Chamber's homeless lobby

An interesting turn for the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, which will send a delegation to Washington next month to push for more federal dollars aimed at beefing up homeless services. They're especially interested in changing the federal formula for determining how homeless dollars get divvied out. Currently, the formula is based not on the actual number of homeless people in the area, but on other factors, such as the age of an area's housing stock. From the Downtown News:

As a result, Los Angeles ends up with fewer per capita resources than other areas. The United Way calculates that Los Angeles receives about $1,706 per homeless person per year in federal funding, based on the $82 million the region got in McKinney-Vento money and divided by the 48,000 people estimated to be homeless on any given night. By comparison, Chicago, whose 2009 official homeless count was 6,240, gets $8,119 per person, Marge said.

The Chamber is focusing its attention on permanent supportive housing, a controversial approach to the issue in which the 10 percent to 20 percent of the homeless population that suffer from severe addiction or mental problems receive assistance through housing and counseling services. The approach has been successful, as far as it goes, though some homeless advocates argue that not enough attention is being paid to the "situational" homeless, or folks who find themselves in shelters or even on the streets simply because they have lost their jobs. Those numbers are growing.