"President Bush has made it a top priority to confront the root causes of homelessness," said Secretary Martinez, who also is chairman of the Interagency Council on Homelessness. "The Administration's new vision places a greater emphasis on coordinating our assistance and preventing individuals from becoming homeless in the first place."
The plan was announced jointly by Secretary Martinez; HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson; VA Secretary Anthony Principi; and, Philip Mangano, the new executive director of the Interagency Council. Mangano has day-to-day responsibility for coordinating the activities of the Council and the homeless assistance efforts of its 18 federal member agencies.
The Secretary's Friday speech to the National Alliance outlined elements of this comprehensive plan, including concentrating more efforts on preventing homelessness. His remarks came one day after the White House hosted a meeting of the Interagency Council on Homelessness - the first in six years. President Bush has reactivated the Council to coordinate the activities of 18 federal agencies with programs that assist homeless individuals and families.
Read Secretary Martinez's remarks to the National Alliance to End Homelessness and learn more about the New Federal Response to Help the Homeless. In addition, Secretary Martinez's Address to the 2002 annual meeting of the National Alliance to End Homelessness will be broadcast on HUD-TV at 1:00 PM, EDT, and also will be available as a HUD webcast.
Learn more about the work of the Interagency Council on Homelessness (www.ich.gov).
Once again, Secretary Martinez and I want to thank every HUD employee who participated in the Department's Organizational Assessment Survey (OAS). The survey, conducted earlier this year, was designed to measure HUD employees' satisfaction with their workplaces.
We promised to share a summary of the survey results with you, and they are now available on HUD's internal Intranet. The breakout includes charts and tables that show a summary of employees' responses to major categories of the survey, a benchmark comparison with all Federal agencies, and also to a survey of Fortune 500 company employees. To see the results, HUD employees should go to HUD@Work where you'll find a link to the survey results.
We said we would take your survey opinions seriously, and we have begun to follow up on your responses. For example, you said you wanted more and better training opportunities, and last week we held HUD's first National Training Awareness Week. We wanted to focus everyone's attention - from the newest staffer to HUD's senior policy officials - on the importance of training to the success of HUD's mission, and our employees' career development. This was a good beginning.
Again, thank you for your participation in the 2002 OAS, and your commitment to HUD's mission. We look forward to working with you to help make HUD the effective, high-performing agency our nation needs to help the people and communities we serve.
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