, and there is not enough 

housing stock. 

We do tremendous amounts of preventive care. We probably 

spend for our budget somewhere around $150,000 to $200,000 a 

year in financial assistance, preventing homelessness, and in giving 

rent money. 

The trick to it is you need to make sure the people can afford 

their rent the next month. Most people cannot. Many people cannot. While you are waiting for either the voucher for public housing 

to kick in, you are dealing with the homelessness factor. The waiting lists on public housing and Section 8 can be 4 to 5 years. During that time gap, even though people have money, there is no affordability. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you. One final question to each of you, and 

it will be a yes or no question to be answered quickly. 

At an emergency shelter, should we ascertain citizenship? Yes or 

no? 

Mr. CULHANE. I would say no. 

Ms. MARQUEZ. No. 

Ms. MCNAMEE. No. 

Ms. GOMEZ. No. 

Ms. ROMAN. No. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you. We will now recognize the ranking member for 5 minutes. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Thank you. I want to thank the Chair. 

I want to pose a question here because a lot of what we are talking about is going back to what I asked in the last panel, expanding the definition of ‘‘homelessness’’ with HUD to include more children and families, single parents, in different situations. 

I am kind of fast forwarding. Let us say we do that. Do you envision a situation—Ms. Gomez, you said you are where the rubber 

meets the road. You are right there. You are a service provider. 

41

A situation where you are going to have to prioritize within your 

own shelter, within your own community, who—we have already 

said the resources are going to be thinning. I think Mr. Mangano 

made that point. 

How are you going to be able to prioritize the homeless, is it 

chronic that has more need or is it the families? To me, I think 

those are going to be very difficult decisions that are going to be 

made. I am wondering if any of you have thought about this and 

how that is going to set up in a real life situation. 

Ms. GOMEZ. I will take that. With us, the young people, the 

youth who are living in doubling-up situations, motels or efficiencies, are young people who probably transition into street 

homelessness also. They might go back and forth into those different environments. A lot of those young people, for youth specifically, we work with those youth on a regular basis in our drop in 

centers and emergency shelters. 

Our goal is if they are stable enough to work and to try to stay 

in a doubled-up situation, to transition them into a more permanent situation rather than making them become homeless and living on the street before they can access service. 

Ms. ROMAN. I think that generally you have to look at how to set 

those priorities community-wide. Programs are designed to help 

specific populations. Community-wide, what I think will happen—

you have to have a balance because you have to serve everybody. 

You have to meet all of the needs. 

I think what might happen is if you have a lot more people, you 

basically will be increasing the demands by a factor of several 

times, unlikely to have a lot more resources. 

What I think is going to happen is you are going to get thinner 

interventions, less rich interventions, fewer outcomes, and more 

emergency assistance. I think you are also going to see the shelter 

systems start to clog up because you are not going to have the exits 

to get people out, especially the high end users that consume the 

majority of shelter resources. 

Ms. MARQUEZ. What we already do in Los Angeles, we have a $100 million affordable housing trust fund. It is split 50 percent of 

it for the chronically homeless specifically. Within that group, we 

already target homeless adults, emancipated foster youth, transition age youth, and very-low-income families who have experienced 

already the beginnings of chronic homelessness. We are already 

doing that. 

What we are now doing to help what we are calling situationally 

homeless families, who are not yet needing the very rich level of 

services, and this has everything to do with it—when you have to 

build a building that is going to have to contain all of the space 

for services, that is much more expensive. 

If we are going to have folks who need very heavy duty services, 

we need to have them together so they are taking advantage. 

Our other program, the regular affordable housing trust fund, 

which is now funded in the last 4 years, we are butting up against 

6,000 units. The vast majority of those units go to very-low-income 

families. We are now this year going to add a 10 percent set-aside 

in our regular program, not the homeless program, our regular program, a 10 percent set-aside for situationally homeless families 

42

who need a much lower level of service, that will marry with the 

Section 8 voucher. 

We are trying to handle that. It is a huge part of our population, 

but we handle it through our regular affordable housing program 

because their services needs are lighter and as a result, less expensive. 

Mrs. CAPITO. If I could just clarify that. You have spotted this 

as a need and a potential conflict here. What you are doing in Los 

Angeles is really with the flexibility that your city and the support 

obviously, and that you have vast resources, have made those decisions at the local level rather than have those decisions made at 

the Federal level. 

Ms. MARQUEZ. Yes. If it were made at the Federal level, it would 

be much more difficult because it would add more expense for us 

as we are building the type of supportive housing with rich services 

that are necessary. It would be a very different thing and the per 

unit cost would soar. 

With what I am doing now, you are right, I am lowering the cost 

by putting those families where they belong, with other families 

that need less services. 

Mr. CULHANE. If I could just follow up. 

Mr. GREEN. Yes. 

Mr. CULHANE. I think that there are a number of priorities that 

the McKinney Act, and as it has been administered through HUD, 

a number of priorities that have been very effective in helping to 

make sure that resources are targeted and have an impact. 

I think the concern about expanding the definition or leaving it 

up to localities is that there are many localities that do not like the 

homeless. As the research has indicated, there are close to 40 percent of the people who do not have any shelter whatsoever, are not 

getting any services. They are living and in some cases dying on 

the street. 

Some communities may choose to expand the definition to serve 

people that they prefer to serve, and to continue not to serve people 

who are on the street. I think that has been the value of the Federal priorities, they have made localities have to recognize and understand these needs that they might otherwise ignore. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you. I now recognize Mr. Cleaver for 5 minutes. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a number of 

questions that I think are for me very critical. 

Dr. Culhane, you mentioned 2.5 million homeless in America. Is 

there any way for us to better document the homeless? How comfortable are you and frankly everybody on the panel with the numbers that we throw around? 

In the State of Missouri, for example, we said 8,000 homeless 

and 1,600 in my City. Whenever I hear those numbers, I usually 

just disregard them because I just think that some person is down 

in the basement with really thick glasses—okay, thin glasses, and 

they are just coming up with a number. 

Mr. CULHANE. I think it is good to be cautious. In the 1980’s in 

this room here, there were two separate hearings held on the issue 

of, ‘‘How many homeless are there in America?’’ Fortunately, in the 

1990’s, there were no hearings focused on that because the reVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:45 Feb 19, 2008 Jkt 039908 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\39908.TXT HFIN PsN: TERRIE
43

search community came to a resolution on that issue from different 

yet convergent methodologies. We have estimated that about one 

percent of the population is homeless each year. Of course, that 

varies by region. 

Furthermore, one of the more important things that the Congress 

has done in the last 10 years is required communities to implement 

information systems that are gathering systematic data on everybody who comes into the homeless system. 

On that basis, the Congress received its first report this past 

spring, the Annual Homelessness Assessment Report, that will be 

delivered to the Congress annually, and is providing a reliable annual estimate of the number of people who experience homelessness in the United States. 

We have made a tremendous amount of progress. It is not an 

exact science by any means. I think we are very comfortable saying 

the number is between 2.5 and 3 million and the number on a 

given night is around 700,000. 

Mr. CLEAVER. You understand the importance of it as we are 

talking about block grants? 

Mr. CULHANE. Yes. 

Mr. CLEAVER. I think all of you—I hope I saw this correctly—

were opposed to expanding the definition. 

Mr. CULHANE. I am opposed. 

Ms. MARQUEZ. We are supporting it. 

Ms. GOMEZ. I am opposed. 

Mr. CLEAVER. With what is happening in the secondary market, 

subprime market, with an estimated two million foreclosures on 

line when the new rates are triggered this year, don’t you think we 

need to do all kinds of things to accommodate the new homeless, 

I think they are called ‘‘couch surfers,’’ in other words, people who 

are sleeping on the couch in their aunt’s house because they lost 

their home, and the church where I am, I know of seven people 

who lost homes and are living with others. 

Do you not think, based on what is happening in the subprime 

market, that we need to make some adjustments? 

Mr. CULHANE. If I could, Mr. Cleaver, I would distinguish between people who are literally homeless, people who are on the 

street or in an emergency facility, versus people who are at risk of 

homelessness and who have unstable housing. 

I think the situation you are describing is something that as a 

society we absolutely should be doing more to make sure that people who are at risk of homelessness do not become homeless. 

I do not think that defining everyone as homeless and trying to 

shoehorn them into the homeless programs is going to do that. We 

need to have more effective anti-poverty programs in general, including programs that deal with folks who are facing foreclosure. 

Those problems are much broader than the problem of literal 

homelessness. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Yes. The people I have spoken with, I went undercover at a local ABC station a few years back. I let my beard grow 

and I put on ragged clothes and I went out. They had a camera 

on me, Channel 9, KNBC, an ABC affiliate, and they were in a 

plain truck and they followed me around and so forth. 

44

As I talked to people who were homeless, many of them started 

out pretty much like what is happening to folk who are losing their 

homes. 

I do not know of anyone who said, ‘‘After careful study and reading several booklets, I decided to become homeless.’’ 

It was the movement of events that triggered the homelessness. 

With people losing their homes, that could actually trigger what is 

being called ‘‘chronic homelessness,’’ which I think there is some 

controversy over that. 

I know my time is running out. Ms. Roman? 

Ms. ROMAN. I think the solution to that really is we do not have 

much to offer those people in the homelessness system. We have 

shelter and some kind of case management. Those people need affordable housing. They need the other things you are doing in this 

committee, the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund, the Section 8 issues, that is what those folks need. 

I think what we want to avoid is having all those people become 

homeless. That is a terribly important thing for us to do. 

The community partnership also does have a lot of prevention, 

new prevention resources, and we should get better at getting people back into housing faster and having some flexibility to do that. 

Ms. MCNAMEE. I agree. I think much like the last time we went 

through this, we tend to be much more responsive this time, and 

there has been some efforts made to train the housing counseling 

people. There are some programs around foreclosures and a lot 

more outreach to families who have in fact lost their houses, and 

hopefully before they lose their houses, to provide the interventions 

to do it. 

I think we have gotten a little better. I think with much more 

outreach to those individuals, hopefully we will not see them sleeping on the couches. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you. We will now recognize the former ranking member, Mrs. Biggert, for 5 minutes. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am sorry I missed 

part of your testimony. I would like to ask Dr. Culhane, your research on public shelter utilization in New York and Philadelphia 

found that children were more likely than the general population 

to become homeless. 

I think your analysis also found that the younger the child, the 

greater the risk. Indeed, infants under the age of one had the highest rates of shelter usage. 

Would you conclude that infants and toddlers do not suffer lasting ill effects from homelessness? Do you think they do suffer more 

or less? 

Mr. CULHANE. I think the literature shows that in the near term 

we know that families and children who experience homelessness 

do suffer ill effects of that. I do not know that we have evidence 

yet as to what the long term effects are. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Are you concerned that it could be that extreme 

stress in early childhood would cause physical and mental disabilities later in life? 

Mr. CULHANE. It is certainly possible. It is also the case that we 

know that families when they are in the homeless system are less 

45

likely to access other resources, for example, early care programs, 

including Head Start programs. 

I think one of the reasons that it is important to get families 

back into stable housing as quickly as possible is that it will enable 

them to access some of the mainstream programs more effectively, 

have more stable schooling, and not have to move around as much, 

all of those things. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. I think one of the things that we have been working on, on the education side of it, is that Head Start would be 

available to the homeless. 

This is for a couple of people. I will start with Ms. Roman. I understand that your organization endorses the Senate bill. In order 

to be eligible for HUD homeless assistance, a family in a doubledup situation must be notified by the owner of the residence where 

they are staying that they can only stay there for a short period 

of time, and having moved 3 times in a year or twice in the previous 21 days, and not had significant resources to contribute to 

rent. 

Are you concerned about the impact this definition’s requirements would have on homeless children? 

Ms. ROMAN. I think the balance that we need to strike is between doubled-up for economic reasons, which I think includes a lot 

of people who may have bad housing situations but are not homeless, and who among the doubled-up population is actually homeless. 

We were looking for some way to describe couch surfers or people 

who are unstably housed but doubled-up. If that is not the way to 

do it, I think there is plenty of room for compromise on this between what is too broad a definition and what I think many people 

anyway are really meaning, which is there is definitely a group of 

people who are doubled-up, who are homeless and need help. 

Of course, we are always concerned about the effect on children. 

I guess my concern is the homeless system—what children need is 

stable housing. We do not really have that to offer them in the 

homeless system. We have shelter. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Just take, for example, a mother and her children 

who are in an abusive situation, domestic violence, and they are 

fleeing really to find some place, safety, and they go to maybe a relative and they are staying, so they are going to have to document 

the proof of all of these things in order for them to stay some place? 

To me, they are almost like refugees who are fleeing with the 

clothes on their back and they need to find a place. 

Ms. ROMAN. If they need a place to stay and they present as 

homeless, they are homeless, and they are eligible for homeless assistance. 

I think the question is, if you are trying to get them services 

while they are living with somebody— 

Mrs. BIGGERT. They are the people who very much need that. If 

they can only stay for a short time, then they are going to have 

to move from place to place, and maybe they will end up in a shelter or maybe they will end up in a car, if they have one. Maybe 

they will end up in a motel. 

It just seems to me to focus on such a definition is not the way 

to go. 

46

Let me ask Ms. McNamee. Do you not think we should broaden 

that definition? 

Ms. MCNAMEE. I do. If you think about this domestic violence 

victim who leaves and has to demonstrate being homeless, and I 

believe it is 3 times in 21 days or something like that, they have 

to verify that. Where are they going to go? Go back to the abuser 

and say, ‘‘Oh, by the way, could you tell them that I was here?’’ 

Or a youth who was on a couch and was sexually exploited in 

order to get an overnight stay, is he going to go back and ask the 

exploiter person to please tell them that I was here? 

I think it creates a barrier in the definition and it is a real problem for very, very vulnerable populations. We also know that this 

population, because we have a fair amount of mentally ill folks, set 

each other up sometimes, so they are held captive. 

If you want a verification from someone, well, I will tell you if, 

you know, I will tell them you were here if. I am just not sure that 

is quite the way we want to do that. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you. I see my time has expired. 

Mr. GREEN. The gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Davis. 

Mr DAVIS OF KENTUCKY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a parenthetical statement on this last comment, when we are dealing 

with the definition. You are going to have people fall through the 

cracks if you do not re-define it. 

I was reminded of a humorous story after a system change when 

the Army payroll system went computerized many years ago. I 

walked in and discovered that none of my bills had been paid and 

my bank deposits did not happen because I had been deployed and 

I came back to find out that somehow I was lost. 

When I went in to inquire about my check in uniform, I was told 

that I was not in the Army any longer, and was not a real person 

according to the computer until a kind person restrained me. 

I think about how we got that fixed after a spirited discussion, 

but I had all the documentation to prove who I was. 

The challenge that I think you run into here is you have people 

who are dealing with a wide variety of issues, those who have been 

victimized, young people who are going to be intimidated by any 

form of governmental system creates a huge challenge in dealing 

with that. 

I would like to address a question to Ms. Marquez. In your testimony, you stated your support for the 30 percent set-aside for supportive housing. I agree with you in one sense, that permanent 

housing is successful in some areas. 

Do you not think that instead of a bureaucracy in Washington, 

D.C., running things, setting arbitrary requirements, for example, 

a brilliant example of a rule made by somebody who has never 

worked in the real world is saying that you have to validate 3 

times in 21 days that you were some place where you might get 

harmed by going back to prove that, or not have the means or 

know how to verify that. 

Having Washington do it, would it not be better to have local 

areas have that control on the front lines, if there were appropriate 

mechanisms for accountability but not creating a bureaucracy that 

would incur a lot of overhead? 

47

Ms. MARQUEZ. I guess I would say this, that the evidence the research does show is the need is so great that it makes sense to set 

a floor. I would like the opportunity at the local level to go beyond 

that if that is what is needed in my city. 

For instance, it is often said that in Los Angeles City, we are 

housing and more people come from the County into Los Angeles 

City. If there is no requirement that anybody else has to build 

housing and has to use the money for that, then we continue to be 

a magnet. 

I need to be able in my region to make sure that everyone is taking on their fair share of what is going on. It is for that reason that 

I would support a floor. 

It is also true from the point of view of the family that you are 

speaking of, if you want to extend the definition, to make sure that 

is coming down the pike. 

It is because it is a significant issue. I would suggest perhaps 

that what you are looking at in the National Affordable Housing 

Trust Fund, that might be a place to take a look at the issues of 

these families. They need affordable housing, not necessarily the 

subset of permanent supportive housing that has rich services that 

they do not need. 

Mr. DAVIS OF KENTUCKY. For example, if what you are talking 

about is effective in Los Angeles, and that is great, you have a Continuum of Care, the ability to manage that. You have local resources. I come back to the context issue here. 

You have a Federal regulation that may compete with common 

sense. I know that might sound paradoxical in this environment 

that there would be those types of problems. 

I go back to this issue of verification of homelessness. The local 

professional and again somebody here sitting in a cubicle 5,000 

miles from somebody with difficulties perhaps does not realize that 

good folks working on the ground are going to know their neighborhoods like the policemen, they are going to know who these people 

are in many cases, or when they come into the system on a localized level, that they can have this connectivity. 

Would you agree that having flexibility say, for example, in my 

district, where maybe housing itself is less the issue but other Continuum of Care issues are the issue, to not simply warehouse the 

person but help get the problem dealt with or help get them back 

into the economy, that that flexibility would be of some value? 

Ms. MARQUEZ. Flexibility is of some value. Of course, when we 

are dealing in local communities, many communities would come to 

the point of view that they do not have a problem with housing 

when in fact they do, and they are happy to transport it to other 

areas. 

That is why, from our point of view, a floor is very important. 

Mr. DAVIS OF KENTUCKY. I will just leave you with one final 

point on that. You had mentioned that you do not support the expansion of the definition. I do not think what any of us are talking 

about is a blank check. I think the biggest problem with the Federal Government are the silo’s that do not work effectively together 

and create problems. 

48

You can pick any situation whether it is this, national security. 

We have a 21st Century country running on a 1960 system architecture and it is broken. 

To come back to this, definitions do have tremendous power. I 

know if we are going to think in the 1960 sense, then I perhaps 

could agree with Ms. Roman, but we are not there. We are in an 

entirely different world. 

You mentioned 13,000 homeless children attending public school. 

That caught my ear. If there are so many homeless children or 

young people who are out of foster care and suddenly find themselves pushed out into the economy, why would not you support or 

why do you say you do not support expanding that? 

I am asking you to step out of the regulatory framework you 

have to live with for a moment and make a statement in the context of the situation. 

Ms. MARQUEZ. I guess I would say this. I do not support it in the 

context of the ‘‘homeless’’ definition. In Los Angeles, what we have 

done, because it is a significant issue, we have attached that great 

need to our regular affordable housing program, so much so that 

we are now going to do a set-aside in our regular program of 10 

percent for families such as those that you are discussing. That has 

everything to do with the costs. 

Those families need fewer services, less expensive services. The 

regular affordable housing programs that we fund that would be 

the target of your Affordable Housing Trust Fund, if it went national, are those families, and of the 6,000 units that the City of 

Los Angeles has funded as affordable housing, nearly 4,500 are targeted specifically to low income families. 

In our city, we have taken care of it because they are not homeless in this context. They do not need that richness of service. They 

need other things. We are making sure that they are getting it. 

That is why it is in this context only in the ‘‘homeless’’ definition 

that we would not support it because what comes with that is a 

heavy burden of services and it is very expensive. We think they 

belong in the regular affordable housing program, and that is 

where we fund it. That is actually the majority of our funding, 

going to those types of families. 

Mr. DAVIS OF KENTUCKY. With the chairman’s indulgence, I 

would just like to clarify one point. The services that are being provided by those monies outside of those specifically designated as 

the stereotypical definition of ‘‘homelessness,’’ are those services 

provided by the same people to both groups? 

Ms. MARQUEZ. In many situations, they are. For instance, if you 

are going to build a permanent supportive housing unit, there is 

a requirement that many of the services be onsite, because of the 

difficulty of getting folks to access them. You have to be right there 

working them all of the time to get them to participate. 

A family like the ones you are concerned with, those are folks 

who have issues but are functioning in the world. They can walk 

4 blocks to the services center to get what they need. 

In affordable housing what we do, we have a requirement that 

services be provided, but they do not have to be onsite because 

these folks work. They are the working poor. They may come from 

a situation like the one that we have heard here, a domestic vioVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:45 Feb 19, 2008 Jkt 039908 PO 00000 Frm 00054 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\39908.TXT HFIN PsN: TERRIE
49

lence situation, but many of them work, including those who are 

doubled-up, and including those who have lost their homes to foreclosure. 

It is not that they are not working. It is that the affordability 

gap between what they earn and the cost of housing is too great. 

They are functioning individuals. They do not have dual diagnoses. 

It is for that reason that we would have them in a regular affordable housing where they can walk to the services around them 

rather than have the very expensive effort of having to have them 

housed in the building and the capital expense of building those 

units has to include the cost of building out all of the space for the 

services. That is why we distinguish it. 

Mr. DAVIS OF KENTUCKY. Thank you. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you. I am told that we will have votes in a 

few minutes. Because we will have votes, we will excuse this panel 

and instruct the next panel to come back at 1:30 or after the votes 

have been completed, whichever is later. You do not have to come 

back before 1:30. 

We look forward to seeing you at that time. You are excused 

until 1:30 or after the next series of votes. 

[Recess] 

Mr. GREEN. Friends, we would like to call the meeting to order 

at this time and proceed with our last panel. We would like to 

thank you for being so patient. We assure you that we try to get 

to you as expeditiously as possible. We always seem to have votes 

that will at some point intercede. Please accept my apologies on behalf of the entire committee for keeping you waiting so long. 

Let me now introduce the members of this panel. If I should mispronounce a name, if you will just step right in and help me, I 

would greatly appreciate it. 

We have with us Ms. Dora Gallo, with A Community of Friends 

in Los Angeles. 

Ms. GALLO. That is correct. 

Mr. GREEN. We have Mr. Moises Loza. He is the executive director of the Housing Assistance Council. 

Dr. Ellen Bassuk, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard 

University. 

Diane Nilan with HEAR US, in Naperville, Illinois. 

Mrs. Biggert, please forgive me. I am told that we have a Representative who would like to say a few words by way of introduction, and we will now recognize Mrs. Biggert for this purpose. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I would like 

to introduce and welcome to today’s hearing a constituent and a 

dear friend of mine from Naperville, Illinois, Ms. Diane Nilan. 

Diane has spent over 21 years giving voice to homeless kids and 

their families. She comes to us today in her capacity as founder 

and president of HEAR US, Inc.—Homeless Education Awareness 

Raising in the United States—a nonprofit organization to empower 

homeless children and youth through video advocacy and other 

technologies. I know you will hear more about that. 

She has had a distinguished career of public service. She has 

served as manager of emergency shelters, a long time board member and officer for the statewide Housing Action Coalition, a board 

member and 9 year president of the Illinois Coalition to End HomeVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:45 Feb 19, 2008 Jkt 039908 PO 00000 Frm 00055 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\39908.TXT HFIN PsN: TERRIE
50

lessness, and co-founder of the campaign Forget Me Not, Kids’ Day 

on Capital Hill, and co-author of several U.S. Interagency Council 

on Homelessness reports. 

She is going to tell you a little bit about this, but in 2005, she 

sold her house and car and purchased an RV to travel across the 

country documenting the plights and dreams of America’s homeless 

children. She has logged over 20,000 miles in just that short time. 

I would like to welcome her here today and look forward to her 

testimony. Thanks. 

Ms. NILAN. Thank you. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. 

From Los Angeles, we have Ms. Dora Gallo, A Community of 

Friends, Los Angeles. I want to thank Ms. Gallo for joining us. I 

and my staff were fortunate enough to be able to visit several of 

the 33 buildings that A Community of Friends has developed and 

operates in the Los Angeles area. We were very impressed at the 

quality of both the housing and the services delivered to the poor, 

often formerly homeless, disabled tenants of the projects. 

I would like to see this subcommittee do all we can do to make 

sure that the production pipeline to this organization and others 

like it across the country are as robust as possible. 

We also have Ms. Nancy Carter, the National Alliance for the 

Mentally Ill, Urban Los Angeles. I very much appreciate the work 

that Ms. Carter, whom I have long known, has undertaken on behalf of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, Urban Los Angeles Chapter. 

I know that the testimony she will provide today will be invaluable to the subcommittee as we consider our actions regarding how 

the McKinney-Vento program will affect the severely and persistently mentally ill who live in shelters and on the streets in Los Angeles and nationwide. 

Also, Dr. Martha Burt, Ph.D., senior principal researcher, Urban 

Institute. 

We will start with Ms. Dora Gallo. 

STATEMENT OF DORA GALLO, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, A 

COMMUNITY OF FRIENDS, LOS ANGELES 

Ms. GALLO. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and Ranking Member Capito, for the opportunity to provide testimony to the subcommittee. My name is Dora Gallo and I am the chief executive officer of A Community of Friends. 

We are a nonprofit developer in Los Angeles County. As a practitioner, I can tell you firsthand how important McKinney-Vento 

funding has been to our efforts to end homelessness for individuals 

and families with special needs. 

We are thrilled to see reauthorizing legislation proposed and a 

commitment to enact legislation that encompasses the best provisions of H.R. 840 and Senate Bill 1518. 

The McKinney-Vento Act is unique, unlike other State, local, and 

Federal sources of funding, at least in Los Angeles County, the 

McKinney-Vento Act is the only source of funding that encompasses all three elements of permanent supportive housing, operating, construction, and services. 

51

An award of McKinney funds from SHP, Shelter + Care, or SRO 

rehab allows ACOF and other developers to leverage millions of 

dollars in other funding, particularly in construction. 

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that our organization 

supports the set-aside of 30 percent of McKinney funds for permanent supportive housing for people with disabilities. 

One concern that we wish to convey to you, however, is a provision in Senate Bill 1518 that codifies a policy to limit supportive 

housing projects to 16 units or less, unless it can be demonstrated 

that, ‘‘Local market conditions dictate the development of a larger 

project.’’ 

No such provision exists in H.R. 840. While we understand the 

policy objective of not concentrating and isolating people with disabilities, the definition of ‘‘large’’ varies from community to community. 

In urban areas where density is often much higher, setting a 

maximum of 16 units per project is too low and imposes an unfair 

burden in urban areas to prove that more than 16 units should be 

allowed. 

ACOF has successfully developed, operated, and maintained supportive housing ranging in size from 7 units to 60 units, such as 

the successful 40 unit supportive housing project in South Los Angeles that is in Chairwoman Waters’ District. 

From a developer’s standpoint and a service provider’s standpoint, there are economies of scale to incorporating more than 16 

supportive housing units in one building. That is not to say that 

integrating special needs housing is not a good policy objective. 

We have two buildings now in operation with mixed populations, 

and we are developing more. Even with a 50 percent ratio, the special needs component of our new projects total at least 20 units and 

as high as 35. 

I would like to also point out that it is going to take us a very 

long time to reach the Federal goal of 150,000 units of supportive 

housing if we are only building 16 units at a time. 

Regarding the ‘‘homeless’’ definition, we do support the expansion of the definition to include those in camp grounds and motels 

for purposes of determining eligibility for the community homeless 

assistance programs, such as the Shelter + Care, SHP, and SRO 

mod rehab, but we do not support the expansion of the definition 

to include those who are doubling up or couch surfing. 

Instead, we propose that those who are doubled-up or couch surfing be assisted under the new prevention program in the McKinney 

Act proposed in both H.R. 840 and Senate Bill 1518. 

The last critical point we wish to convey is a plea for the subcommittee to think carefully about the long term sustainability of 

permanent supportive housing projects, both from a financial perspective as it relates to operating, and a human perspective, as it 

relates to services. 

Goals of increasing economic self-sufficiency are admirable for individuals and families in supportive housing, but experience has 

shown us that for individuals who have a long term chronic disabling condition, it would take many years for them to be able to 

increase their income to a level to enable them to move into the 

private market, either on their own or with mainstream resources. 

52

Therefore, housing must continue to be affordable through 

project based rental assistance. The consequence is homelessness 

again caused by economic instability or poorly maintained housing 

throughout communities. 

Services funding should also be consistently available. As a developer, we sometimes find that government agencies and the larger provider community do not realize that once a homeless person 

with disabilities is in housing, their job is not over. 

Our onsite service coordinators with a staffing ratio of 1:25 or 

1:30 do not have the capacity due to lack of resources to provide 

intensive services if and when a tenant needs more help. 

Nonprofits need to be able to develop long term plans for our 

services program and an opportunity to leverage HUD services 

funding. 

Finally, we would like to express our appreciation to the committee for considering clean up provisions in both bills, which is 

itemized in my written testimony and referred to by Mercedes 

Marquez in the Housing Department. 

A Community of Friends applauds the subcommittee for your 

leadership in putting best practices, lessons learned, into reauthorization legislation for the McKinney-Vento program. 

Whatever final version you adopt, this legislation will have a tremendous impact on thousands of homeless individuals and families 

throughout the country. 

Thank you to the subcommittee and to Chairwoman Waters for 

holding these hearings and for soliciting our input. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Gallo can be found on page 104 

of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you. 

Mr. Loza? 

STATEMENT OF MOISES LOZA, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

HOUSING ASSISTANCE COUNCIL 

Mr. LOZA. Chairwoman Waters, Ranking Member Capito, and 

members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting the Housing 

Assistance Council to provide testimony on pending legislation to 

reauthorize Federal programs for the homeless. 

My name is Moises Loza, and I am the director of the Housing 

Assistance Council, a national nonprofit dedicated to improving 

housing conditions for low income rural Americans. 

HAC is particularly interested in the resources needed to address 

homelessness effectively in rural areas. Rural individuals and families do experience both literal homelessness and very precarious 

housing situations. 

HAC’s local partners have often reported and research has shown 

that homeless people in rural areas move from one extremely substandard, over crowded and/or cost burdened housing situation to 

another, often doubling or tripling up with friends or relatives. 

Over 6 million rural households experience a precarious housing 

condition, threatening their ability to achieve housing stability and 

placing them at risk of homelessness. 

Based on conservative estimates, 9 percent of the homeless population lives in rural areas. Many rural communities lack a system 

to meet emergency housing needs and face structural issues that 

53

limit the creation of these resources in rural communities, such as 

lack of community awareness and support, lack of access to services, and lack of data on needs. 

For these reasons, using Federal resources can be difficult in 

rural areas. Because the number of homeless people in a given 

community is often small and congregate shelter may be viewed as 

inappropriate, providers in rural areas have a strong incentive to 

emphasize homelessness prevention and permanent re-housing options. 

Despite limitations, some programs, specifically HUD’s Continuum of Care, have been useful in rural areas. For example, the 

Center for Family Solutions is located in Imperial County, the 

poorest county in California. 

The Center operates two emergency shelters and 14 transitional 

shelter apartments for women and their children who are victims 

of domestic violence or who are homeless for other reasons. 

Another example is Stop Abusive Family Environments, Inc., 

SAFE, located in McDowell County, West Virginia, which has been 

working for 25 years to break the cycle of violence through a social 

justice approach and combines domestic violence services and the 

provision of transitional housing with permanent housing and economic development. 

SAFE operates a 31 unit transitional housing facility for victims 

of domestic violence. 

Both H.R. 840 and Senate Bill 1518 have important components 

that can support the work of rural homeless providers and equip 

them to better serve homeless individuals and families in rural 

areas. 

The bills would consolidate HUD’s three main competitive homeless programs into one. This would improve rural communities’ 

ability to apply for resources. The bills also make prevention an eligible activity in rural areas, which is a very important part of 

homeless assistance activities in rural communities. 

These common themes would make the McKinney-Vento programs more accessible to rural homeless providers. 

The definition of ‘‘homelessness’’ used by the Departments of 

Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice, as proposed 

in H.R. 840, would work better in rural communities. 

HAC supports the new rural resource created in Senate Bill 1518 

because it will help local rural organizations to both address and 

prevent homelessness. 

Senate Bill 1518 would target resources to re-housing or improving housing conditions to stabilize the housing of individuals who 

are in danger of losing housing, provide a simplified funding application that recognizes the capacity constraints of rural community 

organizations, and allow successful applicants to use up to 20 percent of their grant for capacity building activities. 

HAC also supports the simplified application in Senate Bill 1518. 

Finally, HAC suggests following a change recommended in H.R. 

840, allowing local communities to set their own priorities for 

spending McKinney-Vento funds. Communities could certainly 

choose to prioritize chronic homelessness if appropriate, but no 

community would be required to do so. 

54

Thank you for this opportunity to comment on the bills before 

the subcommittee and on the housing needs of the rural homeless. 

I would be happy to respond to any questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Loza can be found on page 128 

of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you. 

Dr. Ellen Bassuk. 

STATEMENT OF ELLEN L. BASSUK, M.D., ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PSYCHIATRY, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL, AND 

PRESIDENT, NATIONAL CENTER ON FAMILY HOMELESSNESS 

Dr. BASSUK. Chairwoman Waters, Ranking Member Capito, and 

other distinguished members of the subcommittee, I am honored to 

have the opportunity to speak with you today on behalf of the 1.3 

million children who are homeless in America each year. 

Thank you for giving a voice to this vulnerable and often neglected group. 

As a psychiatrist and president of the National Center on Family 

Homelessness for 20 years, I have witnessed a change in the face 

of homelessness with children and their families now comprising 35 

to 40 percent of the overall homeless population. 

I have had the privilege of seeing firsthand the spirit of homeless 

children. I have also documented their anguish. 

Homelessness for children is more than the loss of a house. It 

takes away their belongings, reassuring routines, friends, and community. Instead of developing a sense of security, trust in care 

givers, and freedom to explore, they learn the world is unsafe and 

that violent things often happen. 

As one homeless teenager described, ‘‘Not only did we lose everything, but we were looked at and treated like garbage, told we were 

dirty, no good, our parents were lazy, and should get jobs. I remember crying myself to sleep. At times, I still do, thinking why us? 

What did we do to be treated like this?’’ 

In our work at the National Center, we have learned that residential instability, interpersonal violence, and family disruption 

are inextricably linked. In a population based longitudinal study 

we conducted, families moved many times in the year before they 

entered shelter. These moves were not positive ones. 

Thirty percent were evicted. Many moved into doubled-up situations where they were faced with overcrowding, friends and relations who resented their presence, and significant risk of physical 

and sexual abuse. 

Perhaps most shocking is the staggering rates of violence in the 

lives of these families. Over 90 percent of homeless mothers have 

been severely physically or sexually assaulted. Almost two-thirds 

have been violently abused by a male partner. 

Homeless children are exposed to violent events, some many 

times, including adults hitting each other, seeing people shot, and 

even having their own lives threatened. 

Homelessness is marked by family separation. Almost a quarter 

of homeless children have lived apart from their immediate family, 

with 12 percent placed in foster care compared to just 1 percent of 

other children. 

55

These separations may interfere with caring attachments between a parent and child leading to behavioral problems and the 

inability to form supportive trusting relationships in adulthood. 

The relentless daily stress of homelessness diminishes children’s 

physical, emotional, behavioral, and cognitive development. They 

have more acute and chronic medical problems, many developmental delays, higher rates of anxiety, depression, and behavioral 

difficulties, and more learning disabilities. 

By age eight, one in three have at least one major psychiatric 

disorder. They struggle in school, with almost three-quarters performing below grade level in reading and spelling and one-third repeating a grade. 

Within this bleak picture is a ray of hope. In spite of their experiences, new data suggest that many homeless children are resilient 

and do well with proper support and clinical treatment when needed. Stable permanent supportive housing is critical for achieving 

these positive outcomes. 

This brings us to the work of this subcommittee. We are dismayed by the current policy debate that focuses on how to allocate 

scarce resources by pitting one subgroup of homeless people against 

another. All homeless people are deserving of help. Any response 

to homelessness in America requires a substantially larger commitment. 

We strongly advocate for adequate funding for McKinney-Vento 

to meet the needs of all subgroups experiencing homelessness. 

Until that time, we offer the following suggestions. 

First, we urge aligning the HUD definition of ‘‘homelessness’’ 

with those used by other Federal agencies. Families, children and 

youth who are doubled up or living in hotels and motels and do not 

have a fixed, regular, and adequate living situation are homeless. 

These temporary, chaotic situations are emotionally damaging to 

children and place them at an increased risk for physical and sexual abuse. 

Second, we support provisions in the HEARTH bill that give 

communities greater flexibility to implement a range of housing 

and service options. This approach will also support better strategies, essential for closing the front door onto the streets. 

Furthermore, the proliferation of Ten Year Plans to end homelessness indicates sufficient community momentum to allay our 

concerns about discrimination against individuals with disabilities. 

Finally, if there is to be a set-aside for permanent supportive 

housing, it is essential that eligibility criteria be expanded beyond 

chronically homeless individuals to include homeless families and 

children. 

Their mental health needs are different from those of homeless 

single adults, but some family members, both adults and children, 

are nevertheless disabled enough to warrant ongoing services and 

housing. 

Homeless children do not become homeless by themselves. We 

cannot expect them to stabilize their lives alone. As a society, we 

have a moral responsibility to devise their rescue. We must act now 

before the homeless children of today become the chronically homeless adults of tomorrow. 

56

The HEARTH bill takes important steps in that direction, but we 

are mindful that much more needs to be done. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Bassuk can be found on page 70 

of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. 

Next we will hear from Ms. Diane Nilan. 

STATEMENT OF DIANE NILAN, PRESIDENT/FOUNDER, HEAR 

US, INC. 

Ms. NILAN. Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify, 

and my profound gratitude to Congresswoman Judy Biggert who 

has been a tremendous champion for this Nation’s homeless children and youth. 

I am president and founder of HEAR US, Inc., a national nonprofit whose mission is to give voice and visibility to homeless kids. 

I sold my home and I have spent the last 2 years traveling in 

my RV across this Nation’s back roads, interviewing homeless children and families. Our documentary, ‘‘My Own Four Walls,’’ features these courageous kids talking about their homelessness. I 

speak on their behalf. 

I have worked over 20 years with homeless children and adults, 

15 years as director of an emergency shelter in Illinois, serving up 

to 150 men, women and children each evening. 

My premise is simple. This Nation needs a new more promising 

approach to ensuring people in this country that they have a place 

to call home. 

One family I met was in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and included 

Esperanza, who was crippled by polio all her life, who impressively 

managed to look after her grandkids while her daughter, Elizabeth, 

worked minimum wage jobs. 

When I met them, they were living in a cramped motel room 

prior to moving into a palatial three bedroom handicap accessible 

subsidized apartment. Sadly, their stay was short lived. About 7 

months after moving, Esperanza died, and the family had to leave 

because they did not require an accessible apartment. 

They moved into a friend’s cramped house because Las Cruces 

lacks a shelter for families with teenage boys. Elizabeth was working two jobs and sleeps on the floor with her three youngest children wrapped around her, knowing that their situation is precarious, utterly dependent on her friend’s hospitality and her family’s 

ability to endure this grueling arrangement. 

Elizabeth is on a long waiting list for housing, with Esperanza, 

the Spanish word for ‘‘hope’’ in her heart. 

Why would families like these, struggling to survive in motels, 

or doubled-up with others, not be defined as homeless? 

I am haunted by an experience from over a decade ago. TJ and 

his mom turned to us for help off and on for years. This little guy 

changed places to live more often than he changed clothes. He encountered what is tragically common for kids in homeless situations, abuse which caused severe mental harm. 

TJ, a severely disturbed 7-year old, snapped when he faced the 

prospect of living in our cramped family sleeping room. After 

spending hours holding this traumatized little boy to keep him 

57

from harming himself or others, I had to commit him for psychiatric evaluation. 

He and his mom continued to be homeless, with his fragile situation deteriorating further at great expense to him, his mom, and 

the community. 

This tragedy may have been prevented had HUD recognized this 

homelessness when he and his mother were bouncing between 

homes prior to entering our shelter, and despite TJ’s disability, the 

current HUD definition of ‘‘chronically homeless’’ does not include 

families at all, and the Senate’s bill of ‘‘chronically homelessness’’ 

does not include families where the child has a disability. TJ’s family would not be prioritized for assistance. 

TJ is 18 now, facing a life filled with hardship. 

To narrowly define ‘‘homelessness’’ in order to feign a successful 

war on homelessness defies comprehension. To force families to 

move repeatedly before assistance is provided as proposed in S. 

1518 is short sighted and cruel. 

To proceed with HUD’s proposed direction of codifying chronic 

homelessness at the expense of homeless children, youth and 

adults, is fiscally and morally irresponsible. 

Frontline shelter staff across our Nation await the day that HUD 

provides the opportunity for people in all homeless situations to receive assistance. 

They long to focus on easing homelessness as it appears in their 

communities, on the street, doubled-up or in motels, instead of coping with arbitrary rules and restrictions. It is no coincidence that 

the local service providers who have testified at these hearings support an updated definition of ‘‘homelessness.’’ 

We need a new approach, much of the blueprint which can be 

found in H.R. 840, the HEARTH Act. Please incorporate the 

HEARTH Act into HUD’s new approach to homelessness. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Nilan can be found on page 182 

of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. 

Ms. Carter? 

STATEMENT OF NANCY CARTER, NATIONAL ALLIANCE ON 

MENTAL ILLNESS, URBAN LOS ANGELES 

Ms. CARTER. Hello. My name is Nancy Carter. I must admit I am 

a little choked up after hearing Diane speak. 

I am president and co-founder of NAMI Urban Los Angeles, the 

National Alliance on Mental Illness. Our Urban Los Angeles Chapter was formed by five African-American women to reach out to 

families like ourselves who had loved ones who suffered from mental illness. 

The stories that Diane is telling you are the stories that we live 

with every single day. We educate. We support. We advocate for 

our own families and for those in the community who affect us the 

most. 

Chairwoman Waters, I am honored to be here, and I thank you 

so much for the invitation. Ms. Capito, thank you as well. 

When I think about family, I think about the fact that I was 

raised in Logan County, West Virginia, where I saw homelessness 

58

in rural areas every day of my life as a child, and then growing 

up living in Los Angeles, California, and raising a son who would 

one day develop mental illness. 

I think today on this panel that there, but for the grace of God, 

go most of us. In a week, 2 weeks, or a month, so many of us can 

end up homeless and on the streets. For those families who have 

loved ones who suffer from mental illness, the risk is even greater, 

and that is why I am so honored to be here today to speak for 

NAMI, both for my Chapter, Urban Los Angeles, and as a National 

Board member as well. 

Why do we support the McKinney-Vento reauthorization? Because it works, because it has been a success. The McKinney-Vento 

permanent housing programs are perhaps the most successful and 

effective Federal intervention for people with severe mental illness 

since the Community Mental Health Center Act of 1963. 

Shelter + Care and SHP permanent housing have brought stability and the opportunity for recovery for thousands upon thousands of individuals with the most severe mental illnesses and cooccurring disorders. 

These programs break the tragic and costly cycle that too many 

of these individuals experience through chronic homelessness, 

bouncing between the streets, the emergency shelters, the emergency rooms, psychiatric hospitals, general hospitals, and tragically 

in Los Angeles, jails and prisons. 

Permanent supportive housing is an effective solution that 

works. It is also cost effective. There is substantial research that 

demonstrates that permanent supportive housing is an effective 

model. 

Formerly homeless residents of supportive housing achieve decreases of more than 50 percent in emergency room visits and inpatient hospital days, and an 80 percent drop in emergency detoxification services. This translates into a savings of $16,000 plus in 

health care costs per unit per year. Eighty percent of people who 

enter supportive housing are still in housing a year later. 

The focus of McKinney-Vento must stay on permanent housing 

needs of the most difficult to serve, experiencing chronic homelessness. 

In NAMI’s view, it is critical that any reauthorization of McKinney-Vento retain a Federal minimum requirement for permanent 

housing. This is the hallmark of what has made this program successful over the past decade. 

Prior to enactment of the 30 percent set-aside in 1998, only 13 

percent of McKinney funds went toward permanent housing, with 

the vast majority of funding going toward shelters and services. In 

effect, we were using McKinney programs to build a service system 

that would depend on keeping people homeless to sustain itself. 

Investment in permanent supportive housing offers a different 

policy objective, that of ending chronic homelessness. NAMI is troubled that the HEARTH Act excludes a permanent housing setaside. We are extremely concerned that without a minimum national requirement for development of new permanent housing, 

many local Continuums of Care would face strong incentives to 

spread limited dollars among as many local homeless programs as 

possible. 

59

It is important to note that people who experience chronic homelessness are more likely than other McKinney-Vento eligible populations to be categorically excluded or screened out of other affordable housing programs. 

These include restrictions on eligibility for both Section 8 and 

public housing based on previous history of substance abuse and 

involvement in the criminal justice system. 

Ms. Waters, I am so grateful. NAMI is so grateful to you and 

Chairman Frank. Over the past 9 years, you have achieved enormous legislative and policy accomplishments with respect to addressing the affordable housing issue. 

The Section 8 voucher reform bill, the GSE and FHA reform 

bills, the Gulf Coast housing bill, and most importantly, the National Housing Trust Fund bill, H.R. 2895, passed by the House 

just last week. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 

These are the most impressive legislative accomplishments for 

affordable rental housing in a generation. 

We thank you for your leadership in bringing this agenda forward. We thank the entire committee for the opportunity of 

NAMI’s views to be heard today on the reauthorization of McKinney-Vento. We look forward to working with you and the subcommittee to produce a bill that will continue to move us down the 

road towards ending chronic homelessness. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Carter can be found on page 92 

of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you. 

Dr. Burt? 

STATEMENT OF MARTHA BURT, PH.D., SENIOR PRINCIPAL 

RESEARCHER, URBAN INSTITUTE 

Ms. BURT. Chairwoman Waters, Ranking Member Capito, and 

other members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to 

share my views relating to various provisions of the reauthorization of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act pertaining to 

the HUD housing programs. 

I have been involved in policy oriented research on homeless populations and homeless service systems since 1983, and also helped 

shape the definition of ‘‘homelessness’’ that now governs the Department of Housing and Urban Development programs funded 

through the Act. 

It is a pleasure for me to be asked to give testimony on these 

matters. I will address my remarks to five issues raised in the invitation letter, definitions first. 

I very strongly urge the committee to retain the current HUD 

definitions with a couple of very important exceptions. 

I do believe that for families, if a parent meets the definitions, 

the criteria of chronicity and disability that currently allow a single 

person to be considered chronically homeless and to access funds 

and programs directed to chronic homelessness, that family should 

also have access to permanent supportive housing. 

On the other end of the spectrum, I think in certain situations, 

which I mostly have seen happen in rural areas, if a family or a 

person is seeking help, they are clearly homeless at the time they 

60

seek that help, by HUD’s definition, there is no place for them to 

go at the time, and Aunt Susie will take them in for 3 days with 

the clear understanding that 3 days is it, they should at the end 

of those 3 days be considered homeless and eligible for the housing. 

At present, they are not or they are interpreted as not because 

people are afraid that HUD will reject a decision to continue to 

serve them. 

My reasons for strongly advocating for retention of current HUD 

definitions for use in HUD programs with the exceptions just notes 

are that if you are going to create a definition, the definition has 

to tell you who is in and who is out. It is the only way to tell 

whether interventions are making a difference. 

With the current HUD definition, you can in fact tell who is 

homeless and who is not. You can do surveys that let you do estimates of homelessness. I am responsible for the first two national 

ones of those, one from 1987 and one from 1996. 

The Department of Education definition, and I have worked with 

State homeless coordinators and some local homeless coordinators 

around definitions and how they should count, it is really not a definition at all, in my opinion. It is so loose that it varies greatly 

from State to State and even from school districts within the 

States. 

I have worked with it and I know it is flawed. It does not meet 

the criterion that I have just stated, which is measurable and it 

has an ability to count. 

Furthermore, the departments that use the broader definitions 

that have been under discussion today are not actually charged 

with ending anybody’s homelessness. They are charged with serving people who are already homeless. They have very narrow statutory responsibilities of keeping people in school or treating their 

health conditions, but they are not charged with measuring everybody in the country who could be eligible for their services. They 

are only charged with serving the people who walk up to the door, 

and that is who they report to Congress. 

They do not have any responsibilities for telling you that they 

have reduced that number, changed that number, or affected that 

number in any way. HUD does. 

It would be extremely counterproductive to burden HUD with a 

definition that cannot be measured when you are also requiring 

them to report to Congress progress in reducing homelessness 

every year through the annual homeless assessment report. 

For doubled-up situations, I would suggest that if there has to 

be any expansion of definition to doubled-up populations, it should 

be limited in very careful ways. One possibility is first of all only 

for those who seek assistance from homeless assistance programs, 

rather than the whole universe, and second, to add specific easily 

documentable circumstances of extreme housing instability. 

The allowable circumstances need to be very carefully thought 

out, and I think are better left with special panels to determine 

rather than to be codified into law, as they may change. 

Prevention. One of the reasons that Congress has not added or 

included a lot of prevention money in homeless programs in the 

past is that it is easy to waste prevention money. 

61

There are very, very large populations of very poor households, 

single and family, who could come under the rubric of being eligible 

for homelessness prevention. That was certainly true when Congress first passed the McKinney Act. We now know more and we 

are in a better position to target than we were 10 years ago. I 

think support for prevention resources is really important, but you 

really need to think how they are going to be used. 

It would be very, very important to require good recordkeeping 

and outcome tracking for at least the first 2 years of funding any 

community to do prevention, so that you can be sure that you were 

actually preventing homelessness rather than just helping a lot of 

poor people with their housing costs. 

I have complete respect for how much they need that help for 

housing costs, but the homeless programs are not the place for 

them to get it. 

I want to cite to you the case of Massachusetts, increase in family homelessness, which has already been mentioned, because the 

way it happened was that the Department of Transitional Assistance, through which all families go to get homeless assistance, had 

been really working on prevention in exactly the way this law envisions. 

They were actually succeeding. One of the consequences of their 

success was there were fewer families in emergency shelters. They 

emptied the motels and they reduced the number of families going 

into shelters. 

Chairwoman WATERS. I have to end your testimony. 

Ms. BURT. Okay. The reason there are more homeless families is 

the legislature was convinced to give everybody the right to 6 

months of shelter, and as a consequence, there is a lot more family 

homelessness now. 

The last thing I really want to say is on the composition and authority of local homeless planning bodies in relation to Ten Year 

Plans, please do not specify who should be on them, how they 

should work, what their decision making structure should be, because if you do, you will be recording a far larger number of 

them— 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. You will have to 

submit that for the record. 

Ms. BURT. It is already in my written testimony. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much for your testimony. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Burt can be found on page 77 of 

the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. With that, having heard all of you, we are 

now going to turn to questions for the panel, and I will recognize 

myself for 5 minutes. 

Let me first tell you how moved I am and how impressed I am 

with all of you and the work that you do. Maybe I should not say 

this, but there are five women at this table, and I wonder if this 

is telling us something about who is doing the work. I thank you 

for being here, Mr. Loza. 

Let me ask Ms. Gallo, you started to talk about what we should 

be doing if we are truly going to talk about permanent housing for 

the homeless, that we must understand that there still must be assistance for a long period of time for those who reached the level 

62

of being able to have their own unit, their own place to live, and 

maybe some income. We cannot expect that is going to last forever. 

Would you further explain to us what you were saying? 

Ms. GALLO. Yes, I will be glad to. I was speaking specifically of 

individuals and families whose head of household has a chronic 

mental illness. The residents that we house in our buildings fit 

that description, which means they come to us on SSI. They are 

disabled for purposes of the definitions that allow them to access 

mainstream resources. 

Off the streets with a disabling condition, once we moved them 

into the housing, once we get them stabilized, that is when we 

start to be able to treat the underlying causes of some of their 

issues, whether it is substance abuse, mental illness, that takes a 

long time. If we are successful, we can get people back participating in the community. We can get people to volunteer, hold part 

time jobs and even hold full time jobs, but that takes a very long 

time. 

Again, I am talking about people who have been on the streets 

for a long time, and who have a chronic disability. That group of 

individuals is different than for instance a homeless person taking 

advantage of SRO mod rehab, where that homeless person does not 

have a chronic disability. 

I am speaking specifically of the Shelter + Care program and 

people who have a disability. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. I have heard a lot 

of discussion about the definition of ‘‘homelessness’’ today. I think 

you have helped me to come to grips with what I think was said 

by Dr. Bassuk, and that is we should not be pitting one homeless 

group against another homeless group. 

Certainly, you have made the case as far as I am concerned 

about individuals who find themselves homeless but being able to 

stay with someone for a few days, and then all of a sudden, they 

are not eligible any more. That is just not right. 

Thank you for helping me to understand that a little bit better, 

and for Ms. Nilan, thank you for having dedicated your life to documenting homelessness. It seems to me even as we explore the 

changing of the definition or expanding of the definition, there are 

going to be people who are going to fall outside of the definition 

and there needs to be some kind of a hotline that can be called to 

take care of extraordinary cases, that do not fit anywhere. 

Your testimony was riveting. Thank you very much. 

With that, I will turn to my colleague, Ms. Capito. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I, too, echo the 

chairwoman’s sentiments, thanking you for your dedication to service and to folks who a lot of times cannot advocate or help themselves. I am glad to know, Ms. Carter, that you were born in West 

Virginia. I am sorry you went to L.A., however, but you are welcome back to West Virginia any time. You know that. 

I have a question. I think maybe I would like to hear, Dr. 

Bassuk, in your clinical life, in talking with homeless children and 

youth, we have heard kind of conflicting opinions that if we expand 

the definition to include children that may be doubled up or living 

in different kinds of situations, that the stigmatism of labeling 

63

them as homeless has a damaging effect. No doubt, to think you 

were a young person without a home, that is a damaging effect. 

You have to weigh, I suppose, the pluses of being labeled homeless and being able to access services that we have talked about, 

permanent housing. How do you weigh that in your clinical assessment for the well being of a child becoming an adult that has been 

either labeled—is there a real damage effect that we should be cognizant of? 

Dr. BASSUK. I think the way I would answer that is 40 percent 

of homeless kids are 6 years old or less. Their experience of the 

world is mediated to a large degree by their mom’s. They are not 

going to have necessarily a direct experience of that labeling. 

The teenagers tend to be humiliated and mortified about being 

homeless, many of the teenagers I have spoken to. In many of the 

shelter systems, they tend to age out after 12 or 13 years. They go 

with relatives, families that have split up. In certain States, they 

will not take boys who are 12 years old or older because of the domestic violence problem. 

Weighing it, I think it is a small price to pay for providing services to a kid who is going to have extreme difficulties because of 

this experience, and everything that surrounds it. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Thank you. I have a tendency to agree with you on 

that. I think the services and availability of services is critically 

important. Those ages, you cannot go back. 

Mr. Loza, you mentioned a project in West Virginia, in McDowell 

County, I believe, that was servicing rural homelessness. I understand you have a perspective on that. I know you addressed this 

in your comments. 

Flexibility seems to be the main thing that people in rural communities, places I represent, are asking for. How do you reflect on 

that? 

Mr. LOZA. We work with a few hundred organizations around the 

country. The testimony is based on what we are hearing from 

them. Rural areas suffer from a dearth of resources and access to 

resources. Flexibility becomes more important for them. 

For example, we heard about some of the great programs in Los 

Angeles. Los Angles has CDBG money. Many rural areas do not 

get CDBG money. Los Angeles has HOME money. Many rural 

areas do not get HOME money. Los Angeles is fortunate enough 

to have a trust fund. Many rural areas do not have access to a 

trust fund. 

The lack of resources and just the difficulty in counting and assessing the need and finding where the homeless are because they 

are so invisible makes it necessary for those local organizations to 

have the flexibility, where they are able to really deal with their 

own unique situation in their own area. 

For all those reasons, flexibility becomes very, very important in 

rural areas. 

Mrs. CAPITO. I have one final question. I know we had a presenter from the Catholic Charities in the last panel. 

This has been a great debate here on Capital Hill on the role of 

faith based organizations. Somebody who I have not asked a question, how do you perceive the role of faith based organizations in 

helping to address the problem of homelessness? Ms. Nilan? 

64

Ms. NILAN. Having run a shelter dependent on faith based communities, I think I can answer that. Without faith based communities, this Nation would have a far worse homelessness problem 

across the lands. 

That being said, I get very nervous when we start talking faith 

based because I do not think that should be the core of how the 

program is structured. It should be just the reason the volunteers 

are there. I think it is a very strained system. 

Volunteers who have been doing this for 20 years get really tired 

in the fact that our program in Aurora started 20-some years ago, 

and it was an emergency shelter, and ‘‘emergency’’ tends to mean 

short term, something that is going to get better. We have far exceeded any definition of ‘‘emergency.’’ 

Mrs. CAPITO. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Mr. Green? 

Mr. GREEN. I thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I will be brief. I 

thank each of you for your testimony today. It has been very insightful. 

Let me ask Ms. Gallo, you mentioned the maximum of 16 units 

per project and you expressed your concern. Tell me how would you 

have this language be modified? 

Ms. GALLO. I am not exactly sure how it got into current HUD 

policy. It is a policy. It is in the current applications where every 

single time we do a project, we are an affordable housing developer, 

so we do projects and we do permanent supportive housing 

projects, we have to justify every single time, proving market conditions. 

The suggestion I have is either if for some reason there is a desire to have a limit, that you raise that threshold to 25, 35 units, 

something that makes more sense for urban areas, so that urban 

areas do not always have to justify that number. 

I am aware of a project apparently in Louisiana where they did 

35 units. I am sure they must have had to justify how they needed 

to go above 16. 

The number needs to be higher—I do not know what that floor 

is—or eliminated, not have a floor at all, and not put that as a requirement. Let the local conditions of the particular community decide what is the appropriate size for a project. 

Most municipal governments have zoning regulations as well, 

which governs that. 

I would suggest that either there not be a number in there or 

raise that threshold substantially. It needs to make sense as to 

why we have to have a justification. 

Mr. GREEN. Let me see if Mr. Loza has a quick comment on it. 

Mr. LOZA. Again, getting back to the flexibility issue as Ms. 

Capito raised, the localities need to have some input into what 

floors or maximums are. The problem we have always faced in 

rural areas is that when you have those floors, they are automatically eliminated because we just do not have the scale or the population size that would make sense with floors on development size. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you. Moving to another topic quickly. We 

have a debate here about citizenship and resources being accorded 

persons who are not citizens. 

65

My assumption is that everyone would agree that at an emergency shelter, we should not require citizenship at an emergency 

shelter. If I am incorrect, please raise your hand, at an emergency 

shelter. Does anyone differ with that proposition? 

[No response] 

Mr. GREEN. If we start to require citizenship, and my suspicion 

is there will be someone who will think that we should, and I respect the position, I just want to get some intelligence from people 

who are actually on the ground, who know what is going on, what 

will be the impact of requiring citizenship before persons can receive shelter who are homeless? 

Would someone care to give me a statement on it, please, and I 

will leave it to you to decide. Ms. Burt? 

Ms. BURT. I am not on the ground, so to speak, but I think you 

will harm far more people who are citizens than who are not because one of the basic problems of people who are homeless is documentation, and if you start requiring for everybody who comes into 

an emergency shelter that they be able to prove that they are citizens or resident, permanent residents, I assume that is okay, then 

a lot of people are not going to come and a lot of people are going 

to fail and the burden on the programs themselves is going to be 

much increased. 

Mr. GREEN. Anyone else care to comment? Ms. Carter? 

Ms. CARTER. I think it also ties into faith based. When I was 

growing up, there was very little homelessness because we took 

care of each other. There was no term as ‘‘couch surfing’’ or ‘‘doubling up.’’ We doubled-up as families, because that is what was required of us. 

We were our brother’s keepers. It seems over time we have lost 

that. If we are truly a faith-based nation, then we must be our 

brother’s keepers and we cannot separate out those who have a 

card and those who do not have a card. 

People who are suffering are people who are suffering. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you. I yield back, Madam Chairwoman. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. Mrs. Biggert? 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I would like to 

submit, without objection, a letter from 44 organizations starting 

with Alliance for Excellence in Education down to Youth Service of 

America, and the 42 in between, concerning the definition of 

‘‘homelessness.’’ 

Chairwoman WATERS. Without objection, so ordered. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you. Madam Chairwoman, I would also 

like to note that there are five women down there and one man, 

but there are three women up here and one man. 

[Laughter] 

Mrs. BIGGERT. My first question is for Ms. Nilan. Some of the 

panelists today have suggested that homeless families should have 

their needs met through mainstream programs such as Section 8 

and TANF as opposed to the McKinney-Vento program. 

As you have traveled across the country, do you think these programs offer real opportunities for homeless families? 

Ms. NILAN. Thank you, Mrs. Biggert, for the opportunity to speak 

to that issue because I would have to say unequivocally that the 

families that I met across the country in non-urban areas are so 

66

not served by those programs, mainstream resources, that it is 

shameful. 

I have met families who are in motels or staying in churches or 

staying in their cars. I am sorry, but what is supposed to be out 

there is not working. For me to have the opportunity to come and 

say that to this respected committee today, I think you need to 

know that. 

If it were working, I would be here saying you know, what you 

are doing is good, let’s keep it up, maybe add to it. It is not. It is 

tragically not working at the expense of the children and the families and the teens that are not getting the help they need. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you. Ms. Gallo, would you have any comment on that? I know you had said we should not expand the definition of ‘‘homelessness’’ to include doubling up. We obviously need 

some alternatives. Would TANF— 

Ms. GALLO. I agree with Ms. Nilan. I think some of the existing 

systems, some of the existing programs in mainstream are not 

working. 

I am not advocating that homeless families not be served under 

the McKinney program at all. We serve several hundred children 

in our buildings, people who are homeless. 

I do support—we did not talk about the chronically homeless. I 

do support expanding that definition to include families, whether 

or not I believe the definition of ‘‘chronic’’ is a relevant definition, 

that is another matter, and that is in my written testimony. You 

can look at that. 

I do believe families should be served. The doubling up, the reason I say that there is another source, it is not necessarily because 

of TANF, it is that most of the families that we are talking about 

who have fallen into homelessness have fallen in because of economic circumstances. 

One of the things that I do not think is clear is that both legislation talk about a new program, prevention activities, which can pay 

for mortgage assistance, rental assistance, security deposits. I am 

not suggesting that—the program itself has not been defined. 

It could be 3 months of mortgage assistance. If a family does not 

have to pay 3 months of mortgage, that can allow them to save 

that money to last them throughout the rest of the year. 

I think that for Shelter + Care and SRO mod rehab, we should 

restrict that to the homeless, people who are actually homeless and 

on the streets and in camps, but for prevention activities, I think 

that is where it is most valuable to families, to take advantage of 

those types of activities to be funded, which is really new to the 

McKinney-Vento Act. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you. Dr. Burt, and maybe I will come back 

to Ms. Gallo, too, talking about this, but you mentioned that the 

proposed expansion of HUD’s definition of ‘‘homelessness’’ including 

all people living together, but to be clear, the U.S. Departments of 

Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice, use the definitions of ‘‘homeless’’ and include people in doubling-up situations 

and motel situations if the situation is not fixed, regular, and adequate due to specific circumstances. 

67

If I read that definition, it seems to me that we are not including 

two families choosing to live together on a long term basis because 

the rents are high. 

Do you read that differently than I do? 

Ms. BURT. No. I would agree with you, that you are not—that 

definition does not include voluntary long term arrangements, two 

sisters and their kids, rent an apartment together. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. You still think doubling up should not be— 

Ms. BURT. I would not in any way disagree with anybody about 

the current inadequacy of mainstream services in two different directions. I would totally agree that they do not reach homeless people and they do not serve them very well. I would totally agree that 

they do not have the resources to do it. 

I would totally agree that we need very much more—I would personally like to see the resources to eliminate every worse case 

housing need that stemmed from economic resource issues. 

I think there is a lot of homelessness and a lot of it on the family 

side that is economic in nature, and you can see it as the cost of 

housing goes up, so do the number of families that are specifically 

desperate on the subject of housing, much more than you see it on 

the single side. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. If I could just interrupt because I am out of time, 

just one question for everybody. 

When we were talking about the disabled and the disabled parent and finding housing, do you think the definition of that should 

be changed to include if you have a disabled child? Dr. Burt? Rather than just the parent, where they were kicked out of the apartment. 

Ms. BURT. That is actually rather hard. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. I just need a yes or no. 

Ms. BURT. Maybe. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Okay, maybe, too. Ms. Carter? 

Ms. CARTER. Yes. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Ms. Nilan? 

Ms. NILAN. Yes. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Dr. Bassuk? 

Dr. BASSUK. Yes. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Mr. Loza? 

Mr. LOZA. Yes. 

Ms. GALLO. No. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. It is close. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I 

yield back. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. That completes the 

hearing for today. I would like to thank all of you who have been 

so patient and who have been so informative and so helpful to us 

as we make decisions about this very important public policy. We 

appreciate your time, your work, and everything that you are 

doing. 

With that, the Chair notes that some members may have additional questions for this panel, which they may wish to submit in 

writing. Without objection, the hearing record will remain open for 

30 days for members to submit written questions to these witnesses, and to place their responses in the record. 

68

This panel is now dismissed and without objection, we submit for 

the record a statement from a group known as Family Promise. 

Thank you very much. This hearing is now adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 2:58 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

(69)

A P P E N D I X

October 16, 2007

70


39908.001
71


39908.002
72


39908.003
73


39908.004
74


39908.005
75


39908.006
76


39908.007
77


39908.008
78


39908.009
79


39908.010
80


39908.011
81


39908.012
82


39908.013
83


39908.014
84


39908.015
85


39908.016
86


39908.017
87


39908.018
88


39908.019
89


39908.020
90


39908.021
91


39908.022
92


39908.023
93


39908.024
94


39908.025
95


39908.026
96


39908.027
97


39908.028
98


39908.029
99


39908.030
100


39908.031
101


39908.032
102


39908.033
103


39908.034
104


39908.035
105


39908.036
106


39908.037
107


39908.038
108


39908.039
109


39908.040
110


39908.041
111


39908.042
112


39908.043
113


39908.044
114


39908.045
115


39908.046
116


39908.047
117


39908.048
118


39908.049
119


39908.050
120


39908.051
121


39908.052
122


39908.053
123


39908.054
124


39908.055
125


39908.056
126


39908.057
127


39908.058
128


39908.059
129


39908.060
130


39908.061
131


39908.062
132


39908.063
133


39908.064
134


39908.065
135


39908.066
136


39908.067
137


39908.068
138


39908.069
139


39908.070
140


39908.071
141


39908.072
142


39908.073
143


39908.074
144


39908.075
145


39908.076
146


39908.077
147


39908.078
148


39908.079
149


39908.080
150


39908.081
151


39908.082
152


39908.083
153


39908.084
154


39908.085
155


39908.086
156


39908.087
157


39908.088
158


39908.089
159


39908.090
160


39908.091
161


39908.092
162


39908.093
163


39908.094
164


39908.095
165


39908.096
166


39908.097
167


39908.098
168


39908.099
169


39908.100
170


39908.101
171


39908.102
172


39908.103
173


39908.104
174


39908.105
175


39908.106
176


39908.107
177


39908.108
178


39908.109
179


39908.110
180


39908.111
181


39908.112
182


39908.113
183


39908.114
184


39908.115
185


39908.116
186


39908.117
187


39908.118
188


39908.119
189


39908.120
190


39908.121
191


39908.122
192


39908.123
193


39908.124
194


39908.125
195


39908.126
196


39908.127
197


39908.128
198


39908.129
199


39908.130
200


39908.131
201


39908.132
202


39908.133
203


39908.134
204


39908.135
205


39908.136
206


39908.137
207


39908.138
208


39908.139
209


39908.140
210


39908.141
211


39908.142
212


39908.143
213


39908.148
214


39908.149
215


39908.150
216


39908.151
217


39908.152
218


39908.153
219


39908.154
220


39908.155
221


39908.156
222


39908.157
223


39908.158
224


39908.159