Missions Research Assessment #5

Sources:
"Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program/HUD Information
Related to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009."
Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program. U.S. Department
of Housing and Urban Development, n.d. Web. 24 Nov. 2015.
"HPRP Requirements." HPRP Requirements. U.S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development, n.d. Web. 24 Nov. 2015.
Date:

November 24, 2015

Analysis:

As opposed to analyzing a single work done by someone, I will be

analyzing previous attempts to address homelessness in trying to solve it.
Now we know none of them worked because we obviously still have
homeless citizens in the United States but that doesnt mean that there
werent some good methods or ideas. In this assessment I am going to focus
on the pieces that caused them to fail.
I would like to address the shortcomings of the government, both state
and federal. From a financial standpoint, the biggest issue is that the money
is for the most part, one-time money. That means they build a program to
address homelessness but once the original money is gone, the program is
no longer in affect. A great federal example of that is the Recovery Act of
2009 in which the federal government invested $1.5 billion into Homeless
Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing. It was great at the time because it allowed
existing programs to spend money trying to find new ways to reach the

homeless but they had to stop because the money ran out. A smaller scale
example of this is the Safer Cities Initiative in Los Angeles County. L.A.
County spent $100 million on homeless effort most of which was one-time
money. It is estimated that anywhere from $53 million to $87 million went to
the police force to be used in an effort to control the people. The goal of the
initiative was to change the culture of Downtown L.A. by addressing the
homeless but it clearly has not worked. The homeless rates are up right now
in L.A. by 13%. These are just two examples of poor use of government
spending and there are many more.
Another issue concerning our Government is how they are addressing
homelessness with the little money they do spend. Our government and this
can be seen in the safer cities initiative, has turned it into a containment
process. They assume that out of sight, out of mind is the best way of
approaching it. When you really think about it from their point of view, doing
it this way is positive in all areas except the actual issue of homelessness.
Its cheaper, requires less work, and appeases the majority of the people.
Really theyre just being lazy. I plan to use the information I have gathered
through my research to go after government spending as a source of funds
for my original work and final product.