“We very cognizantly decided to take our shots at the federal government,” Sullivan says. “We knew it would behoove us to put down how we felt about it.”

BAD SAMARITAN?

Cambridge officials say that new federal regulations also make it harder to provide services for some who need it most.

“It’s against the law to help me,” insists a homeless man at the Christ Church dinner as he picks M&Ms from a chocolate cookie.

One of the lucky individuals to make it off the Section 8 waiting list, this man says he voluntarily left two federally-subsidized apartments in recent years. The first was too small, the second too noisy.

He can barely hear a reporter’s questions—perhaps on account of the bright-orange ear plugs he wears—and he refuses to divulge his first name.

The Bush administration’s next budget allocates $200 million to the much-heralded Samaritan Initiative, which specifically targets the needs of individuals who—like this man—are “resistant to services,” according to Philip F. Mangano, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.

The federal government mandates that permanent supported housing programs devote at least 70 percent of funding to the “chronically homeless.” And for new programs funded under the Samaritan Initiative, the Bush administration requires that all clients be “chronically homeless.”

But Cambridge social service providers say the definition of this phrase is too limited.

To qualify as “chronically homeless,” an individual must have been in shelters or on the street for a full year—or must have experienced four episodes of homelessness in the last three years.

So if an individual who has been homeless for decades accepts transitional housing—even for a short period—“poof, you lose your eligibility,” says Fred Berman, a planner for the Cambridge Department of Human Service Programs.

The definition also excludes married couples and families. And to qualify as “chronically homeless,” one must have a diagnosed disability—a requirement that makes it more difficult to provide certain services to those with unacknowledged physical and mental illnesses, according to Semonoff.

For instance, it’s neither realistic nor fair to expect HIV-positive individuals to reveal their condition to provider agencies in order to obtain basic services, says Katya E. Fels ’93, executive director of the Cambridge-based organization On The Rise, which assists women who are homeless or who face crises such as trauma and abuse.

By requiring aid recipients to report that they have a disability, the definition of “chronically homeless” can seem “pretty stigmatizing,” Fels says.

But Mangano says that lists of individuals who have died on the streets “are composed almost exclusively of those experiencing chronic homelessness,” and he says that segment of the population should be prioritized.