The USC School of Social Work, in conjunction with the National Network for Social Work Managers, led the 19th annual Management Institute on homelessness, a two-day event that attracted 175 participants from all over the country to discuss how to halt the epidemic.

The first of its kind to bring together both public and private sectors in search of better management strategies to prevent and end homelessness, the conference was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles United Way, National Alliance to End Homeless, National Association of Social Workers, Union Rescue Mission of Los Angeles and the Salvation Army.

Experts from California and New York led workshops on best practices and obstacles to implementing change, seizing on the dual needs for collaboration and focus on long-term solutions to homelessness among social work managers and government at all levels.

"It won't be much longer before Los Angeles will be the 'former' homeless capital of America," said keynote speaker Torie Osborne, a senior advisor appointed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

With 73,000 homeless individuals on the street on any given night, Los Angeles has a greater number of homeless people than any other American city. Eighty-three percent of them spend the night without any type of shelter. Since the 1970s, many of Los Angeles' homeless have found their way to Skid Row, which was developed as a hub for social services and humanitarian efforts as part of a homeless containment policy. At the time, the Los Angeles homeless population was just over 1,000 people. Since then, funding for housing and urban development programs has been slashed by 80 percent while the number of homeless has skyrocketed, leading to what Osborne calls a "tragic and dysfunctional" situation.

"Nobody has taken responsibility. The cities have been let off the hook, and it's been a bad non-solution to the problem," said Osborne.

As the homeless problem has become more visible and touched the lives of a greater number of people, public attitudes about homelessness have shifted. Opinion polls from 10 years ago show a general belief that homeless people were entirely at fault for their situation. Today, Gallup polls show that 70 percent of people would be willing to donate money for the cause, and 54 percent favor raising taxes to eradicate homelessness. The shift in opinion demonstrates a greater understanding on the part of the public than in years past of the link between homelessness and wider economic problems such as poverty. As widespread economic troubles grip the nation, the demographics of homelessness shift toward people suffering sudden and unexpected medical emergencies or other high-impact financial losses.

Alicia Lara, vice president of community investment for the Los Angeles United Way, talked about the shrinking number of people able to dismiss the problem as something "that happens over there. I don't have to worry about it in my neighborhood."

Speakers at the outset of the conference emphasized the need to cast aside the antiquated models centered on temporary solutions such as homeless shelters and move toward using permanent, affordable housing; job training; in-house social services and greater personal responsiveness on the part of ground-level social workers to eliminate homelessness for good.

Lara explained some of the frustrations borne out of the past models. "There is a level of fatigue among the people funding the efforts because they are not seeing results or changes for their efforts," she said.

Lara pinpointed chronic poverty as the greatest obstacle to defeating homelessness. People lacking the resources or opportunities to work their own way out of poverty are becoming stuck in a cycle of attempting to find space in shelters each night and unable to acquire occupational skills or money to obtain stable housing.

Part of the solution, Lara said, is identifying the most vulnerable members of the homeless population and striving to meet their needs. Such efforts are now underway on Skid Row, as Project 50, a transplant program from New York City's highly successful efforts to defeat homelessness, has worked to provide permanent housing, health care, drug treatment and mental health services to the 50 inhabitants the group identified as the most vulnerable.

Project 50 is seen as a small-scale version of the model Los Angeles will move toward in its efforts to wipe out homelessness. "The kind of leadership that you want to develop, reward and promote is the leadership that can change systems and structures and paradigms. We must ask 'how do we solve this together?'" said Osborne.

Marvin Southard, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, discussed the attitude that social work managers need to adopt to confront the challenges ahead in the fight to end homelessness. "None of us has a chance of getting through this alone. This is an opportunity for altruism to surface because of pragmatic circumstances," he said.

Southard commented about the search for a new motto for the department. He was reminded of the big picture as clients insisted the motto include a message of hope. They settled on "partnering with families and communities for hope, wellness and recovery." He said the dogged insistence on the emphasis of hope reminded him: "The point is never about the services. It's about the lives of the people the services are meant to help."

USC School of Social Work Professor Michálle Mor Barak discussed the homeless problem from a global perspective. Highlighting the varying causes of homelessness around the world with photos and staggering statistics, Mor Barak stressed the need for diversity within the field of social work management to best serve the needs of a diverse community of homeless people. She shared her international experiences of seeing how homeless people lived and survived around the globe.

"It's just heartbreaking," said Mor Barak.

The USC School of Social Work's involvement with the institute is a part of an initiative to reduce the homeless population of Los Angeles. The program is the only one of its kind on the West Coast. The initiative was given a boost last year by a $2-million donation from the Watt Family Foundation. The school has since worked to develop a long-term program of research, education and community cooperation that includes training students to help residents of Skid Row receive housing, job training and social services.

The initiative is part of the collaborative efforts among academia, social work management and government. Homelessness, each of the speakers believes, is a problem that can be completely solved with the right approach and allocation of resources.

"There may be impossible situations, but this one isn't," Southard said.