$1.33B in McKinney-Vento funds awarded

HUD has announced $1.33 billion in 2006 homeless assistance awards under the McKinney-Vento Act programs, consisting of the Emergency Shelter Grants and the Continuum of Care programs: Shelter Plus Care, SRO/Mod. Rehab, and the Supportive Housing Program. HUD announcements here and here. The figure is below last year's $1.4 billion, but the programs seem not so badly cut as some other forms of housing spending.

Odd how Congress finds it relatively easy to reduce rent subsidies such as Sec. 8 that keep very poor households out of homelessness, but it has a harder time cutting the McKinney-Vento rescue programs for people who already are homeless. True, it costs less tax money to place a person in supportive housing than to pay for the government services affecting that same person in a state of homelessness -- think of the jail, court, paramedic, hospital, and morgue expenses alone. But long-term homelessness inflicts lasting material and emotional damage in ways that cost time and money to heal if they can ever be healed at all. So wouldn't it save even more money to increase simple rent subsidies and keep more people from ever becoming homeless in the first place?