Homeless census exposes vital needs
YOUR JAN. 6 editorial "Safe at home" brings welcome attention to issues of homelessness in Massachusetts. But no plan to combat homelessness will work without prevention strategies that keep at-risk families in their homes and prevent the expensive and traumatic crisis of homelessness in the first place. These interventions include landlord-tenant mediation, housing counseling, rental-financial assistance, housing court mediation, and case management.
Just as healthcare policy stresses illness prevention and health maintenance to avert expensive surgery and hospitalization, we can use preventive tactics to keep many high-risk families from falling into homelessness and entering the difficult shelter and housing placement system.
Individuals and families threatened with homelessness who receive prevention services are likely to maintain their housing at significant savings to everyone. A 2007 Boston Foundation/UMass-Boston study shows that a family's yearlong stay in a shelter costs $32,880, and hotel or motel placement is more than $100 a day. In contrast, the price of a 12-month prevention program ranges from $500 to $1,700, with 75 percent of all families and 91 percent of those receiving more intensive services staying in their homes for a year.
ROBERT M. COARD
President and CEO
Action for Boston
Community Development
Boston
THE MENINO administration's recent census of Boston's homeless population showed that there has been a big increase in family homelessness ("Number of homeless families rises for 3d straight year in city," City & Region, Jan. 5). Let us be mindful that most of the people in those families - and one of the largest and fastest-growing segments of the homeless population - are children.
In Massachusetts, depending on how homelessness is defined, by some measures there are as many as 20,000 homeless children over the course of a year, and by other measures 100,000 homeless children on any given day. No child deserves to be part of either statistic. Without a home, a child is robbed of childhood, with lifelong consequences for both the child and the broader community.
We agree with your editorial suggesting that resources must be invested in long-term housing solutions. However, homelessness won't end overnight. In the meantime, we must remember that the majority of the homeless people in the Commonwealth are children who need to be sheltered right now, today, and they need educational and therapeutic services to improve their long-term prospects for success in life.
SUE HEILMAN
Executive director
SUSAN WHITEHEAD
Chairwoman
Horizons for Homeless Children
Roxbury 