Lessons from Katrina may aid needy Utahns

Out of tragedy often comes good, and state and national officials hope the recent response to hurricane victims will translate into innovative, long-term solutions to battling homelessness in the United States.

"We can reach into this disaster and bring out something that is redemptive in the lives of those who have been chronically homeless," said Philip Mangano, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.

Displaced Gulf Coast residents received a one-stop approach to services, with a focus of getting them into housing as quickly as possible. It's a model that could be extended to the historically homeless, rather than just the newly homeless, Mangano said.

Earlier Wednesday, in his keynote address at the state's second annual homeless summit, Mangano praised Utah's efforts to end chronic homelessness.

"The model of Utah has been an important ingredient in helping other states think about how they can get their plan moving forward and what direction they should take," he said.

The state has adopted a 10-year plan to end chronic homelessness. Salt Lake County is set to unveil its plan today.

The founder of a revolutionary New York-based approach to ending homelessness agreed that the lessons learned from Katrina should be expanded to address the larger problem.

"What we do with hurricanes when people are suddenly homeless, we move quickly. We don't make housing as a condition of anything," said Sam Tsemberis of Pathways to Housing.

"If we could somehow get people to understand that homelessness is a hurricane . . . we would be out of this very quickly," he said.

Utah's response in welcoming nearly 600 hurricane evacuees was just a "warm-up for what needs to come," said Gordon Walker, director of the state's Division of Housing and Community Development.

"We responded to a disaster, but we still have a disaster with us," Walker said. "We have the exact same issues, on a day-to-day basis, that we are going to solve and end."

Around the country, plans tackling chronic homelessness — defined as being homeless for more than one year or four times over a three-year period — take a "housing-first" approach, rather than just throwing services at the homeless or treating housing as a reward.

With more than 40,000 programs across the country dedicated to the homeless, Mangano said, something new needs to be done.

"We're serving homeless people endlessly, but not ending their homelessness," he said. "It's no longer managing or maintenancing or accommodating. It's ending."