Aiding the Almost Homeless

The jury has yet to return a verdict in the Orange County trial of Diane Grue, a homeless woman who was arrested in Buena Park last November on a charge of “public camping” near some railroad tracks. The 66-year -old had refused the help of outreach workers, telling them “I ain’t moving.” Grue’s is not simple. But what’s clear is that officials in Orange County, like those in most communities across America, do not do nearly enough to prevent people like her from becoming homeless in the first place.

Buena Park, which in defiance of state mandates has no homeless shelter plan, and Orange County, which provides only 2,200 shelter beds for the 20,000 people who go homeless on its streets on any given night, share at least part of the blame for the homelessness problem in that area. There’s no excuse for the county’s failure to provide more beds through simple measures like opening its two “cold-weather” shelters year-round.

Also at fault, however, are perverse federal incentives that lavish money on public and private groups helping the already homeless but deny funding to programs that try to prevent homelessness in the first place.

As “Helping America’s Homeless,” a book just published by the Urban Institute, concludes, the central flaw in the nation’s homeless policies is that “you have to be homeless--not almost homeless--to receive help.”

In a July speech to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez vowed to redirect agency funding from homeless assistance services to housing development programs. Martinez said he would expand HUD’s emergency shelter grants, which fund local programs that help people facing eviction.

Such a change could help people like Diane Grue, who says she lives in motels until she is evicted mid-month when her Social Security checks run out. But Congress should proceed cautiously in dealing with a bill that Martinez and his agency are crafting. The measure would loosen the McKinney Act, landmark legislation passed in 1987 that restricts $1.2 billion in aid, allowing it to be used only for homeless shelter programs. If legislation is drafted carelessly or callously, the money could end up in homeownership programs that are more help to the middle class.

Nothing is easy about homelessness. Congress should be open to new and better ideas but also beware of letting money intended for the most impoverished slip away into programs where there is less need.