Washington National Cathedral

Dean Lloyd: Good morning and welcome to the Sunday Forum, where week by week we carry on an ongoing conversation about the relationship between faith and public life. Well, the cold weather is coming, and one of the effects it always has is we begin to see and have real concerns about a particular population in out midst, that of the homeless. Phil Mangano has dedicated his life to fighting and ending homelessness. He is executive director the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, which he will tell us about in just a minute. And he is a “homelessness abolitionist,” who believes we can end this national disgrace once and for all. And he has been billed to the Cathedral congregation as someone who will tell us today how to put it permanently to an end. Phil’s an old friend from Boston days, feels wonderful to have you back with us today.

Mr. Mangano: Well I’m so glad to be here at the Cathedral. Thank you.

Dean Lloyd: You bet. Well, let’s start from the beginning. How does a man find his way into making homelessness his life’s work? I know you didn’t start out this way. You were off in a very different direction out in Los Angeles.

Mr. Mangano: Actually I was working in the music industry in Los Angeles, running a booking agency and a management company. And actually I would say my life in this area began in a movie theater. I was walking through Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We saw a film that was by Franco Zefirelli. It didn’t matter what the title or the subject of the film was, we were just happy to go to a Zefirelli film.

We walked in. I had been prepared, I think, all my life to go see that film unknowingly. I had fallen in love with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table as a very young boy, and loved the story of Robin Hood and of course those themes of chivalry and taking care of the poor. They were very much ingrained in me as was in my Christian childhood reading, of course, the Gospels.

But when I entered that movie theater, it turned out to be a movie about the early life of St. Francis of Assisi. I must say I went into that movie theater thinking one way about my life, and I came out of that movie theater thinking a completely different way. I had a completely different path. I learned in that movie that you could dedicate your life completely to the service of the poor.

I had known about compassion and charity, but I had never known about companionship, the notion of being together in the breaking of bread in complete companionship with the poorest. So it was there in that movie theater that my life went literally from one direction to another.

Dean Lloyd: Many of us probably remember that film. It was Brother Sun, Sister Moon, and plenty of us probably went to see that Zefirelli film. But we didn’t come out converted to a cause the way you did. What was it about the movie? Was it an amazing moment when all of a sudden Francis starts taking off all of his clothes in front of his father? What struck you? What captivated you there?

Mr. Mangano: Again I think it was the notion that you could live a life in companionship. I had heard a lecture by Robert Coles at Harvard, who’s the great Pulitzer prize–winning lecturer and writer. He taught a couple of courses at Harvard—the literature of Christian reflection, the literature of social reflection—and he once gave a lecture, which I think he repeated every year, specifically on the notion of companionship, which is a word that comes from the Old French “come with” and pain, bread.

And the whole notion of being together in the breaking of bread that is you are actually sitting at the table with the poorest of the poor. You leave behind a life of other things, of other concerns, and as much as possible, you try to focus on a life of being other-centered. Now, I have a long way to go in my own life in terms of being completely other-centered, but it was certainly inspirational to see that that was a possibility. I didn’t grow up Roman Catholic, so actually my first introduction to saints other than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and Paul was actually in that film. So I think I was very much impacted by that whole idea of sainthood as it related to being a servant of the poorest of the poor. So what touched me, I think was... my heart was prepared for that, again, by my youth.

Dean Lloyd: Youthfulness in response to a new vision of how to live.

Mr. Mangano: Exactly.

Dean Lloyd: You went to seminary from there for awhile.

Mr. Mangano: I did.

Dean Lloyd: Even considered becoming a Franciscan monk.

Mr. Mangano: I did. Actually, I was so inspired by that movie, I moved back to Boston. I wanted to be with the poorest of the poor, and I thought I would become a Franciscan, so I started going for instruction. And the priest who was giving me instruction, in about the fourth session of instruction, he couldn’t quite figure out why this person who worked in the music industry would be interested in becoming a Franciscan. So in the fourth time of instruction he said, well you’ve been coming here to the shrine. You’ve noticed the Franciscans, they have the brown robe, and they have the three knots in the rope tied around them. I said, I do. He said, well, those three knots represent the vows that Franciscans take.

So I said, what are those? He said, poverty, chastity and obedience. I thought, poverty, chastity... And I said to him would one for three be good enough to become a Franciscan? (laughter) That’s exactly what he did: he laughed a bit and said no.

But it was literally at that session with that priest that he told me that they were starting the first breadline in Boston since the Great Depression. They had so many people coming to the doors of the cath—of the shrine that they decided that they would create a breadline. And so I thought, maybe I can’t get to the three for three, but I could certainly start volunteering on the breadline. And that certainly was a reflection, certainly a mirror of what St. Francis was about. It would afford me that opportunity to be a companion and being with homeless people everyday.

Dean Lloyd: And so did your work with the homeless really move out from that breadline experience and working with homelessness agencies from there?

Mr. Mangano: Yeah. I volunteered on that breadline for three years and also went to the evening meal programs and volunteered there. And what was important, I think, at that breadline was meeting homeless people and really fulfilling that notion of companionship.

I got to know them. There weren’t enough shelter beds in Boston, so I would often take homeless people to my little apartment in the North end of Boston and they would stay there. But was particularly tragic was, though we had rolled up our sleeves on the issue, the line grew and grew. From the first time we went out, there were about fifty people, but over the years it grew to a hundred, 150, then 250 people waiting for sandwiches on that breadline. And of course, when that happens, we recognize that something is amiss.

Because, of course, homelessness isn’t like energy or high tech. It’s not a growth industry. It’s one of those things that we want to diminish and if it’s growing, it’s in the wrong direction. So that began to inform some of the thinking that I was doing about homelessness.

Dean Lloyd: Having worked at this for quite a lot of years, you’ve come to calling yourself an abolitionist of homelessness: not someone trying to reduce it or stop it for a moment, but to end it permanently. Tell us about how you landed on this notion of abolition.

Mr. Mangano: Sure. Well, I appreciate that question, because in my time in Boston, I got to know Cornel West, that great metaphysician and theologian. He’s kind of a free agent in the Ivy League, I think as you know. He goes from school to school there, depending on the highest bidder and his interests. But in my conversations with Cornel West, one of the things that he talked about was that if you’re taking action on a social issue, if you’re part of that unfolding of social justice and you’ve committed your life to that, you need to place yourself in the longer story of the unfolding of justice in our country.

You shouldn’t understand what you’re doing to be individual or singular, you need to understand it in the unfolding story. It was very akin, to me, of what Dr. King said, when he had that great insight, literally almost channeling a great abolitionist preacher in Boston, Reverend Beecher, who taught us, as Dr. King later taught us that the long moral arc of history, the long moral arc of the American experience, bends toward justice. It’s a remarkable insight because I think, if we look on it at any day, any week, even any year, it may not look like that moral arc is bending toward justice.

But from the perspective of Dr. King, when he looked back at the work of the abolitionists and the suffragists and his own civil rights activists, he understood that that unfolding arc bent toward justice. So it was easy to take Cornel West’s advice of placing ourselves in a longer story when we understood that that story could be the story of unfolding justice, and I happen to love the abolitionists. I love William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman and others of the abolitionists.

And of course they gave themselves to a cause that seemed very foolish and naïve in their own time, that they could literally bring an end to something that was six thousand years in human history, two hundred years in our own country, and was reified in our constitution. People thought they were incredibly naïve and foolish to think that they could end that. But in fact they did, and that’s certainly inspirational to those of us who have committed our lives on this issue of homelessness. And so I very much understand the work that we did.

The long history, the long story that we’re a part of is that unfolding story of justice in our country, and the abolitionists are quite a great set of ancestors to have in that work.

Dean Lloyd: Tell us a little bit about the problem of homelessness in America. Kind of overview of how we got here and what’s going on. A lot of the story is that homelessness starting spiking in the early Eighties. What was that all about? What’s your sense of what the causes of this are? And then what are you beginning to think of as the right kind of response to it?

Mr. Mangano: Sure. There are, of course, lots of reasons why people fall into homelessness. Sometimes they make bad personal decisions. And just as often we make bad public policy decisions, and when those two come into collision, people literally fall into the long misery of homelessness. And that’s what it is.

We needn’t idealize or romanticize the lives of homeless people. It is a long misery. One need only spend time with our homeless neighbors to understand that. So while there are many roads into homelessness. And unfortunately, in our nation, this very night about 670,000 Americans will be experiencing homelessness, living on our streets, living in our shelters, living in abandon buildings. And over the course of this year, more than two million Americans will come to experience homelessness, and we would certainly all agree that that’s a human tragedy.

That’s something that is dissonant, I think, with what we think of when we think of our country and what this country means and has to offer to people. And I think, while there are many roads in to homelessness, I think where our policy is right now is, there is only one road out of homelessness.

And that one road out is the very thing that homeless people ask for when we ask homeless people what they want. And one of the things I think we’ve been able to do in the last six years is really focus on what the consumer is interested in.

And when we ask the consumer—when we ask homeless people themselves—they never ask for a pill or a program or a protocol, ever.

They ask for one thing—a place. A place to live. And so our work is, no matter how many roads into homelessness there are, whether it’s economics or addictions or mental illness or domestic violence or now, of course, the great specter of difficulty economically—no matter how many roads there are in, the only road out is a place to live, and that’s what the customer, that is what our homeless neighbor is asking for. And so that’s much more what our policy is about.

Dean Lloyd: All of those different causes, which are the chief ones? What’s the main driver for homelessness? How do people in America most commonly end up there?

Mr. Mangano: Well, I think historically, the failure of de-institutionalization... you may remember, back a number of years ago, we saw documentaries about the horrific conditions in the back wards of mental institutions in our country. And we decided as a nation we would bring an end to that wrong, to that human misery that was going on in those back wards. And actually it was President Kennedy who signed into law and regulation our efforts to deinstitutionalize folk, and so we did.

Around the country we began a long effort to move people out of the back wards into the community, and it was a three-legged stool that were looking for in the community: a place to live, the medications that allowed people to live stably and securely in the community, and community services to support people.

We delivered unfortunately on only two legs of that stool, and a two-legged stool doesn’t stand. We didn’t provide those community services. So when we first rolled up our sleeves in contemporary homelessness in this country in the late Seventies and early Eighties, 80s it was really about the victims of a failed policy. That’s why we rightly say, sometimes it’s bad decisions, but it is as often bad public policy. And part of the work that we’ve done for the last forty years is remedying the failure of that de-institutionalization.

Added to those numbers, though, in subsequent years, and certainly right now, are people who are suffering just from the difficulties of the economy. Right now, as you know, we have twin tornadoes headed at people. We have a significant amount of job loss in our country, and we have the mortgage foreclosure crisis. Well, that combination has moved some families to the precipice of homelessness, and some people have fallen in. So we need to be vigilant about that, for certain, but there are again a number of different ways people get in.

And of course domestic violence is another way in which young families fall into homelessness. But again, I think the efforts now are to look at that situation and to move from simply a social service frame, where we saw homeless people and we wondered how to serve them, to now, for the last seven years, bringing a business frame, an economic frame into place.

When we look through the lens of the business frame and we see homelessness, we wonder, how can we solve that problem? And it’s that evolution from simply servicing people to solving their homelessness. That’s what’s captured the imagination of our country, that’s were the momentum is in our country, and that’s certainly the direction of public policy.

Dean Lloyd: You’ve been very provocative in framing it this way. By the way, your role: you might say something about that, as head of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, which is bringing together a lot of departments in the government. Say something about that. Then I want to ask you about your strategy.

Mr. Mangano: The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness is a federal agency which reports to the domestic... which reports to the domestic policy council in the White House. Its work is to bring twenty federal agencies to the table of homelessness.

We do that literally at the White House, in fact, just the past Monday we had our twelfth meeting in the last number of years, where twenty federal agencies come together to try to figure out how to make their resources more effective and efficient, more available and accessible for homeless people.

The good news from that is, if it were just meetings and rhetoric, we would all grow tired and weary of that rapidly. We’ve had enough rhetoric on homelessness. But what that has corresponded to is seven consecutive years of record resources in the federal budget and, in fact, the president’s budget for 2009 has an unprecedented eighth consecutive year of record resources targeted to homeless people.

So part of our work is that ensuring that all twenty federal agencies are meeting together, but another part of our work—and maybe the more important part of our work—is creating a national partnership. So that every level of government is partnered and on the same page of planning around this issue.

We’ve certainly learned that without a plan, things only get worse. They get worse on our streets, worse in our emergency rooms, worse for pedestrians, worse for police, worse for doctors and nurses. So the planning that’s going on around our country is literally every level of government, and the council has been inspiring that, and every level of government partnered with the private sector, whether the faith communities, non-profits, but also the business community. So that’s the national partnership we’ve created to respond to the issue, and that’s been making a difference around our country and has brought faith communities into, beyond charitable responses, toward solutions.

Dean Lloyd: One of the surprises of your leadership has been the ripples, I gather, you’ve set up in the homelessness advocacy community, because you’re saying tough things, like solving homelessness isn’t about compassion; it’s a business strategy. You’re talking about cost/benefit analysis. You’re trying to bring hard analysis to that. Now maybe you’ve lost your bleeding heart along the way, or you’ve got some other strategy for it. Why is that the way to go?

Mr. Mangano: Well, while I don’t understand Einstein’s scientific theories, E=mc2, I have a brother who went to MIT for ten years. He sat me down one day, tried to explain theories, E=mc2, to me. I was never so confused in my life, I have to admit.

But Einstein was also a keen observer of human nature and public policy. And one of the things that Einstein told us was that the very definition of insanity was to do the same thing over and over and over again expecting a different result. And on homelessness unfortunately we were practicing that craziness for several decades.

We were doing the same thing over and over again. We had hoped that good intentions, well-meaning programs, and humanitarian gestures could get the job done. Well, if they could, homelessness would have been history decades ago, because we’ve mustered all of those on the front lines of homelessness for years, and yet the numbers only grew. So we could either continue to manage homelessness, maintenance our efforts, and accommodate a rising number of homeless people, or we could think, this isn’t working. There needs to be another strategy.

And I think that’s where we’ve gone. We’ve moved from simply having good intentions and well-meaning programs that didn’t get the job done, to adding a business frame. And a big part of that business frame is an economic frame, and through that economic frame, we’ve come to understand that these folk... We keep a good grip, by the way, on the moral, spiritual, human reasons. It’s the reason I worked on this issue. It’s the calling I have on my life.

So I keep a good grip. I think most of us keep a good grip on the moral, spiritual, and human, but if they’re not getting the job done, if they’re not driving an unprecedented amount of political will to bring remedy, if they’re not literally driving the numbers down...

There’s only one metric in homelessness. A single metric. That the numbers of our neighbors suffering from homeless go down. If they’re not getting it done, we need to adopt other strategies. And what we’ve learned is that doing cost/benefit analysis, understanding that homeless people are some of the most expensive people in our community, and randomly ricocheting through health and law enforcement systems, then we’re not bringing to the argument everything that can be to drive political will.

Dean Lloyd: So walk us through what you’re trying to do. You say that the key is giving a homeless person a home. You also talk about how in the past, emergency rooms have been one of the chief places where people get their care, or shelters, or food lines, or all sorts of things. Why do you think that ends up actually being the cost-effective thing to do? It sounds very expensive, giving everybody a home.

Mr. Mangano: Well, one of the things that we’ve been able to do, not only have we done cost studies to understand the cost of homeless people... Again, randomly ricocheting through the emergency room, you can go to any emergency room in this city and any other city in this country or any other country, and if you say the word “homelessness” to the triage nurses in the emergency room or the doctors and nurse in the emergency room, they’ll tell you, “We see them all the time, we see some people every month, every week, every day. We see some people multiple times in the same day.”

What we’ve learned around the country is the average cost of that emergency room visit is $1,000. The cost of half of the people who are homeless, who go the emergency room. You add on the cost of the ambulance ride to the emergency room, then you add in this population going to the acute side of substance abuse and mental health programs, police and firefighters responding to 911 calls, sometimes court costs, sometimes temporary incarceration costs.

When you add all of those together you learn again that these are literally some of the most expensive people in the community. In 65 cost studies that have gone on around our country, the cost of that random ricocheting ranges from $35,000 to $150,000 per person per year. Now in a number of those cities, we’ve done the intervention of what’s called “housing first” or “rapid re-housing.” Literally getting people into housing as quickly as possible, and then wrapping services around people to support their tendencies. The cost of that in communities ranges from $13,000 to $25,000 a year.

So for public policy makers—the public, for the taxpayer—we can either pay $35,000 to $150,000 to maintain people in homeless system, maintain them on our streets and in our emergency rooms, or we can spend $13,000 to $25,000 to literally end their homelessness and create trajectories toward self-sufficiency and dignity. You don’t need to be Warren Buffett or even Suze Orman to figure out which of those is the better investment, and that’s what’s driving an unprecedented amount of political will toward solutions rather than simply managing.

Managing is more expensive than solving the problem. It’s a question, I think, of stewardship in a certain way.

Dean Lloyd: When you’re providing them homes, what kind of homes... are they in group homes, are they spread around a community? How do you all create that, oversee that, and make that work?

Mr. Mangano: Well...

Dean Lloyd: They probably aren’t used to taking care of homes very well either. So I would wonder if that’s a problem.

Mr. Mangano: Again, I think it’s very important to understand that people who are on the street for a long time, people who are languishing in shelters, some of those homing skills have atrophied over the years. So while we recognize that a place to live is important, we also recognize that we don’t want to set up our neighbors for failure again, as we did with de-institutionalization.

That’s why those services are so important. If there’s one thing we’ve learned in the last twenty years—and there are many things that we’ve learned that have influenced policy, but one thing we’ve learned, housing for the most vulnerable and disabled, without services, sets them up for failure.

But services without housing leaves people on our streets, leaves people languishing in our shelters.

It’s that combination of housing with support services, and those support services frankly are customized. They’re customized to support the person who is mentally ill, who needs to continue to take their medications. They’re customized for that person who is addicted and needs to ensure that they are going to detox and they can return to their place to live after the detox, so they have the stability of their recovery. They’re customized in the sense of people who are there for economic reasons having job training and job skills as part of the services.

So it’s really housing with services, and what we know around the country through cost... not only the cost studies that have been done, but through other research on that housing intervention, is that, for the most vulnerable and disabled people, people if we pass by them on the street we would think a blanket and a bowl of soup is the best that we’ll ever do for that person. Those very people now being rapidly placed in housing. Here in Washington, D.C., by Pathways to Housing in Washington and cities across our country and now around the world, the retention rate of those people in the housing is 85 percent.

It works, it’s cost effective, consumer preferred, and better for the taxpayer. You don’t get a public policy trifecta like that very often.

Dean Lloyd: And you’re working ten-year plans that you’re encouraging states and major cities to take on for themselves. Tell us a little bit about that, and then we’re going to open up this for people to ask their questions.

Mr. Mangano: Well, part of our national partnership is to not only get the federal government on board—every single agency, twenty federal agencies meeting regularly in Washington, more resources than every before in the history of our country targeted to homeless people, not enough. So we’ve partnered with governors, we now have 49 governors of states and three governors of territories who have created state interagency councils on homelessness that mirror the work that we do in Washington.

They bring state agencies, state commissioners, state secretariats together to make their resources more available and accessible, still not enough. Twenty federal agencies, 49 governors, not enough. A lot of our work is on the front lines and that’s in cities and communities around our country. We now have five hundred communities, five hundred mayors and county executives, partnered in 350 plans all across our country.

Here in Washington, D.C., Mayor Fenty owns a ten-year plan. That’s right, he’s investing more resources because he’s investing them in a strategic plan that is results oriented. Mayor Bloomberg in New York, Mayor Daley in Chicago, Mayor Newsom in San Francisco, and mayors in small and large communities and county executives in small and large communities all around our country, all with ten-year plans that are shaped around business principles and practices that are all oriented to investing only in what is field tested and evidence based.

We now know that there are innovative ideas that have the result of ending people’s homelessness. Why invest in things that don’t, when you can now invest in what does? So increasingly, through ten-year plans that are all shaped around having the verb “end” in the same sentence as the noun “homelessness,” remember, five hundred mayors and county executives have committed to ending homelessness in their communities, again Mayor Bloomberg, Mayor Daley, Mayor Newsom, Mayor Franklin in Atlanta, Mayor Fenty here in Washington.

This abolitionist movement now includes not only radical advocates and provider agencies, the abolitionist movement is a train. On that train are governors, mayors, county executives, faith communities, the business community. That train has now pulled out of the station, it is oriented to one destination, that destination is abolition. And we have the research, we have the data, we have the innovative ideas to get the job done.

Dean Lloyd: I told you he is a man with a solution. Questions about this very important piece of our lives.

Q: I’m Linda Kaufman, the chief operating officer of Pathways to Housing here in D.C. and one of the affiliated clergy at St. Stephen and the Incarnation, the Episcopal Church here in the diocese. And my question, Philip, is how did we move from ten years ago, when all we thought about was caring for homeless people to today, where everyone is talking about “end homelessness”? How do you make that kind of paradigm shift?

Mr. Mangano: Well, we are in a church, and I would have to confess I do pray regularly as I know you do, Linda, and I know it’s probably part of the prayers of this church and other churches... I would never discount the power of prayer. I have to say my own, I’m from Boston by the way, which is partially why I’m an abolitionist, when you’re born there it’s just in the gene pool—you see a social wrong you just want to right it. You see a social evil you want to end it. And I think that that kind of prayer is very important. I think that adds together with everything else we’re doing, but I wouldn’t discount that power, but I think there was a certain level of frustration.

I think we had been doing the same thing, as Einstein talked about, over and over and over again, we had extended, especially faith communities, extending charitable response to their neighbors, yet they were seeing that same neighbor over and over again, week after week, month after month, year after year.

So finally, when we began to constellate the data, disseminate innovative ideas that actually make a difference, we now know that we can invest resources and ideas that literally worked to end people’s homelessness. I think that moved us from simply managing homelessness, that was our verb for twenty years, we managed the disgrace, we can finally, because of the innovative ideas—and of course I’m so proud of the work that you’ve done here in Washington, Pathways has done in Washington, here and also in New York. And now it’s actually the most replicated innovation all around the country. Well, you have given hope to mayors and county executives and to faith communities and to nonprofits and to providers, that we needn’t just be charitable nor managing nor maintenancing but in fact, there are now in place ideas that allow us to get to our abolitionist goal. And I think all of that added up to change our national mindset.

And I think you’re absolutely right, that the mindset has changed. After twenty years of managing, the intent now is ending. And even in the current financial crisis, we’re sustaining that abolitionist intent. And we understand that, even in a financial crisis, there are some opportunities around housing that haven’t been there for ten years. So thank you for the good work that Pathways has done in terms of ensuring that that mindset is sustained.

Q: How do you develop the research and produce the data that you’re going to implement in techniques?

Mr. Mangano: Well, thankfully, it’s not left entirely to the federal government, of course, because people would be very wary of that, as they have been for years. But there are many great researchers around our country. I think of Dr. Dennis Culhane at the University of Pennsylvania, probably the foremost researcher in our country, and we have prioritized data and research after twenty years, again, of homelessness being dominated by conjecture, anecdote, and hearsay because it was the best we had.

We can now rely on data and research that tells us, does this initiative work or not? And if it doesn’t work to bring an end to people’s homelessness, we need to leave that behind.

We don’t have infinite resources. We have finite resources. And so we’ve brought actually on board people like Malcolm Gladwell, the bestselling author who wrote The Tipping Point and Blink, or Jim Collins who wrote Built to Last and Good to Great, some of the best business thinking minds in our country, to help us refine our strategies. All of them have put a priority on data and research, and on investing our finite resources in the most vulnerable and disabled populations: to begin there, people experiencing chronic homelessness, people literally living on our streets and languishing in our shelters, and then moving from there to tackle the entire problem.

Not to try to solve it all at once, but to focus on the most vulnerable and disabled. In many ways—I think you’ll like this, Sam—in many ways, our emphasis on the chronic population, that is, the people who are long-term homeless or the most disabled, in many ways it’s putting into policy the lessons of the story of the good Samaritan in Scripture. There is somebody on the side of our road. Others have passed by in past years.

We’re not going to pass by. We’re stopping. Mayors, governors, county executives, faith communities are now stopping for that person on the side of the road. Not just providing them with some food and moving on, not just talking to them and moving on, but in fact picking that person up and going with that person to a place to live in. The government is stepping up to say to that innkeeper, so to speak, that person who’s providing the housing, provide for this person what they’re needing, we’re going to provide the resources so that you can do that.

So whether it’s Pathways to Housing here in Washington, or around the country, or all of these housing efforts, the federal government and local governments have stepped up. Is it enough right now? Not yet. But the trajectory of increased resources and some of the numbers that we’ve seen actually from 2005 to 2007, a thirty percent decrease in our country in the number of people on our streets, languishing in our shelters, a thirty percent decrease over those years, by investing in the innovative ideas of housing that get the job done. That’s what the data and research is telling us, so of course that’s the direction that we’re going in.

Q: Hi, there, I have a question about those Americans that may be sensitive to socializing national programs, especially now with the financial industry and possibly the health care industry. Would now be the time to introduce homelessness into the public forum and get legislation passed to abolish it?

Mr. Mangano: Well, fortunately, homelessness has been... Ever since 1987, the federal government, through what’s known as the McKinney Act, has been very involved in the issue of homelessness. I think there was a sense that the charitable responses early on in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, as well intentioned as they were, they were insufficient, and that government needed to partner with the private sector.

And we did that for a number of years, but what we learned was we were funding, and we were expending. but weren’t investing. Because whenever any of us makes an investment, there’s one thing we anticipate from an investment, and that is a return on the investment. And in this case, the return that we were looking for in private foundation giving and local giving and in federal government giving is that the number of people who are homeless would go down.

For twenty years we expended and funded without anticipation of that. We’re now saying that resources are an investment, and what we anticipate is the number of our neighbors will go down, and that’s what we’re seeing. That’s only inspired deeper federal investment and deeper local investment. So fortunately, around our country, there is this partnership. Every level of government and the private sector, including the business community, as well as the consumer, homeless people themselves involved in that planning and the intent is just one intent now, and that is to get people out of that long misery.

Q: Good morning. On September 1, last month, 325 homeless residents of a local D.C. shelter, including as many as eighty—eighty—who are mentally ill, were moved out of the shelter and into apartments in the area. Out of that 325, seventy have already defected, due for the most part to inadequate wrap-around services as you mentioned, including lack of mental health wrap-around services. There are approximately four thousand mentally ill individuals among D.C.’s homeless population of sixteen thousand. These four thousand will need comprehensive, consistent mental health services in order to make the transition from the streets and languishing in shelters, as you say, to independent living. My question: How will Mayor Fenty’s plan to privatize mental health services in 2009 affect the success and the retention rate of the various housing programs for the mentally ill homeless population? Thank you.

Mr. Mangano: First of all, I want to say how much I appreciate Mayor Fenty’s commitment on this issue. Not only does he have a plan, he’s deepened his political will in that plan by investing nineteen million dollars specifically to create housing with the wrap-around services that are needed.

That’s not enough to solve the entire problem of homelessness, but if we think about resolving an issue that’s been incubating for twenty, 25 years in some places—if we think about solving it and resolving it incrementally, certainly Mayor Fenty is going in the right direction. And the good news, I think, for people who are experiencing mental illness is that the most innovative, the most cost-effective arguments are now being mustered on their behalf.

We now how to end that form of homelessness. And as Mayor Fenty moves forward in terms of as many states and cities are moving forward around our country, in terms of understanding how to provide mental health services within a different frame, we’ve seen in many cities and in many states that homeless people are prioritized with those services. Because there’s an understanding that otherwise they become the most expensive people if those services aren’t provided, because they end up on the street and doing all of that random ricocheting.

So there’s an economic incentive. We had relied for years on the moral and spiritual and humanitarian incentive. That’s where we have the faulty political will. But now we’re relying on the economic: that we understand that providing those wrap-around services keeps those people from being on the streets, where they become some of the most expensive people in the community. So I think you’ll see an economic sensitivity in the progressive revelation of that plan that Mayor Fenty has, and he will take into consideration not only the moral and spiritual efforts that we need to make, but also the economic ones. That’s what gives us assurance that we’re going the right direction.

Q: Hello, I forgot what a beautiful building this is, haven’t been in here since I was confirmed years ago. I’m a past director of the largest homeless shelter in the world, which is right here in Washington, D.C. I hear a lot about the most vulnerable getting housing first, which is a great idea. Of course, some are going to fall through the cracks, but in the homeless population we have some people that work. They cannot afford a place, and they seem to be far down on the list to get permanent supportive housing. Our resources in this city for housing and apartments is much limited. Do you have any solution to move these people, who are trying to work very hard themselves to get out of homelessness, to give them a hand, to give them a place?

Mr. Mangano: Well, first of all I so appreciate the work that you’ve been doing here in Washington. It’s so important. I don’t know which list you’re referring to, but I can assure you that homeless individuals and families who work are not far down on any list that I’m aware of.

In fact, the very nature of the ten-year plans that are being shaped in communities around the country, while they do prioritize those who are the most vulnerable and disabled—people who are living on our streets—they also are taking into consideration, and in some research, as you probably know, there is some research that say up to thirty percent of all homeless individuals are working. So certainly part of the effort with other resources are to help those folk transition out of shelters and into housing just as rapidly as possible as well.

So while housing first and rapid re-housing is generally thought of as a strategy primarily for the people on the street because they most need it, it’s certainly a strategy that’s now evolving, and it’s the strategy that we’re thinking about for all homeless populations. So there are new resources that are in play for people who are working and in shelters, and part of those resources are employment and training resources that help those folk increase their income so that they, in fact, can support an apartment on their own.

We’re very consumer oriented in that regard and we would consider them to be primary consumers of some of the resources that we’re making available to make certain that people don’t stay in shelters who are working, but get out as soon as they can. Thank you for your continuing work on that.

Q: Good morning. My name is Francis Person, and I’m a street evangelist for fifteen years now. I notice that you said the moral and spiritual efforts were not enough, but I’m here to tell you that Jesus’ word is enough. The people need hope out there. You can give them food and houses—but their mental capacity and the spiritual need for God to give them hope for tomorrow that’s what they need: Jesus. If you put them in houses...

Dean Lloyd: All right, we need a question. We need a question please.

Q: Yes. If you put them in houses and don’t give them Jesus then of course they’re going to be on the street. The 15% that you mentioned that were lost still, those are the people that we also don’t what to leave behind. The Lord didn’t leave that one shepherd because of the 99. Don’t you think that Jesus has power? Perhaps because you went out, you all went out and not had faith in the Lord...

Dean Lloyd: Let’s hear what he has to say about that. Thank you very much. We’re going to hear from Phil.

Mr. Mangano: One of the things that we know, and I know from having worked on the streets in Boston for any number of years, getting to know homeless people—they became some of my closest friends—is that they identify the spiritual aspect.

We don’t need to do that for them. They identify the spiritual aspect of their issues.

You know, I think right here in this Cathedral there is a little space, I always think is one of the most sacred spaces in this Cathedral, it’s a place were there’s a statue of Abraham Lincoln, and it was... it just has his comments when he was leaving Springfield, Illinois, to come here to Washington to become president. In that speech he says, basically, he says, without the divine presence I will not succeed. With the divine presence I cannot fail at what I am setting out to do.

So I think there is a lot of room, and I talked about that earlier, a lot of room for understanding what we’re doing within the context of a moral and spiritual effort to bring an end to a moral wrong. There’s no question about that. Within that context there are some other means by which we are putting more political will to work for some of those who are poorest and most disabled. It’s not one or the other. It’s both in partnership to get the job done. So I appreciate the work that you’re doing as a street evangelist. Keep it up.

Dean Lloyd: Last brief question, because I have a final question I want to ask before we stop, so let’s make this brief.

Q: Thank you, Mr. Mangano for being here. The Cathedral and the Community Council for the homeless at Friendship Place are partners, and we’ve been privileged to have you upstairs in the tower talking to our city decision maker. Thank you for that. I wanted to ask you, I have a brochure here that Friendship Place has prepared, but to ask you what to do when you see a homeless person? That’s my question to you.

Mr. Mangano: Well, first of all, I just want to commend the Cathedral for moving beyond the charitable responses of the past to partnering with Friendship Place and other efforts that are creating permanent housing here in the city for our homeless neighbors. That’s a very important part of it.

We’re moving from those many seeds of charity that were planted in the past to take a harvest of justice in that housing that’s being created, so I’m so appreciative of that effort. I think always extending a hand of hospitality and friendship and understanding homeless people as our neighbors, I think that’s probably the most important thing. We learned when we were pretty young what our responsibility was to our neighbor, and I think that work of understanding who our neighbor is, and that’s why the good Samaritan story is so important. When Jesus was asked that question, of course, he pointed to that good Samaritan who stopped along the side of the road. So I think we have lots of responsibilities to our homeless neighbors. We have the responsibility ultimately of ensuring that they are no longer homeless and our work needs to be part of that solution-oriented work to get the job done, and that’s why Friendship Place is such an important part of the ministry of th