Fatimah Ali: The next 10-year plan to end homelessness

IT'S HARD to believe Mitch Snyder has been dead for 20 years.

But what's even more peculiar is that the work he dedicated his life to - fighting for the rights of the homeless - has become an even bigger problem three decades after he called for the problem to be solved.

Despite the efforts of Snyder and dozens of other tireless warriors across America, the homeless population has continued to grow. By the best estimates, there are probably more than a million homeless people at any given time, a number softened by counts that don't include those who lose their homes and move in with families and friends.

Most people who live outside Washington, D.C., have probably never heard of Snyder. As one of the nation's most outspoken advocates for the homeless 30 years ago, he was a fixture in what was at that time one of the largest homeless shelters in the country, the Community for Creative Non-Violence at 2nd and D streets in Northwest Washington.

Since his suicide two decades ago last month, the corner has been renamed D Street and Mitch Snyder Place in honor of his tireless advocacy.

Back in the 1980s, I was a reporter working in Washington news radio. I met Snyder when I was out covering a story about his shelter. As a then-single mother, I was always aware that many people, single moms in particular, are just a step away from being homeless.

I had been warned by some of my more cynical colleagues that Snyder definitely had an agenda, and knew how to use the media to get his message across. But because I'd always been an advocate for poor people, I didn't have a problem with that because his message needed to be heard in the mainstream new outlets.

What intrigued me about him was his dedication to helping America understand the reasons behind homelessness, with an end goal in mind of how to end it. It was a dream that he sadly never personally realized.

If Snyder were still alive today, I think he'd be devastated that his call to end homelessness in 10 years has made so little headway that we're hearing the same message today.

And I think he'd also be disappointed in the ways that homelessness in America has changed, and that we now so much more often find entire families and not just single people living on the streets or in shelters.

Homelessness has been a chronic and preventable problem for decades and solving this problem includes compassion as well as support systems for the homeless - including both job- and housing counseling, as well as, in some cases, long-term mental-health services.

The White House recently unveiled a 10-year strategy that uses 16 social service agencies to attempt - once again - to wipe out family homelessness in the U.S. over the next 10 years, and dispatch the problem overall in 15.

U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan has targeted almost $14 million to assist programs in Pennsylvania that serve the homeless. Estimates are that in Philadelphia alone, there are at least 3,000 people who are homeless at any given time, but I believe that number to be much higher.

That in mind, you may have read about, or seen, a newspaper called One Step Away, created and sold by residents of several local homeless shelters and managed by the nonprofit Resources for Human Development. They recently hired me as the paper's development manager.

My professional objective has always been to disseminate information that helps people to empower their own lives. One Step Away is a means to help homeless people hone an entrepreneurial craft to help them get back on their feet.

Over the years, I have reported many stories about some of Philadelphia's tireless advocates for the homeless who've spent their professional lives working on behalf of this issue.

The list is long, but one of the first names on it is Leona Smith, who once told me that "homeless people aren't just looking for a hand out, they want a hand up."

Fatimah Ali is a regular contributor to the Daily News, and blogs about food at healthysoutherncomforts.com.