Congress Passes the HEARTH Act, Obama Expected to Sign Today

by Shannon Moriarty · 2009-05-20 08:00:00 UTC
Topics:

Today, President Obama is expected to sign into law a comprehensive housing bill that reauthorizes HUD's McKinney-Vento program and contains the HEARTH Act.

The bill, S. 896, overwhelmingly passed by Congress yesterday, will significantly increase the support available for homeless families and individuals. While note perfect (which we'll delve into that in future posts), the bill acknowledges the realities of modern homelessness in America better than any homeless legislation to date.

Here are a few of the highlights of the bill:

  • Increases priority on homeless families with children, by providing new resources for rapid re-housing programs, designating funding to permanently house families, and ensuring that families are included in the chronic homelessness initiative.

  • Significantly increases resources to prevent homelessness for people who are at risk of homelessness, doubled up, living in hotels, or in other precarious housing situations through the Emergency Solutions Grant program.

  • Continues to provide incentives for developing permanent supportive housing and provides dedicated funding for permanent housing renewals.

  • Grants rural communities greater flexibility in utilizing McKinney funds.

  • Modestly expands the definition of homelessness to include people who are losing their housing in the next 14 days and who lack resources or support networks to obtain housing, as well as families and youth who are persistently unstable and lack independent housing and will continue to do so.

Stay tuned - we will track this until President Obama signs this bill into law!

Shannon Moriarty has worked in various homeless shelters and service organizations around the country. She is a graduate student studying housing and urban policy at Tufts University.
PREVIOUS STORY:
Support the Gulf Coast Civic Works Campaign
NEXT STORY:
Sallie Mae Blinks!

COMMENTS (0)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.