White House Proposes $50-Million Plan to Aid Mentally-Ill Homeless

White House officials on Friday unveiled a blueprint for helping America’s 200,000 mentally-ill homeless, but advocacy groups said President Bush had put only enough money behind it to help a dozen in each state.

Housing Secretary Jack Kemp and Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan told reporters that $50 million will be available in matching grants for 20 to 30 communities to provide housing for the mentally ill.

“We are targeting a segment of the homeless population that has been traditionally underserved, those who suffer mental illness and alcohol or drug addiction,” Sullivan said.

Kemp and Sullivan released the report, “Outcasts on Main Street,” at a rehabilitation center for the mentally ill called the Green Door. The renovated 19th-Century mansion is a club, job training school and housing office for about 200 mentally ill people, some of whom live in shelters.

They agreed that the money will be enough only to test the program. Kemp said that “$50 million is not enough, but it is an important start.”

Advocacy groups commended the White House’s task force on homelessness for its analysis of the problems of those homeless Americans who suffer from schizophrenia, manic-depression and other severe mental illnesses.

While they have been seeking such a comprehensive, flexible strategy to help the mentally ill for two decades, they said hundreds of millions of dollars are needed.

Joe Manes of the Mental Health Law Project said the report was a good blueprint, but left a vast gap between the ideas for action and the money to carry them out.

Manes said the $50 million in five-year grants will fund at most 750 single-person housing units. This is based on the estimated cost of $40,000 to provide a new housing unit for each person.