Homes for the Homeless

In September of this year, the New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki chronicled the success of a program in Utah to address chronic homelessness in his column, Home Free?

With a chronic homeless population hovering at 2000, Utah made a decision to try a new approach called “Housing First.”  It turns out that finding stable housing for the homeless costs a lot less than all the services and bandaids put on the homelessness problem.  It’s a solution that is gaining a bi-partisan following.  Costs less.  It works. It is a humane response to a human tragedy.  Everyone can get behind that.

Piedmont Housing is now partnering with the the Thomas Jefferson Coalition for the Homeless to put this solution into action here locally.  We have housing, they have homeless persons.  When we can make it work, we do.  Getting a homeless vet who had been sleeping under bridges into a safe, warm apartment makes our day around here, and we’d like to believe it makes his day a bit better as well. — ktk

P.S. I just found a great video about how Houston, TX is addressing this issue. Housing First is an idea whose time has truly come.