The Impact of the Federal Initiative to End Chronic Homelessness in 10 Years
Philip F. Mangano is the Executive Director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, to which he was appointed in March 2002. Since then, he has engaged every level of government and the private sector to constellate a national partnership to end homelessness which now includes 20 federal agencies, 49 states, three territories, the District of Columbia, and over 320 local communities. Through the Council's leadership, unprecedented interagency and community collaborations have taken place. Ensuring that jurisdictional CEOs 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. 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. 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. Prior to his federal 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 that 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. 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."
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