Mayor Williams Releases Draft Plan to End Homelessness by 2014

(Washington, DC) Mayor Anthony A. Williams today released for public input a draft proposal to end homelessness by 2014. At the announcement, Mayor Williams was joined by Philip F. Mangano, Executive Director of the US Interagency Council on Homelessness, the federal agency responsible for coordinating the nation's response to reduce and end homelessness.

“As homelessness is a complex and sensitive issue, there may be aspects of this draft plan or the public discussion that follows that will be controversial,” said Mayor Williams.  “That’s OK.  We can’t expect that finding solutions will be easy.  We can expect, in the end, to develop effective and workable solutions to this critical issue.”

Homeless No More, drafted by the Mayor’s Policy Academy Team (MPACT), focuses on moving homeless residents into permanent housing as quickly as possible and providing social services to help resolve the issues that caused them to be homeless.  

The draft plan is based on the recommendations of a broad spectrum of city and business leaders, homeless providers and advocates, and homeless people who worked together for more than a year on committees that were formed under the Mayor’s “Focus Group on Access to Housing for Homeless and Very Low Income City Residents.”  The city was selected to participate in a federally-funded policy academy and the resultant multi-disciplinary MPACT team used the committees’ recommendations as the basis of the plan.

“Today is a good day in the nation's capital,” said Mangano. “Washington, DC shows itself to be a compassionate and pragmatic city as it joins many other cities across our great country committed to ending the national disgrace of chronic homelessness in the next decade. Washington, DC partners with cities all across our country in moving forward with