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Quote:Included in President Donald Trump’s proposed $6 billion cut to the Department of Housing and Urban Development is the elimination of a small but vital program that has been a crucial force in driving down the U.S. homeless population.
The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) has a scheduled sunset date of October 2017 and, for the first time since the Clinton administration, it may not be reauthorized. First created in 1987, USICH’s 19 government member agencies coordinate 23 federal programsto combat homelessness. With an operating budget of $3.5 million a year, the program collaborates with both federal and local government and the private sector to help provide the nation’s homeless with food, shelter, health care, and jobs.
In 2010, the program launched “Opening Doors,” a comprehensive plan that focuses on leadership, collaboration, and civic engagement; access to stable and affordable housing; economic security; health and stability; and the homelessness crisis response system. Five years after the plan was launched, nationwide homelessness had decreased by 14 percent, or 87,000 individuals (some 550,000 people in the United States do not have a home as of 2016). Homelessness among veterans decreased by 47 percent, chronic homelessness by 27 percent, and family homelessness by 23 percent.
The Urban Institute interviewed more than 50 national and local homelessness advocates, most of whom attributed the progress to USICH. Urban Institute research associate Sarah Gillespie told the Prospect that referred to USICH’s Opening Doors plan as a “leader” in the fight to end homelessness.
Trump’s Budget Would Eliminate Agency Tasked with Ending Homelessness
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Quote:The list of areas at risk of being slashed is long and disturbing. It includes affordable housing schemes, women’s health, jobs training and disability benefits. It also targets one of the most fundamental forms of assistance for those in urgent need – nutrition-based programmes. As the Illinois-based Shriver Centre points out, programmes such as the supplemental nutrition assistance programme (Snap) – formerly food stamps, which are targeted for a whopping 20% cut over a decade – and earned income tax credits (also on the chopping block) are the mainstays of a safety net helping millions of families annually. Yet they are directly in the firing line. These programmes don’t just help to alleviate the immediate need that sends people to food banks. The Shriver Centre points out that the evidence shows they lead to “long term gains” that promote social mobility.
More than 40 million Americans use food banks, about one in eight people, and this includes 13 million children. In large part, this reliance on food banks is because Snap and other programmes have never been sufficient. Scott Allard, a political scientist at the Brookings Institution in Washington and author of the new book Places in Need: The Changing Geography of Poverty, says the notion advocated by Donald Trump and Republican politicians that the slack from more cuts to federal anti-poverty programmes would be picked up by private charities and food banks is “not a reality”. Allard argues that if cuts go ahead there will be “irreparable harm to a safety net that already struggles to meet the needs of working poor families”.
Food poverty is the ‘new normal’ in the UK. We adopted it from the States | Society | The Guardian
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