From Andy Heben, whose book Tent City Urbanism: From Self-Organized Camps to Tiny House Villages is now available at Tsunami Books and other fine stores: There are some models for converting vacant housing into space for the homeless. Under the Title V program (part of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act), the federal government requires that empty or underused properties that it owns be made available to homelessness advocacy organizations. Every week, a list of the available properties are printed up in the Federal Register. Non-profits (along with state and local agencies) can submit a proposal for how theyd like to use the space. The only rule: it must benefit the homeless. If the Department of Health and Human Services approves the application (they have 25 days to do so), the property is transferred. Between 1988 and 2003, 91 such properties (worth some $105.4 million) were handed over to help the homeless. One of them, in Little Rock, Arkansas, was a former VA hospital converted into an apartment complex for homeless families. The facility also offers job training and child care includes over 40 units of housing. The cost of real property can be prohibitive to any homeless service provider, says Tristia Bauman, the housing attorney for National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. With this program, [organizations] are able to engage in work they might not otherwise have been able to do. businessinsider/heres-why-we-cant-just-put-homeless-families-in-foreclosed-homes-2012-6#ixzz39pp97VhS
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 21:49:38 +0000
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