As Houstonians, we were quite excited to read this recent report about the number of homeless people residing in shelters or in public spaces in the Houston area dropping to 46 percent in the past four years!
“It’s incredible,” Marilyn Brown, president and CEO of the Coalition for the Homeless, told the Houston Chronicle. “When we see the result — that the number of homeless has been cut in half — we see we’ve gone from managing homelessness to ending it.”
The Coalition for the Homeless released the report during the week and it provided detailed figures collected from a point-in-time survey conducted in January.
The good news came just a week after Mayor Annise Parker announced the city had ended chronic veteran homelessness. Over the past three years, Houston partnered with a number of local groups to house 3,650 vets, according to a press release provided to The Huffington Post.
“Too often those that answered the call of service still find themselves struggling long after leaving the military,” Parker said in a statement. “Houston is there for our heroes, and just like on the battlefield, we will leave no one behind.”
The coalition credits its success in part to the Way Home — an action plan led by the Houston/Harris County Continuum of Care (COC). The COC has aimed to create permanent housing units and implement a coordinated intake, assessment and triage system for those in need, among other strategies.
As a whole, the U.S. has made significant progress in fighting homelessness, particularly amongst its veterans.
Chronic homelessness has declined by 10 percent over the past five years, and veteran homelessness has dropped by a third in the same time period, the Associated Press reported in February.
Any city struggling to house its residents should therefore look no further than Houston for a few pointers.
Source: Huffington Post
