Steve Quayle News Alerts

Nov. 24, 2003

DENVER (AP) - The Salvation Army and some other metro area charities are considering giving up federal grants because they don't want to participate in a new survey of the homeless.

Congress has ordered the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to do a better job counting the number of homeless people in the nation. HUD is now asking local groups to collect the names, Social Security numbers and other information about the people they serve.

HUD has promised not to give the information to investigators or immigration officials but some non-profit groups that many homeless people will be wary of what they see as ‘‘Big Brother’’ intrusion.

‘‘There are a number of clients who would rather stay on the street and freeze to death’’ than provide personal identifying information as part of HUD’s effort to count them, said Gerald Koch, who oversees homeless shelters for the Salvation Army in Denver.

HUD officials say the information is needed to understand the scope of homelessness and track whether existing services are working. Some of the other information is being sought about the homeless is whether they are veterans and when they left their last permanent address.

‘‘We have never been able to have good data on the number of homeless in our communities,’’ said John Garrity, HUD’s director of homeless assistance. ‘‘We don’t have good data about what works.’’

Agencies that do not comply will not get HUD grants, which bring $12 million a year to Denver area agencies.

Most groups expect to comply with the requirement. Some social workers acknowledge that tracking the homeless could be helpful as long as the information is used fairly. Others think the data could be used to help organizations work together more seamlessly.

‘‘It’s hard ... to get a clear picture of homelessness in the United States,’’ said Rich Audsley, chief operating officer of the Mile High United Way, which is cooperating. ‘‘HUD is trying to get some consistency.’’

However, Meg Allen, director of victim services for the Justice Information Center, is still suspicious the information could be turned over to law enforcement, especially because of the war on terrorism.

‘‘With the Patriot Act ... I feel that the government is very able to do things under the guise of fighting terrorism,’’ Allen said. ‘‘What will it come to? That’s my fear.’’

Others worry that the information could be seen by batterers or insurance companies looking to identify people who have contracted HIV.

To prevent abuse of the information, HUD’s Garrity said the agency is requiring groups to strip identifying information about people before sending the data to Washington. The information kept by local agencies must also be encrypted to prevent hackers from getting access to it.

Koch said the Salvation Army could still run its downtown men’s shelter without HUD’s annual $19,000 grant but he worries that the agency won’t get an accurate picture of homelessness in the city without knowing about the 78,000 people it serves annually. Ultimately he worries that other agencies would lose funding because of an undercount.

Tygee Jones, 29, one of the men gathered at the shelter on a cold night recently, said he would have no problem providing information in order to have a place to stay.

But Ed Harris, 61, disagreed. He worried about the stigma of homelessness being made official through a document kept by the government.

‘‘It’s too much intrusion from the government,’’ he said. ‘‘You’ve got to leave a man some dignity.’’

http://www.chieftain.com/monday/news/index/article/8