Homeless No More: The Pathways to Housing Story

By, Jay Neugeboren
Posted August 1, 2008 | 04:00 PM (EST)

This past week, the Bush administration reported a most welcome 30 percent drop in the number of chronically homeless people living in the nation's streets and shelters. According to a front page article in The New York Times, it attributed "much of the decline to the 'housing first' strategy that has been promoted by the Bush administration and Congress, and increasingly adopted across the country."

What neither the Times nor the Bush administration reported is that the "housing first" strategy being adopted was originated, informed, and guided by a New York City based organization, Pathways to Housing, which pioneered this approach 15 years ago, and has been successfully implementing it ever since. The Bush administration has relied heavily on Pathways, whose program, until 4 years ago, was the only "housing first" program in the nation.

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