The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness has selected Lincoln County Commissioner Bill Hall to receive its annual national "Home for Every American" County Leadership Award. He is one of two county officials who will receive this award in 2008.

Hall will be honored for his leadership, partnership, and results at the council's third annual national summit for jurisdictional leaders April 10 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The summit will be attended by more than 250 city, county and state officials from across the nation and Canada who are leading 10-Year plans to end homelessness. It will feature an address by Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs Dr. James B. Peake.

County Executive Thomas DeGise of Hudson County New Jersey is the other recipient.

Philip Mangano, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council of Homelessness, in announcing the award, said that Hall was an active partner in the 2006 first-ever Oregon Leadership Summit on Ending Chronic Homelessness convened in Salem by the Interagency Council to bring together state officials and jurisdictions engaged in 10-year planning efforts.

"Commissioner Hall encouraged partnership and cited the urgency of undertaking a 10-year plan in his rural community of Newport/ Lincoln County, noting the availability of the Housing First technology," said Mangano. "I find this approach so promising because it makes the best sense from an economic perspective. Providing people with housing really is less costly than arresting them and putting them in jail or treating them in the emergency room, and it's also the most humane approach. It gives people the best chance to achieve stable and productive lives."

In 2007, Hall, co-author of the Lincoln County Plan, joined community partners for the unveiling of At Home in Lincoln County, the culmination of more than a year's effort to gather data, solicit community input through forums, stakeholder meetings, and interviews with people experiencing homelessness, and identify the best evidence-based practices at work across the nation that could be brought to bear in ending homelessness in Lincoln County. The unveiling was held jointly with the community's inaugural Project Homeless Connect event.

At Home in Lincoln County incorporates Housing First and permanent supportive housing strategies with special attention to those experiencing chronic homelessness, young people aging out of foster care, victims of domestic violence, re-entry strategies for those previously incarcerated or on probation, and workforce housing.

The mission of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness is to coordinate the federal response to homelessness and to create a national partnership at every level of government and every element of the private sector to reduce and end homelessness in the nation. Revitalized by President Bush in 2002, the council is engaged in carrying out the President's commitment to end chronic homelessness. In doing so, the council has forged an unprecedented national partnership that extends from the White House to the streets and includes federal, state, and local government, advocates, providers, consumers and faith-based organizations. For more information, visit www.usich.gov.

-Newport News-Times, April 11, 2008