The following letter was sent to Marilyn Chase, Assistant Secretary for Children, Youth and Families and Julia Kehoe, Commissioner Department of Transitional Assistance in August to request a new line item for homelessness prevention.

Dear Assistant Secretary Chase and Commissioner Kehoe,

We want to express our appreciation for your timely review of past policies related to programs serving homeless and low-income households and your efforts to quickly address areas in which these policies hinder the Administration’s efforts to reduce homelessness within the Commonwealth. In recognition and support of these efforts, we respectfully urge EOHHS and DTA to include a new prevention line item within the Department of Transitional Assistance as part of your agencies’ FY’09 budget requests.

The resources provided through the state’s existing prevention programs are insufficient to address the growing number of households in crisis. Establishing a new prevention line item under the direct control of DTA would enable the Department to target prevention resources to its own consumers and other families and individuals entering through the doors of the state’s shelter system. We are asking the Administration to fund this new line item at $5 million. We envision that these funds would be used flexibly to create new prevention and early intervention initiatives at DTA. These programs would be developed and implemented at the Department’s discretion, in collaboration with other state agencies, municipalities and community-based organizations. Funds would also provide consistent financial support for prevention initiatives previously implemented by DTA through the Emergency Assistance line item.

We appreciate the new Administration’s efforts to help households in shelter to re-locate quickly into new housing, as well as the prevention programs DTA swiftly implemented with end of the year resources. However, to truly end this crisis, we need to develop effective, widespread and permanent homelessness prevention programs. We look forward to working closely with DTA and the Administration to obtain needed prevention dollars to support new and innovative programs to help households avoid homelessness altogether.

For more information on the Coalition, ckick here.