Word: homelessness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Polis, who has served for six years on the Colorado State Board of Education and founded schools both for the homeless and for immigrants, has received endorsements from a number of environmentalists and prominent local politicians. But he faces two tough opponents: Joan Fitz-Gerald, who has been in the Colorado state senate since 2000, and Will Shafroth, former executive director of the Colorado Conservation Trust, who has been endorsed by the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News. In one of the most liberal districts in the state, the campaign has focused primarily on the economy, Iraq, the environment...
...government by saying that the problem is still large and still needs attention. And even HUD secretary Steve Preston sounded a note of caution, saying in a release on Tuesday that there is a "long way to go to find a more lasting solution for those struggling with homelessness every day." Where the two sides disagree is whether a family of four who lost their home to the bank and is now couch-surfing with relatives should be considered homeless...
...keep these vulnerable families out of the count? It's partially about the power of positive thinking. The number crunchers leading the federal fight believe that as long as Americans continue to perceive homelessness as an implacable problem, they'll never muster the will to help. But if the government can show that the numbers are actually relatively small - like the 125,000 chronic homeless they are now counting - then the public might just be up for tackling the issue...
Culhane says he's against expanding the HUD definition of homelessness. "There's a very large housing problem in this country," he says. "But shoehorning new people into the homeless category isn't going to make a hill of beans of difference. It's only going to dilute what we're doing." He points to the U.S. budget for homelessness, which is just $1.5 billion a year. That's barely enough to help fund the Housing First push; it's not going to bail out families caught up in the foreclosure crisis...
...Stoops isn't wrong. If $1.5 billion isn't enough to help the victims of foreclosure as well as the people pushing shopping carts or sleeping in shelters, then the long-term solution doesn't lie in redefining who is actually homeless until there is a small enough number to be served by the budget. The answer lies in getting enough funding to help all of those who are, particularly in this brutal economic cycle, facing the prospect of having a job and a family but no home. Enough money to meet the challenge: that would be truly good news...