Agencies Ordered to Keep Property Open to Homeless
Agencies Ordered to Keep Property Open to Homeless
(CN) - A federal judge on Thursday upheld and strengthened a law requiring government agencies to make their unused property available to the homeless.
The Stewart B. McKinnley Homeless Assistance Act of 1987 requires government agencies to determine which of their properties are "excess," "surplus," "unutilized" or "underutilized," and then determine if any of them would be "suitable" for use by the homeless.
A year after the bill passed, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty and others sued the government for alleged noncompliance. They won an injunction imposing stricter requirements than those mandated by law, and the court has since modified and updated that order, most recently in 1993.
The order now overlaps substantially with the law.
Two decades later, various government agencies asked the court to vacate the 1993 order based on "changed circumstances."
http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/03/22/55986.htm
