Homelessness Law Blog

Each year, the Law Center recognizes outstanding contributions by individuals and organizations to the movement to end homelessness at its 13^th Annual McKinney-Vento Awards. This year’s event will be held tomorrow, Wednesday, Sept. 21 at the L’Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington, D.C.

For Rob Robinson, homelessness isn’t an abstraction; he’s lived it.  For almost three years, Robinson survived on the streets and in shelters in Miami and New York.  And since resolving his homelessness in 2007, he’s become a powerful voice for all those still suffering its indignities.  Working with Take Back the Land, Picture the Homeless, and the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative, Robinson has been a fierce advocate for the human right to housing. He has also been a leader in the Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights.  G.W. Rolle, a former honoree and Law Center board member,  will present Robinson with this year’s Personal Achievement Award.

Robinson’s work has been made possible, in part, by the U.S. Human Rights Fund (USHRF), this year’s Stewart B. McKinney Award winner.  Since its founding in 2005, USHRF has provided more than $20 million to nonprofits fighting for human rights here at home.  Making the Law Center one of its core grantees right from the start, USHRF has helped us change the way policymakers view homelessness.  In March 2011, following years of advocacy by the Law Center, Robinson, and others, the U.S. acknowledged for the first time that homelessness implicates its human rights obligations. Human Rights expert Dorothy Q. Thomas, who helped start the fund, will present the award.

Congressman Barney Frank, this year’s Bruce F. Vento Award winner, has fought time and again for legislation addressing and preventing homelessness.  In 1987, he helped pass the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.  And in recent years, his leadership has been critical to helping enact the Homelessness Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act, Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-housing Program (HPRP), and Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act (PTFA).  He was also a primary sponsor of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program and the Dodd-Frank Act. Susan Vento, the Congressman’s widow, will present Rep. Frank with this award.

This year’s Pro Bono Counsel Award will go to DLA Piper, which has provided thousands of hours of pro bono support to the Law Center across a range of issues, most prominently access to education for homeless children.  DLA Piper is taking a national leadership role on the Law Center’s new Project LEARN (Lawyers’ Education Access Resource Network) initiative.  The firm will provide training and technical assistance on homeless children’s education rights to families and school officials across the country. Suzanne Turner, pro bono partner at Dechert LLP, who received this honor last year, will present the award.

U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, originally scheduled to provide the evening’s keynote address, is unexpectedly unable to join us. In her stead, Assistant Secretary for Policy William Spriggs will join us to honor the efforts of those working to end homelessness in America.  Laura Evans, of Washington’s Fox 5 News, will also join us as the event’s mistress of ceremonies.

Thank you to all who have helped make this event possible. We’re so excited for what is certain to be an inspirational evening.

I woke up at 5:15 Wednesday morning in a downtown Seattle hotel.  As I struggled to get out of bed at such an early hour, I remembered why I was there – for an 8 a.m. meeting in Tacoma, with school personnel, government officials, and housing providers from across Pierce County, to talk about collaborating to provide housing and access to education for homeless children and youth and their families.  Early as it was, it was hard to justify even sleep as more important than this, so I got up and headed to the event.

When I got there I learned about lots of great things already going on in Pierce County, Washington, but I also learned that there was much work to be done.  Many people were meeting for the first time, even people who should already have been working together.  We heard about the challenges that everyone is facing right now – cuts to housing and school budgets, and school superintendents angry at rising homeless transportation costs, costs becoming more and more unpredictable as more families lose their homes and gas prices rise.

But there is a solution, and everyone’s starting to get it – it’s housing.  Kids in housing do better in school, and school districts don’t have to pay to put them on buses for hours a day.  One official noted yesterday that last year his district transported kids from four particular families at a cost of $4,000 a month.  He told the group that he could have housed all four families in apartments for less than that, except that “it just doesn’t work that way.”

It’s our job to make sure it does work that way going forward, and we will!  We’ll start by releasing a paper in the next few weeks, demonstrating that housing can cost less than school transportation, and we won’t stop until school districts, housing providers, and other key government policymakers are talking, across the country, about how to provide housing and education for all of this country’s homeless children and youth.

-Jeremy Rosen, Policy Director

Each day, as my computer shakes to life, I’m conscious that the work my colleagues do is vitally important.  But the enormity of homelessness and poverty can weigh on a person, and numb them to the good days.  I wonder when the day will come when homelessness is removed from the American picture, finding life only in personal and academic histories.

I remind myself, though, that history is but a string of small moments, bound by the fibers of perspective.

Each year, at our annual McKinney-Vento Awards, the Law Center pays tribute to those moments and to the people responsible for them.  This year, on October 14, at the L’Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington, D.C., we’re proud to welcome U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan as the keynote speaker at this evening dedicated to those working diligently to end homelessness.

That night, we’ll be proud to honor New York Times best-selling author Barbara Ehrenreich, whose work has demonstrated a deep commitment to raising awareness and promoting understanding about poverty and homelessness in the U.S. We’re also excited to honor Dechert LLP, a firm which has displayed an exemplary commitment to pro bono legal work. (more…)