By host Tom Ashbrook:

Arthur Sena lived in a hole near the railroad tracks in Denver. Rodney Littlebear spent fifteen years on the streets, in and out of jail, homeless shelters and emergency rooms in Seattle. Chronically homeless alcoholic ex-Marine Murray Barr cost the city of Reno maybe a million dollars over ten years in hospital bills and substance abuse treatment.

Now, Barr is dead and a legend — “million-dollar Murray” as written up recently by Malcolm Gladwell. But Sena and Littlebear have been taken off the streets in a new national campaign against chronic homelessness called “Housing First.”

The program advocates taking the hardcore off the streets — let them drink, let them live, but give them a home.

Hear about “Housing First,” a new attack on homelessness.

Guests:

Philip Mangano, Executive Director of the Interagency Council on Homelessness

Charles High, Housing First client

John Carlson, radio host of the “John Carlson Show”;
Bob Erlenbusch, Executive Director of the Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness