Philip Mangano

( Executive Director of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance )

In a disturbing paradox of a booming economy, the number of homeless people in Massachusetts seeking shelter has reached a record high, according to the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance. The rise in homelessness, which is also reflected in Boston city statistics, reflects one of the consequences of a soaring real estate market: As paychecks swell and demand for housing rises, rents soar and homelessness peaks.

Last winter, 5,016 people were counted as homeless, up from 4,948 the previous winter and continuing a steady upward trend since the early '90s, when the economy was slower. And, gone are the days when the state could guarantee a family shelter for the night.
Meanwhile, the numbers of public-housing units available to low-income families is dropping, just as the economy pushes rents out of the price range of even the working poor. Also, as many as 8,000 families could lose welfare benefits as soon as Dec. 1, according to the Department of Transitional Assistance, further reducing any income they could devote to housing.

Xavier de Souza Briggs, acting assistant sectretary for policy for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, said the number of people paying more than half their income for housing, those most at risk of homelessness, is at an all-time high.
``We're finding that economic growth comes at a certain price, a heavy one for those at the bottom,'' Briggs said. ``At the moment, we are seeing a high point in worst-case housing. Those are people who are at risk of becoming homeless tomorrow.''

Philip MANGANO (Right,with a homeless man), executive director of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance, said, ``The notion that an expanding, bullish economy lifts all boats unfortunately doesn't hold true for the poorest people.'' He said the link between economic prosperity and homelessness is not immediately apparent, but well-documented, nonetheless.
In 1981, a recession year, the state funded two emergency shelters, MANGANO said. By 1989, after six years of rapid economic expansion and a soaring stock market, it funded 150 such shelters. A 1989 study of housing trends in Boston found that condominium conversions, which totaled more than 25,000 from 1981 to 1987, severely cut the city's affordable housing stock. The period from the mid-'90s to late 1998 has been a similar financial climate, as a richer workforce has driven rents and home prices to higher levels than even the boom years of the late '80s.

Thus, MANGANO said, people living on the margins, paying more than half their incomes for rent, quickly become priced out and fall into the shelter system, creating a downward domino effect on even needier people. The shelter system has accommodated more people than its 4,000-bed capacity for a full eight months this year. That contrasts with 1993, when there were no months of overflow, despite fewer beds. ``Capacity has increased and the shelter system continues to overflow at unprecedented levels,'' MANGANO said.

The HUD report said 18,000 Boston homes, where 24 percent of low-income renters live, were identified as ``worst-case housing needs'' households, homes where wage-earners make less than 50 percent of the local median and use half of their income on housing.
Vacancy in Boston's rental housing market in fall of 1997 was 1.64 percent and the average cost of an apartment was $1,047 a month.
Some victims of the shortage sleep on Boston's streets.
``We're seeing more people becoming homeless and it's taking them longer to get housing,'' said Kelley Cronin, director of Boston's Emergency Shelter Commission.
The city's annual count of the homeless, which occurs on a December day each year, providing a snapshot of the population, shows a rise. Last winter, there were 5,016 people counted. The year before, it was 4,948. In 1995, the figure was 4,774, in 1994 it was 5,299, and in 1993 it was 4,809.
In 1996, when the agency's Family Emergency Shelter program began, it housed 75 families in hotels for an average of six days each. In 1997, there were 140 families. By Sept. 30 of this year, there were 138 families with 291 children who had used the service. The final numbers for the year is expected to exceed 180.



( Anna Bissonnette, president of the Committee to End Elder Homelessness, consoled Phillip MANGANO , president of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance, on Dec. 11 near the site where a homeless man, Jose Flores, was found dead on Boston Common. )



**Update, a video link, Click Here ** ( It's supposed to take you directly to the beginning of his speech, if it doesn't , it begins at 24m 20s )



In March 2002 Philip Mangano was selected by President Bush as the Executive Director of the United States Interagency Council on homelessness
Here he is at Long Beach City Council invited by the Mayor

Click Here to view the clip


Here is a Biography of Philip F. Mangano

(updated to Sept 07)..source > http://www.ich.gov/mangano.html

Executive Director United States Interagency Council on Homelessness Mr. Mangano was recently nominated as one on TIME Magazine's 100 Most Influential People. In 2006 he was named by Governing Magazine as the first Federal official ever to be honored with its Public Official of the Year Award. He has been recognized by mainstream and business media in the United States for his leadership on the issue of homelessness and new results in ending homelessness being achieved in cities across the country through the National Partnership created by the Council. Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government this year named the Council one of the "Top 50 Government Innovations" in the nation.

Recent affirmations of the work of the Council and Mr. Mangano have come from diverse quarters. The National Human Services Assembly recognized Mr. Mangano in September 2006 with its "Essence of Leadership" Award for excellence in national public sector leadership. In 2006, he was also recognized with the 2006 HOME magazine annual "Shelter" award for his work in "enriching community spirit and well-being by fostering a sense of home." In September 2006, Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher presented Mr. Mangano with the Kentucky 2006 Spirit of Unity Honor of Excellence Lifetime Achievement Award. In October 2006, he was recognized with the Rev. Canon Brian S. Kelley Public Servant Award by the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance, which acknowledges a public official who has demonstrated leadership in addressing the needs of the poorest.

In March 2002 Philip F. Mangano was appointed to lead the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness. As Executive Director of the Council, Mr. Mangano has engaged every level of government and the private sector to constellate a National Partnership to end homelessness. The priority of the Council has been to ensure that the President's commitment to ending chronic homelessness achieves realization.

The Interagency Council is comprised of 20 Cabinet Secretaries and Federal agency directors who convene regularly at the White House to ensure that Federal resources are more available and accessible to homeless people. For the past seven years, the Federal budget has included consecutive record years of resources targeted to homelessness.

The mission of the Council is to coordinate the Federal response to homelessness and to create partnerships throughout government and the private sector that end homelessness. The Council has led the creation of a national partnership that now includes 20 Federal agencies, 49 states, three territories, the District of Columbia, and over 300 local communities. Through the Council's leadership, unprecedented interagency and community collaborations have taken place. Ensuring that jurisdictional CEO's extend political will to the issue of homelessness, Mr. Mangano has focused the partnering of the Council with Governors, Mayors, and County Executives. The prioritization of the Council on the prevention of homelessness and rapid re-housing of homeless people has focused Federal policy and encouraged local plans and investments from the public and private sectors.

These partnerships have led to unprecedented state and local investments across the country. Additional collaborations with the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National League of Cities, the National Association of Counties, and the National Governors Association have resulted in new visibility on the issue of homelessness across the country. Mr. Mangano brings to his role more than 25 years of experience in the issue of homelessness, both in public policy and solution-oriented programs. In his work in Massachusetts, Mr. Mangano originated the abolitionist notion of changing the verb and intent of homelessness from managing the response to ending the disgrace by moving beyond a status quo that was well intentioned to innovations that are results oriented.

Prior to his appointment, Mr. Mangano was the founding Executive Director of a regional advocacy alliance which became the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance (MHSA), a statewide coalition of 80 agencies which operate more than 200 programs. During his 12-year tenure, MHSA developed statewide strategies to reduce and end homelessness in Massachusetts which influenced the national dialogue in Washington and throughout the nation. His continuing commitment to the abolition of homelessness began in his work in Boston and continues in Washington. Mr. Mangano began his work in homelessness in the 1980s, starting as a full-time volunteer on a Boston breadline, and then working with African-American churches in responding to homelessness, and eventually serving as Director of Homeless Services for the City of Cambridge. He worked with Children's Services of Roxbury, Massachusetts to create housing programs for homeless families.

Throughout his career, Mr. Mangano has initiated involvement with many faith-based organizations on the issue of homelessness. As Director for the family homelessness and housing programs operated by St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church, Mr. Mangano worked closely with the historic African-American Church and the Cambridge Black Pastors' Conference. Mr. Mangano was also responsible for the creation of Cambridge Clergy for Affordable Housing, a multi-congregational effort to respond to homelessness issues.

Mr. Mangano was recognized with the National Alliance to End Homelessness Private Sector Award in 2001. The Associated Press presented him with its National "Hero" Award; he was named a "City Light" by The Boston Globe; a "Local Hero" by The Boston Phoenix; and a "face to watch" by Boston Magazine.

He is the recipient of numerous proclamations from the Massachusetts House of Representatives, the Massachusetts Senate, and cities throughout the Commonwealth for the state-wide impact of his work on homelessness. Additionally, Mr. Mangano is the recipient of commendations from the Massachusetts Departments of Mental Health and Public Health, and he holds several community service awards from the United Way and clergy organizations.

Prior to his work at MHSA, Mr. Mangano participated in the creation and development of a variety of community-based organizations including as a founding member of a social justice group in Los Angeles and as President of Social Action Ministries of Greater Boston.

Under Mr. Mangano's leadership, the Council has prioritized the President's Management Agenda to encourage strategies that are evidence-based, customer-centric, and results-oriented. Focused on performance and accountability, the Council has initiated strategies that, as Mr. Mangano has characterized them, "move beyond funding to investing, beyond inputs to outcomes, and beyond managing the crisis to ending the disgrace." He has led the application of cost benefit analysis and business planning to the issue of homelessness. The Christian Science Monitor credited the Council for "taking a business-school approach to the problem," and financial magazine Fortune, commenting on the Council's work, said that "while applying the metrics of business to homelessness may sound icily clinical, ultimately this is the language of hope." Bloomberg News noted that the new approach "offers practical solutions to a costly problem."

The work of the Council has gained the attention of mainstream media and some of the foremost business thinkers of our day, including best-selling authors Malcolm Gladwell and Jim Collins. The New York Times described 10-Year Plans encouraged by the Council as a "burst of effort [that] has buoyed a field long accustomed to futility and part of an accelerating national movement that has reduced the numbers of the chronically homeless." The San Francisco Chronicle called the Council's work the "most aggressive nationwide strategy in a generation to solve homelessness." The Weekly Standard noted that "somebody has finally found something that works." The Washington Times dubbed Mr. Mangano "one person working overtime to bulldoze misconceptions" about homelessness. The Atlantic Monthly noted that "this hard numbers approach [is] a radical shift." And Governing Magazine wrote, "Nobody has done more than Mangano to change the national dialogue on homelessness."

Although Mr. Mangano's non-stop travel schedule includes visits to Mayors, County Executives, Governors, and innovative programs, he is most at home speaking with homeless and formerly homeless people. Wherever he travels, he takes time to meet with the "consumers and customers of all our planning, resources, and partnership" to ensure that "our poorest neighbors" are central to the creation of policy and the investment of resources.

Mr. Mangano has spoken across the country on the abolition of homelessness and has been invited to speak at United Nations and European Union sponsored events and national meetings in a number of countries. In 2004 he initiated international dialogue on homelessness with the creation of the Tri-Partite Meetings, which now include Canada and several European countries.

Through his historical and theological training, Mr. Mangano's work has been inspired by the words and actions of the abolitionists, particularly William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. He credits the lives and writings of St. Francis Assisi and Simone Weil for spiritual inspiration in his work.

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