Because he is slick, assertive and American, Philip Mangano elicits sharply polarized reactions in Canada.
To his fans, the head of Washington's homelessness agency is a can-do guy with a realistic plan to get people off the streets.
To his detractors, Mangano is a smoke-and-mirrors artist who is merely pushing the poor out of sight.
There seems to be no middle ground, which is unfortunate. Some of Mangano's tactics would work in this country and some wouldn't. Some of his ideas make sense and some warrant skepticism.
What is beyond dispute is that he's doing more than any Canadian official – federal or provincial – to combat homelessness.
The silver-tongued Bostonian has been to Canada frequently in the last few months. He was the opening speaker at last month's annual conference of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities in Calgary. He has visited Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver and Red Deer.
Mangano's message is simple: Chronic homelessness can be beaten with a mixture of tough love, local ingenuity and national leadership. Step one is to move people out of the shelter system, which perpetuates dependency. Once they have a home, their other problems – addiction, mental illness, poverty – can be dealt with.
He leaves it up to civic officials to decide whether to use rent supplements, rehabilitate old buildings, encourage private development or build non-profit housing.
Mangano's goal is to get as many American cities and towns as possible to adopt 10-year plans to eradicate homelessness. So far, he has enlisted 302 municipalities in the United States and two in Canada (Calgary and Red Deer).
Michael Shapcott of Toronto's Wellesley Institute on urban health says Mangano may be a fine performer, but he's failed to convince his own boss, President George Bush, to back him up. Washington's housing budget has shrunk by 30 per cent in the last two years.
Moreover, he points out, Mangano is putting the onus on municipalities to deal with homelessness. It was exactly this kind of downloading that created Canada's housing crisis in the first place.
Gordon Laird, who has just completed a study of homelessness for the Calgary-based Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership, thinks Mangano is on the right track. He is treating homelessness as a solvable problem. He is getting governments across the United States to take action.
"Mangano leads a charge against homelessness that is still years ahead of Canada," Laird says. "Canadians can afford to listen closely – even if it means admitting that George Bush's America can teach them something about social justice."
One of the few people with a foot in both camps is Sean Gadon, director of community partnerships in Toronto's affordable housing office.
As a city official, he sees the practical difficulties in Mangano's approach. But as a housing advocate (he is president of Raising the Roof, a national charity dedicated to ending homelessness), he welcomes the attention the high-profile Bush appointee has brought to the cause.
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