DC Mayor-elect Vincent Gray recently stated that he didn't want to create a housing program so good that would attract homeless people from other parts of the country. He alluded to a program in Paris that proved so effective that it drew homeless people from all over France and overwhelmed the program. His concerns are legitimate.

Nonetheless, a successful program for ending homelessness should not be discontinued or rejected due to working too well. To solve this problem, it is necessary for our federal government to 1) make it illegal for any state or local government to push its homeless off on another and 2) to standardize best practices so that the homeless need not inundate any particular jurisdiction in order to acquire housing and/or services that should be afforded to them everywhere.

Photo credit: Cristiano Betta