Advocates Make the Case in March 20 Daily News Op-ed
In a March 30, 2012 Daily News op-ed, Leonard N. Stern and Ralph da Costa Nunez make the case for a “New Path” to ending family homelessness. As they wrote the piece, over 1.59 million Americans spent at least one night in homeless shelters in 2010 and many have experienced homelessness before and will likely continue to in the future – 50% of homeless families cycle in and out of the shelter system.
Leonard N. Stern, CEO of the Hartz Group and founder and chairman of Homes for the Homeless, and Ralph da Costa Nunez, president of the Institute for Children, Poverty, and Homelessness (ICPH), focus on how we can better serve family homelessness.
Stern and da Costa Nunez call for:
- An end to a system that has families cycling in and out of the shelter system – an the increasing expense of the public;
- Different shelter types targeted for the varying needs of families;
- New, specialized Tier III shelters providing a full range of supportive services – including job training, education, and mental-health and domestic-violence counseling – to those families facing the greatest barriers to stability; and
- Immediately moving families whose only barrier is lack of affordable housing into permanent housing.
And going one step further, instead of only offering chronically homeless families, a spot in these new, specialized shelters, could apartments using the Housing First model also be offered to families who may not want to move into yet another shelter?
Click here to read the Daily News op-ed.
Click here for full “A New Path” report available on the ICPH website.
