That said, I'm not naïve. It isn't a cure-all, "fix all" for everyone. Some may drop or be dropped out on the situation one way or another. Yet a fixed residence is a great precursor getting a leg up.

So much of our welfare system is directed towards getting society's failures to shape up, and very little of it works. If the goal was instead to provide more liveable cities for all residents, with no moral judgments about who was or wasn't deserving, it would be far more successful all round.

It really irritates me that we need an academic or a celebrity or journalist - someone already high up on the social scale - to deliver this "new" information. The people who need the housing have been saying it all along. The upper middle class "prophets" will now write books, earn speaker's fees, win awards, get fame and appreciation. Poor people will still be poor - they will be lucky if they are one of the ones that get housed out of the "new philosophy".

By the way, while I'm glad this guy is backing the "radical" idea, he's hardly the only one, even in academia, that has been pushing it.

Yeah, I've heard of this before for a while. I hope it finds some broader support.

I'm a strong supporter of this message. Stable housing absolutely does need to come first.

The problem is that the widespread search for "filters" and "prophets" of the poor transfers resources to those prophets, when those resources could actually be going to poor people who are capable of speaking for themselves. What if people were recruited off the street to do research. What if they had opportunities to submit proposals and lead projects?

Poor people often complain of needs and gaps, but they aren't invited to step up and help fill those gaps to give them a job. Instead the project is "sourced" to some contractor who is already "established" - the very source of their credibility means they are probably already well-to-do. But does it mean that the skills, and even the leadership potential, was lacking among the poor? The article itself notes the high functionality required to survive on the streets. The philosophy behind "housing first" is taking care of human needs in the right order. I believe offering people a chance to speak to their own needs - and get paid for the research, reports, and applications related to that - could prove to be part of the right order. What undercuts people is all the senseless, contradictory, time-sucking red tape they have to go through that only holds their place in the poverty system, and does nothing to lift them out of it.

To give you an example: for the last several years I have repeatedly complained to a variety of local employment programs, the Workforce Investment Act providers, and the local Chamber of Commerce that there is no online job source for local jobs. People who could only consider local work because of their disabilities were being forced to gather information from wide varieties of sources - but they didn't have time to continuously do that because of the barrage of bureaucratic B.S. that ruled the rest of their lives. Thus, they applied for less work than they could be getting. A partnership of local government, major employers, and nonprofits has at last backed this project - which makes me really happy. The sad thing, though, is that I had the technical skills to work on a project like that. With all my letters, which probably helped justify the project, no one thought to help lift me out of poverty by giving me a role in it.

I've applied for jobs at several recent start-ups that are premised on serving people who need welfare services. I'd be well-positioned as an expert if being a recipient of those services counted - but being a recipient is a "ding" even if your resume showcases the appropriate skills for the job. One job, which I was very excited to apply for, was building a database of local poverty resources: I would have been an epic goldmine had they hired me. They decided not to interview me because I don't have a cellphone. Because I'm poor. Nevermind that I could have bought a cellphone once I finally got a job. I'm sure the major "social entrepreneurship" foundation that is funding them has never noticed that despite their mission statement, they don't really know that much about the population they purport to "serve".

Whenever, I go into an institution of the "poverty bureaucracy", there are college students who have gotten research and advocacy jobs to "help the people". People get funding for their nonprofits and inspirational blogs, and then their "help" trickles down to the poor. I'm sure I'm not the only poor person who would rather be recognized for my abilities than "helped" in this way. I feel cheated by this system. And as a white person who has managed to avoid homelessness so far, I'm relatively well off. If I resent the upper middle class people making their pundit reputation on my plight, how must people who have already lost their hold on housing, and can't regain their footing at all, feel?

Sorry if this sounds like sour grapes, I really think it's fantastic that "housing first" is gaining support. It's just this longstanding inability to recognize that "the poor" are not lesser human beings, that they are an untapped talent pool, is an ongoing low level gripe of mine. People who have simply been treated unfairly in various ways, and suffered the knock-on effects, end up subjected to forms of torture while other people who got different opportunities write about them.

Through out the process.

Just another revolutionary thought.

I love the concept and hope it works out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First
the results have been in for a while.

What goes unsaid, and in my opinion, stands to benefit from these sort of promotional articles,
are the connected crooks who can benefit much more by being the contractor, developer and land owner
of facilities small enough to house less than 70 people but expensive enough to absorb $11 million taxpayer dollars.
While MUCH larger existing apartment complexes go up for auction with no bidders.
For $11 million dollars (and I was mortified to realize this has happened in more places than Fresno, leaving me to believe that the pattern is even less of an accident) you end up with single tenant rooms, expensive camera surveillance systems and something much more akin to a jail for a privileged few who appreciate the step up in their accommodations while magnitudes more continue living outdoors being harassed for not being the lucky winner of the limited, pricey lottery that a few benefit from.
There are major measures in place to seek out and house veterans. These people have to step over hundreds and hundreds of poor black and elderly folks while looking for the elusive unhoused vet.

Housing First WORKS. Its THE BEST solution.
It is being subsumed by the corruption of politicians and the greed of their big $ campaign supporters.

Nobody likes to hear about this. They want a happy story so badly to be true.
It can be. Just dont take these stories to mean the problem is solved.
Money is the problem, much more than it is the solution. There is never quite enough money to satiate the crooks and their puppets are happy to help. them.