Homelessness prevention at HUDUSER

Well, there's not much emphasis in this report on the possibility of reducing homelessness by providing more inexpensive places to live -- but, whaddaya whaddaya, the Urban Institute folks were just doing a study, not renegotiating the federal appropriations bill -- so don't blame 'em if all they came up with was advice on how to help without spending too much.

Lead author on this report is the Urban Institute's Martha Burt, one of the more distinguished homelessness experts around. It makes interesting and intermittently helpful reading. Some observers (such as the intended beneficiaries) might disagree with favorable mentions of the "Homeless Management Information Systems" registration and tracking program, but probably those couldn't be avoided in a HUD-commissioned report. And it's a little eyebrow-raising that the report treats homelessness as a disease and responds with tools out of epidemiology. Illness can be a dangerous metaphor in the wrong hands -- it can imply that homeless people suffer from personal defects rather than economic pressures. Here, though, it seems squarely understood that the idea is not to improve individual character, but to pull households back from the tops of slippery slopes with relatively small amounts of money and genuinely useful in-kind aid. Hey, it's worth a read as these things go. Though if you can spend the same time working or paying to prevent one eviction, probably better to do that instead.