57% of the 270 billion dollars we spent on housing for those whose income met the conditions of the Federal government in receiving housing aid had incomes over $100,000.
The part of this picture that gets the most attention usually is how heavily weighted upper-income subsidies are toward homeownership at the expense of renting. But more important is that households making over $100,000 a year — who represent less than 1 percent of households with severe cost burdens — get about 57 percent of the benefits from the programs included in the above chart. Our housing policy isn’t just heavily biased against renters. It’s hugely regressive too.
$153,900,000,000 in housing aid went to those with a yearly income over $100,000.
During my day even in suburbia I see at least ten obviously homeless and can extrapolate that another hundred are housing insecure if not homeless as well as I pass them throughout the day.
So the percentage taken by those with income most will never dream of seeing leaves little more than 116 billion to be meted out to the rest of us that have far greater difficulty keeping a home.
Now I've been homeless repeatedly in my life. And we all can find other Kossacks that are homeless or are in that horrid position of having to beg online to keep the measly roof over their head.
Yet people that have incomes that far exceed the cost of long term hotels with a comfortable margin are the ones getting a share that far out weighs the risk of ever facing homelessness. The lions share is an apt term as those of us that have been homeless know the fear of predation.
This is sickening.
Here is a report by the Gates Foundation:
Ending Family Homelessness
What Does This Research Tell Us About How to Redesign Homeless Service Systems?
These typologies indicate that homeless service resources are not being efficiently used to end homelessness. There is a mismatch between resources and need, with the highest-cost interventions going to a subset of families in transitional housing who often have the fewest barriers to housing, while minimal help is provided to all other families, including the subset of families with the greatest needs. We can, and must, do better. We can achieve better results by being more strategic about how we use homeless service resources.
The following observations can help to shape a redesigned system:
Temporarily Homeless families already exit homelessness relatively quickly with little help from the homeless service system to find or pay for new housing. Homeless service systems can be redesigned to provide these families the upfront assistance they need to access new housing. Rapid re-housing assistance can dramatically reduce the amount of time families spend in homelessness by providing housing search assistance, some upfront rental assistance, and transitional case management services.
Long Stayers typically receive a rich array of services and deep rent subsidies for up to two years in transitional housing programs. The group selected for this intervention frequently includes those families with the fewest barriers and the greatest assets, by the depressed standards of homeless families. Most of the families receiving transitional housing can be more effectively helped to exit homelessness with rapid re- housing assistance. By reducing reliance on this expensive intervention, communities can generate savings that can be reallocated to help a larger number of families exit homelessness with rapid re-housing assistance
Episodically Homeless families, a small group with the most severe problems, experience multiple episodes of homelessness. They repeatedly fall through the cracks of the homeless service system without ever accessing the help they need to stabilize in permanent housing. Communities can help these families avoid ongoing housing instability by carefully targeting intensive housing and service interventions to this group.
In the past decade, there have been a number of communities that have adopted a more planned, systemic response that uses the data described above to design and scale a coordinated array of interventions calculated to shrink the number of families experiencing homelessness. Hennepin County, MN and Columbus, OH were among the first to develop a system-wide strategy to manage their local homeless service resources. Other communities that have made great strides include Mercer County, NJ, Salt Lake City, UT, Grand Rapids, MI, and Memphis, TN. They now have a coordinated assessment process to match families with the level of assistance they need to exit homelessness, while avoiding spending more than is necessary in order to serve more families.