Mary Ellen Hombs
Encyclopedia
Mary Ellen Hombs was the Deputy Director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness
, a governmental entity that is made up of the heads of various federal departments and agencies with the mission of developing a comprehensive federal approach to end homelessness. She served from 2003 to 2009.
Hombs co-authored Homelessness in America: A Forced March to Nowhere with Mitch Snyder
. She was an important member of the Community for Creative Non-Violence during the 1970s and 1980s, along with Snyder, Carol Fennelly, Harold Moss, and Lin Romano. A 1981 Washington Post article featuring the efforts of Hombs, spoke of her sacrificing dreams of a career, marriage, or normal middle-class lifestyle in order to serve the Washington, D.C. homeless population seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days per year. Hombs stated her goal as convincing churches and the government to provide shelters enticing enough that “even the most isolated, the most hardened person could feel the desire to come out of the cold.” She assisted the CCNV by cooking meals to feed over six hundred people a day and helping run the organization’s Drop-In Center.
Interagency Council on Homelessness
The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness is a United States independent federal agency within the executive branch and is composed of 19 Cabinet secretaries and agency heads. The current chairperson is Department of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis; Department of Health and Human Services...
, a governmental entity that is made up of the heads of various federal departments and agencies with the mission of developing a comprehensive federal approach to end homelessness. She served from 2003 to 2009.
Hombs co-authored Homelessness in America: A Forced March to Nowhere with Mitch Snyder
Mitch Snyder
Mitch Snyder was an American advocate for the homeless. He was the subject of a made-for-television 1986 biopic, Samaritan: The Mitch Snyder Story, starring Martin Sheen.-History:...
. She was an important member of the Community for Creative Non-Violence during the 1970s and 1980s, along with Snyder, Carol Fennelly, Harold Moss, and Lin Romano. A 1981 Washington Post article featuring the efforts of Hombs, spoke of her sacrificing dreams of a career, marriage, or normal middle-class lifestyle in order to serve the Washington, D.C. homeless population seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days per year. Hombs stated her goal as convincing churches and the government to provide shelters enticing enough that “even the most isolated, the most hardened person could feel the desire to come out of the cold.” She assisted the CCNV by cooking meals to feed over six hundred people a day and helping run the organization’s Drop-In Center.
Selected works
- AIDS Crisis in America: A Reference Handbook by Mary Ellen Hombs, Eric K. Lerner, Hardcover, Abc-Clio Inc, ISBN 1576070700 (1-57607-070-0) 1992
- American Homelessness: A Reference Handbook by Mary Ellen Hombs, Hardcover, Abc-Clio Inc, ISBN 1576072479 (1-57607-247-9) 1990
- Homelessness in America: A Forced March to Nowhere by Mary Ellen Hombs, Softcover, Community for Creative, ISBN 0686398793 (0-686-39879-3) 1982
- Welfare Reform: A Reference Handbook by Mary Ellen Hombs, Hardcover, Abc-Clio Inc, ISBN 0874368448 (0-87436-844-8) 1996
External Links
- Mary Ellen Hombs Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library, The George Washington University.