HUD Opens Hotline to Benefit the Homeless

WASHINGTON — With the harsh, wet weather linked to El Nino already making itself felt in Southern California, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development on Monday conducted an unprecedented national teleconference aimed at creating community plans to help the homeless during the dangerous cold season.

“Where homelessness is unacceptable at any time of the year, homelessness in the winter months can literally be a death sentence--that’s what we want to prevent,” HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo said in a speech broadcast to about 5,000 providers of services to the homeless at 70 sites nationwide. El Nino, he added, “makes a bad situation worse.”

Cuomo unveiled a national homelessness hotline--(800) HUD-1010--which will connect people to resources in their community. Sixty HUD employees will staff the line from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. EST, and it will be paid for through existing funds, a HUD spokesman said. Cuomo also announced HUD’s “Take 10” program, which encourages people to take 10 “minutes, hours, weeks or months” to help the homeless.

“Until everyone is sharing in [the nation’s economic] success, none of us has succeeded,” Cuomo said.