Helping People Off the Streets: Real Solutions to URBAN HOMELESSNESS.

• Author: HESS, ROBERT V.

"Policies must be put in place to guarantee a living wage--the minimum income needed for an individual or family to meet basic needs: housing, food, health care, transportation, and clothing."

ON A "CAMPUS" in Florida, 500 homeless men, each given just a blanket and pillow, spend an average of three months sleeping on the cement floor of an open-air pavilion in 4' x 6' "human parking spaces." In another Florida campus, participants who are willing to sleep on the floor of a large, 500-person outdoor pavilion for up to three months may be moved to the comfort of an indoor, 20-bed dormitory, where they can access needed support services.

The idea behind these campuses and others across the country is to remove as many homeless people as possible from downtown streets. Usually, these homeless campuses serve as large warehouse facilities--funded by local government, businesses, and private donations--where homeless persons can receive emergency shelter and, sometimes, support services. Often, the campuses are purposely tucked away from downtown.

Residents, business owners, and tourists, uncomfortable at the presence of the homeless, support moving them away from downtown. These feelings often apply to homeless resource centers such as soup kitchens and housing facilities. For years, organizations dedicated to assisting the less fortunate have fought a growing sense of NIMBY (not in my backyard) and anti-homelessness ordinances.

Numerous American cities--including New Orleans, La.; Orlando, Ft. Lauderdale, and Jacksonville, Fla.; San Antonio and Austin, Tex.; and Washington, D.C.--have developed campuses to address the problem of homelessness. The Center for Poverty Solutions, a nonprofit organization created in 1997 through a merger of the Maryland Food Committee and Action for the Homeless, undertook as one of its first projects a review of homeless campuses. The intent was to offer recommendations to Baltimore regarding the development of a campus for the city. What was found, however, by visiting homeless campuses in nine cities and looking at several award-winning and successful programs for the homeless, is that there are more effective ways to deal with this situation.

A "one-size-fits-all" campus model does not address the individual needs of the people most affected. Homeless campuses too often serve as revolving doors that warehouse poor people for a limited amount of time, then spin them back out onto the streets with no improvement in their ability to climb out of poverty. These facilities also report high incidences of vandalism and destruction of property that may be attributed in part to police depositing homeless persons at these sites against their will, as well as the dehumanizing conditions at some of these places.

Homeless campuses are just one of the latest attempts to solve...