The Social Security Administration is an active participant in the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH). The mission of the USICH is to “coordinate the Federal response to homelessness and to create a national partnership at every level of government and with the private sector to reduce and end homelessness in the nation while maximizing the effectiveness of the Federal Government in contributing to the end of homelessness.” SSI can help a homeless person get housing by providing monthly payments, but a person does not necessarily need a home or an apartment to get SSI. Social Security can make arrangements to give SSI payments to the homeless. An organization can be a mail drop, allowing a homeless person to pick up important Social Security information at the organization’s address.
In 2010, USICH and its 19 member agencies launched Opening Doors, the nation’s first-ever comprehensive strategic plan to prevent and end homelessness. Progress in implementing strategic plans to end homelessness has occurred across the United States and within the federal government. There is an enormous amount of work happening at the federal level that contributes toward the vision of preventing and ending homelessness. According to the USICH, they have been working with the Departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Veterans Affairs (VA), Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Social Security Administration to get more permanent supportive housing under development through better use of mainstream resources for health care, services, and benefits. This partnership has extended to the philanthropic and the nonprofit communities. HUD and VA have made tremendous strides in working with local leaders to get homeless Veterans off the street through the HUD-VASH program. Youth homelessness is being tackled by listening to community leaders who are dealing directly with these issues and connecting our federal partners at the Departments of Education (ED), Labor, HHS, HUD, Justice, and the Social Security Administration with eachother. Homelessness continues to be a serious problem across the country, and the face of homelessness is shifting to suburban and rural areas. According to the most recently available HUD data, 649,917 individuals were identified on the streets or in shelters on a single night in January 2010. Significantly, this is only a one percent increase from 2009. Even in the midst of the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression, homelessness barely increased. Investments through the Recovery Act may have helped prevent more rapid increases in homelessness.
