Then I spoke to Philip Mangano, President Bush's homeless czar. Mangano is the force behind these 10 Year Plans, which he relentlessly criss-crosses the country promoting. To my surprise, many big-city mayors, who are mostly Democrats (like Newsom) and have few good things to say about the Bush administration (like Newsom) have really embraced Mangano and his message. After talking to Mangano on Friday, I can see why. He is so passionate about trying to end chronic homelessness that he burned through the batteries on two cell phones talking to me about it.
Mangano, a longtime homeless advocate from Boston, offers something of a third way on homeless policy. He seems to want to turn the conversation away from left- and right-wing ideologies and instead toward research and data. His main focus is the "chronic" homeless--the people, many with mental illness and substance abuse problems, who are most visible on the street. He cites studies that have shown their hidden costs to government: anywhere from $40,000 a year to well over $100,000 a year per homeless person, if you count all the hospital visits, police contacts and jail time. "Homelessness policy has been driven by anecdote, feeling, word of mouth and conjecture," Mangano says. "We're trying to put an end to that."
Mangano's preferred solution is a strategy called "housing first." It envisions that cities will spend less on temporary shelters, which Mangano argues are not good places for people with serious problems to get back on their feet. And it calls for putting more funding into apartments that people can move into from off the street, where they receive counseling and treatment in a more controlled setting. Studies of housing first pilots in New York and San Francisco have shown success rates of about 85 percent of participants staying housed.
Some liberals won't like Mangano's stance because he's mostly shuffling money and priorities, and doesn't have extra dollars to pump into affordable housing. And some conservatives who in the past have argued that homelessness is more a problem of substance abuse and mental illness than one of housing won't like it because Mangano argues that "housing itself has a therapeutic impact." Still other critics say that Mangano is pitting the needs of the single adult homeless against the families with children who turn up in shelters in disturbingly large numbers.
San Francisco, for better or worse, is shaping its policies very much in Mangano's mold. Mayor Newsom boasts that the number of homeless in San Francisco is down by 37 percent in two years. If that's true, it would be a remarkable feat.
Let's just say my cynicism is melting, if not my journalistic skepticism. It'll be good to see how this stuff works on the ground. I'll let you know what I find out.
