De-mythtifying homelessness

In the cozy living room of Civic House, about a dozen students and faculty members sat down Friday for a discussion of one of the nation's most difficult problems: the homeless. Social Work Professor Dennis Culhane delivered the talk, which was presented as part of Civic House's "Service and Advocacy Training Series." Culhane, who has spent 18 years studying homelessness -- primarily in New York City and Philadelphia -- discussed the composition of the homeless population, the public policy for dealing with the problem and the changes in policy he hopes to see. "Most people who are homeless don't look homeless," Culhane said, deliberately refuting the popular stereotype of an unkempt homeless individual. He went on to show, using statistics from the New York and Philadelphia shelter systems, that one-third of homeless people are employed, usually in part-time or temporary positions and that most try to keep a normal appearance in the hopes of getting out of the shelters. He also rejected the notion that homeless people are old men who have been on the streets for their entire lives. In the case of the elderly, he said, "the stereotype is really the exception" because senior citizens actually face the lowest risk of becoming homeless in the population. Finally, his studies showed that approximately 87 percent of those who stayed in shelters were only transitionally homeless, meaning they usually stayed only once in a five-year period for about 57 days and then never returned. "[Culhane] provided a lot of information on the issue of homelessness to give us a more complex understanding.... For those of us working with homelessness and poverty, it's important to take a quantitative look at what we're doing to see if we're really addressing the problem," Civic House Associate Director Heather Kilmer said. A fundamental problem with the shelter system, however, is that almost half the money for these residences is spent on the chronically homeless, a group that makes up only 10 percent of the population. That means a great deal of money is being spent on about 900 people who spend over 650 days per visit in an institution meant specifically for short-term housing, Culhane said. As a solution, Culhane believes more money should be put into building housing for the homeless. He cited a study showing that providing 5,000 units of housing for homeless AIDS and mentally ill patients has led to substantial long-term savings, which includes reduced city and state hospital use. Culhane said he hopes these statistics can be used to encourage policymakers to change their stance on homelessness. Right now, he added, government views its success in terms of the number of shelters it builds, but he believes that a real achievement would be shutting some down because they were no longer needed. Several of the students who attended the talk work with Civic House. "I thought he was excellent. I heard a lot of key things about the future of policy and homelessness," said College senior Kristina Rencic, a member of the Civic House Associates Coalition.