{"id":218,"date":"2008-08-01T12:26:13","date_gmt":"2008-08-01T12:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/castingstones\/2008\/08\/reduction-in-homelessness-let.html"},"modified":"2008-08-01T12:26:13","modified_gmt":"2008-08-01T12:26:13","slug":"reduction-in-homelessness-let","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/08\/reduction-in-homelessness-let.html","title":{"rendered":"Reduction in homelessness: Let us pause to praise good news"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The federal government has announced that the country has cut the number of &#8220;chronically homeless people&#8221; by approximately 30 percent between 2005 and 2007.  The actual numbers are a reduction from 175,914 to 123,833&#8211;52,081 real people actually moved from the &#8220;homeless&#8221; to the &#8220;housed.&#8221;<br \/>\nOfficials attribute the significant decline in chronically homeless people to a shift in federal policy embraced both by Congress and the Bush administration to focus local, state and federal resources on the &#8220;chronic homeless&#8221;&#8211;those suffering from mental illness, drug addiction, and physical disabilities.<br \/>\nThe new strategy, known as &#8220;Housing First,&#8221; has succeeded in making the most significant reduction in homelessness in more than a decade. Martha Burt, of New York&#8217;s Urban Institute, called the decline in chronic homelessness &#8220;nothing short of phenomenal.&#8221;<br \/>\nThat is good news, and we should applaud all of those responsible for the tremendous success of these new programs at all levels of government.<br \/>\nHowever, the bad news is that homelessness is still far too prevalent in our society. In a country as affluent as America, we should not rest until we have virtually eliminated homelessness among our citizens.<br \/>\nWe should draw encouragement from the success of the Housing First program to continue looking for government programs that <em>do<\/em> work and use them to address the remaining homeless in our population.<br \/>\nFor perhaps the only time in my memory, I&#8217;m going to quote affirmatively Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), the chair of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, who said that while this reduction in homelessness is &#8220;great news,&#8221; that as a nation &#8220;we cannot rest because there is much that remains to be done.&#8221;<br \/>\nWhile she is right, let us at least take a moment to praise good news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The federal government has announced that the country has cut the number of &#8220;chronically homeless people&#8221; by approximately 30 percent between 2005 and 2007. The actual numbers are a reduction from 175,914 to 123,833&#8211;52,081 real people actually moved from the &#8220;homeless&#8221; to the &#8220;housed.&#8221; Officials attribute the significant decline in chronically homeless people to a&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Reduction in homelessness: Let us pause to praise good news - Casting Stones<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/08\/reduction-in-homelessness-let.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Reduction in homelessness: Let us pause to praise good news - Casting Stones\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The federal government has announced that the country has cut the number of &#8220;chronically homeless people&#8221; by approximately 30 percent between 2005 and 2007. The actual numbers are a reduction from 175,914 to 123,833&#8211;52,081 real people actually moved from the &#8220;homeless&#8221; to the &#8220;housed.&#8221; Officials attribute the significant decline in chronically homeless people to a&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/08\/reduction-in-homelessness-let.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Casting Stones\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-08-01T12:26:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dr. Richard Land\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Reduction in homelessness: Let us pause to praise good news - Casting Stones","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/08\/reduction-in-homelessness-let.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Reduction in homelessness: Let us pause to praise good news - Casting Stones","og_description":"The federal government has announced that the country has cut the number of &#8220;chronically homeless people&#8221; by approximately 30 percent between 2005 and 2007. The actual numbers are a reduction from 175,914 to 123,833&#8211;52,081 real people actually moved from the &#8220;homeless&#8221; to the &#8220;housed.&#8221; Officials attribute the significant decline in chronically homeless people to a&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/08\/reduction-in-homelessness-let.html","og_site_name":"Casting Stones","article_published_time":"2008-08-01T12:26:13+00:00","author":"Dr. Richard Land","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/08\/reduction-in-homelessness-let.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/08\/reduction-in-homelessness-let.html","name":"Reduction in homelessness: Let us pause to praise good news - Casting Stones","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-08-01T12:26:13+00:00","dateModified":"2008-08-01T12:26:13+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/#\/schema\/person\/14f4e150e7d01410b8826256299d6429"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/08\/reduction-in-homelessness-let.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/08\/reduction-in-homelessness-let.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/2008\/08\/reduction-in-homelessness-let.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Reduction in homelessness: Let us pause to praise good news"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/","name":"Casting Stones","description":"Casting Stones","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/#\/schema\/person\/14f4e150e7d01410b8826256299d6429","name":"Dr. Richard Land","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/cbf\/cbf3406d76f8380ee6c84afe3132fdebx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/cbf\/cbf3406d76f8380ee6c84afe3132fdebx96.jpg","caption":"Dr. Richard Land"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/author\/jmartin"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/castingstones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}