Editorial: A big help — on paper

Monday, Dec. 6, 2004 | 8:59 a.m.

A program to help homeless people get on their feet is instead keeping federal workers seated at their desks while they shuffle paperwork.

The McKinney-Vento Act of 1987 required federal agencies to compile quarterly lists of their surplus property, then send the lists to the Housing and Urban Development Department, where staff members would combine them into one long list and publish them each Friday in the Federal Register. Homeless organizations were to have first priority in applying for this property.

For the past 17 years the list-making and routing and publishing routine has been conducted very efficiently except for one thing -- none of the surplus property is being claimed.

This is because most of it is junk. And even if there were value, there is no logistical plan for getting the property into the hands of the homeless. An example is the recent listing of three aging mobile homes at Great Basin National Park in Central Nevada. By filling out the right applications, a homeless person or advocacy group could claim them. But the homes are near-wrecks, and pulling them out of the park would have to be at the claimant's expense.

If this program can't be made to work for the homeless, then it should be dumped and replaced by one that can.