The United States Interagency Council for Homelessness (UCISH) just finished its announcement of the Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness, Opening Doors. On behalf of the President, four Cabinet members went on record pledging to end chronic homelessness in 5 years.
This is an inspiring, ambitious and noble challenge that our country has now taken up. As each of the Cabinet secretaries addressed, it’s not something any individual agency – or even the entire federal government, for that matter – can achieve on its own. To rout out economic hopelessness, we “will need to leverage all of the assets we have at the Federal, state and local levels,” as U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius put it. NHC and all of our members look forward to pooling our resources on behalf of this effort. It’s going to take everything we’ve got.
We’re reading through the 75 page plan now, so stay tuned for more information and analysis in the next few days.