Robert G. Marbut

Last updated
Robert G. Marbut
Born(1960-05-05)May 5, 1960
Savannah, Georgia, U.S.
Alma mater University of Texas (Ph.D.)
Occupation(s)Former USICH Executive Director, Consultant, Professor
Websitewww.RobertMarbut.org

Robert G. Marbut, Jr. (born May 5, 1960) is an American homelessness consultant and professor who served as the Executive Director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness from 2019 to 2021 after being appointed by then-President Donald Trump. [1] [2] [3] [4]

Contents

Political career

In 1989, Marbut was selected for a White House fellowship in the executive office of President George H. W. Bush. [5] [6]

In 1995, Marbut won a council seat representing a city district of San Antonio.[ citation needed ] He was re-elected in 1997.[ citation needed ]

In 2009, Texas Governor Rick Perry appointed Marbut [7] as a board member of the OneStar National Service Commission Board (OSNSC), a state agency promoting community service in Texas that oversees the administration of all AmeriCorps programs in Texas. [8]

Haven for Hope

Marbut was the founding president and CEO of Haven for Hope, which opened in 2010, and remained a CEO for a short while. [9]

The project was praised by Texas Governor Greg Abbott and some San Antonio city leaders, but others were critical of Marbut's approach. [10] Shelter and food were reported to be contingent upon good behavior such as passing drug tests and proving sobriety; those who could not pass sobriety tests were exiled to "Prospect Courtyard" to sleep outside rather than the sheltered facility. [11] [12]

Consulting

Marbut consulted on homelessness for cities such as St. Petersburg, Sarasota, Daytona Beach, Pensacola, Panama City and Key West in Florida; Salt Lake City, Utah; Fresno, California; and Fort Smith, Arkansas. [10] [11]

According to The Huffington Post, Marbut's advice to most communities was to limit food handouts and build a large shelter that stays open all day and doesn’t turn anyone away. He called his approach "The Velvet Hammer"; since then he has said he prefers the phrase "The Velvet Gavel". [11]

Marbut's methods were criticized by housing activists who preferred a policy widely adopted since the 1990s called "Housing First," which finds apartments and houses instead of shelters for homeless people. [11] [12] [13] Some activists called Marbut's approach outdated, punitive and patronizing to homeless people, and more effective at hiding them from downtowns than at solving homelessness. [13] [2] [10]

In response, Marbut said, "I believe in Housing Fourth" — awarding permanent housing after residents have shown their personal lives are in order. [11] "I often say, 'Having a home is not the problem for the homeless,'" Marbut told the magazine Next City . "It’s maintaining a financial stability that allows you to maintain your homestead." [14]

In Pinellas County, Florida, Marbut consulted on a 470-bed shelter called Safe Harbor, which opened in 2011 in a former jail building next to the current jail outside of St. Petersburg. It was run by the sheriff's department and included a "penalty box" in a fenced-in area of the parking lot where residents who broke rules would sleep. Most residents stayed for less than a month, according to sheriff's department data, and few were known to have found permanent housing afterward. Between 2011 and 2013, 7 percent of those leaving the shelter found permanent housing, 3 percent went to another shelter or a friend or relative, and 67 percent headed for an “unknown” destination. [11] [12]

In Daytona Beach, Marbut disguised himself as a homeless man for research. Afterward he advised Daytona Beach city leaders to stop food handouts by churches and other community groups that he said were "enabling" people experiencing homelessness. [10] He recommended a large shelter similar to San Antonio and St. Petersburg that wouldn’t turn away people who were drunk or high, and would offer services like drug counseling and haircuts. [11]

"If you give cash out on the street" to homeless people, "about 93 percent of it goes to alcohol, drugs and prostitution," Marbut told NPR in 2014. "And if you give food on the street, you end up in a very convoluted way, but still an important way, you end up preventing people from going into 24/7 programming." [15]

Trump administration

In December 2019, Marbut was chosen by then-President Donald Trump to succeed Matthew Doherty as Executive Director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, which coordinates programs across 19 federal departments. [1] [2] [3] The appointment was opposed by advocacy groups including the National Low Income Housing Coalition and Invisible People, along with 75 members of Congress. [16] An attorney at the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty expressed concerns about Marbut's opposition to the widely-used '"Housing First" model, which prioritizes shelter before other issues such as health or substance abuse. [1] Marbut left the job in 2021 after briefly staying on in the Biden administration. [4]

Education and academics

In 2005, Marbut earned a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, department of government program with three minors: American politics, international relations, and political behavior. [17] He also earned a master of arts in government from the University of Texas at Austin in 2003 and a master of arts in criminal justice from Claremont Graduate School in 1985. As an undergraduate at Claremont McKenna/Men's College he earned a bachelor of arts with majors in economics, political science, and psychology. [18]

Marbut is a tenured full professor at Northwest Vista College and has taught at Texas State University and University of Texas at San Antonio. [19]

Athletics and sports administration

Marbut served as chair and president of USA Pentathlon (1994-1997) and as its executive director and secretary general (2001-2005). [20]

As a volunteer, Marbut was active with the United States Olympic Committee: on the USOC board of directors (1992-2005), a member of the executive committee (2000-2004), [21] an officer on the USOC officers group (2000-2004), [22] and chair of the National Governing Bodies Council, the management organization for all the winter and summer Olympic sports, as well as all the Pan American Game sports (2000-2005). [23] Marbut worked as an administrator for the San Antonio Spurs. [24]

Personal life

Marbut was married to Mary Hartman from 1985 to 1996. During their marriage, Marbut engaged in an affair with an executive at the San Antonio Sports Foundation who was also married. [25] This affair produced a child simultaneous to his own wife's pregnancy. [26] In 1998, Marbut sought to establish paternity and joint custody of the child he produced from his affair, in tandem with murmurs that he was considering a mayoral run. [27]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Cisneros</span> American politician and businessman (born 1947)

Henry Gabriel Cisneros is an American politician and businessman. He served as the mayor of San Antonio, Texas, from 1981 to 1989, the second Latino mayor of a major American city and the city's first since 1842. A Democrat, Cisneros served as the 10th Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in the administration of President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997. As HUD Secretary, Cisneros was credited with initiating the revitalization of many public housing developments and with formulating policies that contributed to achieving the nation's highest ever rate of home ownership. In his role as the President's chief representative to the cities, Cisneros personally worked in more than two hundred cities spread over all fifty states. Cisneros's decision to leave the HUD position and not serve a second term was overshadowed by controversy involving payments to his former mistress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Homeless shelter</span> Service agency that provides temporary residence for homeless people

Homeless shelters are a type of service that provides temporary residence for homeless individuals and families. Shelters exist to provide residents with safety and protection from exposure to the weather while simultaneously reducing the environmental impact on the community. They are similar to, but distinguishable from, various types of emergency shelters, which are typically operated for specific circumstances and populations—fleeing natural disasters or abusive social circumstances. Extreme weather conditions create problems similar to disaster management scenarios, and are handled with warming centers, which typically operate for short durations during adverse weather.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julian Castro</span> American politician (born 1974)

Julián Castro is an American lawyer and politician from San Antonio, Texas. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the youngest member of President Obama's cabinet, serving as the 16th United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 2014 to 2017. Castro served as the mayor of his native San Antonio, Texas from 2009 until he joined Barack Obama's cabinet in 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joaquin Castro</span> American politician (born 1974)

Joaquin Castro is an American lawyer and Democratic politician who has represented Texas's 20th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives since 2013. The district includes just over half of his native San Antonio. He currently serves on the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doug Roby</span> American athlete and official

Douglas Fergusson Roby was an American sportsman and Olympics official. After playing football at Phillips University and the University of Michigan, he worked for American Metal Products Company, an automobile parts manufacturer, from 1923 to 1963. From 1951 to 1953, he was the president of the Amateur Athletic Union, then America's governing body for many amateur sports. He was vice president (1953–65) and president (1965–68) of the United States Olympic Committee and one of two American members of the International Olympic Committee (1952–84). As president of the USOC during the 1968 Summer Olympics, he expelled African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos after their raised-fist Black Power salute during a medal ceremony.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United States Interagency Council on Homelessness</span> U.S. executive branch agency

The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) is an independent federal agency within the U.S. executive branch that leads the implementation of the federal strategic plan to prevent and end homelessness. USICH is advised by a Council, which includes the heads of its 20 federal member agencies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Homelessness</span> Lacking stable, safe, functional housing

Homelessness, also known as houselessness or being unhoused or unsheltered, is the condition of lacking stable, safe, and functional housing. The general category includes disparate situations, such as living on the streets, moving between temporary accommodation such as family or friends, living in boarding houses with no security of tenure, and people who leave their domiciles because of civil conflict and are refugees within their country.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Todd Gloria</span> American politician (born 1978)

Todd Rex Gloria is an American politician serving as the 37th and current mayor of San Diego since 2020. As mayor, he is the chief executive officer in the city of San Diego. He is a member of the Democratic Party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brett Giroir</span> American physician-scientist (born 1960)

Brett P. Giroir is an American pediatrician. He was formerly the U.S. assistant secretary for health, a four-star admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and an acting Food and Drug Administration commissioner.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Homelessness in the San Francisco Bay Area</span>

The San Francisco Bay Area comprises nine northern California counties and contains five of the ten most expensive counties in the United States. Strong economic growth has created hundreds of thousands of new jobs, but coupled with severe restrictions on building new housing units, it has resulted in a statewide housing shortage which has driven rents to extremely high levels. The Sacramento Bee notes that large cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles both attribute their recent increases in homeless people to the housing shortage, with the result that homelessness in California overall has increased by 15% from 2015 to 2017. In September 2019, the Council of Economic Advisers released a report in which they stated that deregulation of the housing markets would reduce homelessness in some of the most constrained markets by estimates of 54% in San Francisco, 40 percent in Los Angeles, and 38 percent in San Diego, because rents would fall by 55 percent, 41 percent, and 39 percent respectively. In San Francisco, a minimum wage worker would have to work approximately 4.7 full-time jobs to be able to spend less than 30% of their income on renting a two-bedroom apartment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Homelessness in California</span>

The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated that more than 181,399 people were experiencing homelessness in California in January 2023. This is one of the highest per capita rates in the nation, with 0.46% of residents estimated as being homeless. More than two-thirds of homeless people in California are unsheltered, which is the highest percentage of any state in the United States. 49% of the unsheltered homeless people in the United States live in California. Even those who are sheltered are so insecurely, with 90% of homeless adults in California reporting that they spent at least one night unsheltered in the past six months.

The Tornillo tent city was a temporary immigrant detention facility for children located in Tornillo, Texas and operated by BCFS on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement. The Department termed it an "emergency influx care facility" and named it the Tornillo Influx Facility. When it was built in June 2018, the capacity was 400 minor immigrants with a one month contract. It was later expanded to a capacity of 4,000 minors. As many as 2,800 teenagers were held at the site before its closure was announced in January 2019. This made it one of the largest facilities in ORR's Unaccompanied Alien Children Program. All immigrant children had left the facility by January 11, 2019. Nearly 6,200 minors cycled through the facility within the seven months it operated. The area was previously used for a few months in 2016 to process migrant families and unaccompanied minors.

BCFS Health and Human Services is a U.S. 501(c)(3) organization based in San Antonio, Texas, specializing in emergency shelter, foster care, and adoption. It was founded as an orphanage for Hispanic children in 1944.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Dickey (Texas politician)</span> American businessperson and politician

James Roy Dickey is an American executive from Austin, Texas and the former chairman of the Republican Party of Texas. He was elected by the 64-member Republican State Executive Committee meeting in Austin on June 3, 2017, and re-elected at the state convention on June 15, 2018. In his third campaign he was defeated by Allen West on July 20, 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip F. Mangano</span> American businessman

Philip F. Mangano is the President and CEO of The American Round Table to Abolish Homelessness, and former Executive Director of the White House United States Interagency Council on Homelessness.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matthew Doherty (homelessness official)</span> American nonprofit administrator

Matthew Doherty is a homelessness consultant who is former executive director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness. He currently advises the state of California and the city of Austin, Texas. He is a proponent of the "Housing First" model, which prioritizes finding private housing for homeless people instead of shelters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Candace Valenzuela</span> American politician

Candace Valenzuela is an American politician from the state of Texas. She is a regional administrator for the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. Valenzuela was the Democratic nominee for Texas's 24th congressional district in the 2020 elections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2022 United States House of Representatives elections in Texas</span>

The 2022 United States House of Representatives elections in Texas were held on November 8, 2022, to elect the 38 U.S. representatives from Texas, one from each of the state's 38 congressional districts. The state gained two seats after the results of the 2020 census. The elections coincided with other elections to the House of Representatives, other elections to the United States Senate, and various state and local elections. Primary elections took place on March 1, with primary runoffs scheduled for May 24 for districts where no candidate received over 50% of the vote.

Bethany House of Laredo is a non-profit organization based in Laredo, Texas, USA, serving homeless people, disabled people, impoverished people, elderly people and veterans Laredo and Webb County. The organization runs several centers providing shelters and services for homeless people and other vulnerable groups.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "He wanted to ban feeding homeless people. Now he's about to lead a federal homeless agency". Los Angeles Times. 2019-12-04. Retrieved 2019-12-09.
  2. 1 2 3 "White House Names Controversial Pick To Head Homelessness Office". NPR.org. Retrieved 2019-12-09.
  3. 1 2 Kesling, Ben (February 1, 2020). "New Homelessness Czar Takes Aim at Longstanding Policy". The Wall Street Journal . Retrieved February 3, 2020.
  4. 1 2 Goodykoontz, Emily; Theriault Boots, Michelle. "Bronson administration hires controversial former Trump 'homelessness czar' as consultant". Anchorage Daily News. Retrieved 2021-10-16.
  5. ↑ Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Administration of George H.W. Bush. Monday, June 12, 1989. Volume 25, pages 871-872.
  6. ↑ 1964-1995 White House Fellowship
  7. ↑ Office of the Governor Rick Perry - [Appointment] Gov. Perry Appoints Marbut to OneStar Foundation
  8. ↑ "Our Board | OneStar Foundation".
  9. ↑ Wang, Jackie (2019-12-12). "Former Haven for Hope President Takes Over Federal Homelessness Agency". San Antonio Report. Retrieved 2021-11-17.
  10. 1 2 3 4 Rich, Davis (2019-12-06). "Donald Trump's new, controversial homelessness czar has argued feeding homeless people enables them". The Texas Tribune. Retrieved 2020-05-25.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Delaney, Arthur (2015-03-09). "How A Traveling Consultant Helps America Hide The Homeless". HuffPost. Retrieved 2020-01-26.
  12. 1 2 3 Capps, Kriston. "Trump's Homeless Policy Gets a Controversial Boss". CityLab. Retrieved 2020-01-26.
  13. 1 2 O'donnell, Katy (4 December 2019). "Trump taps consultant who urged food ban on homeless to lead council". POLITICO. Retrieved 2020-05-29.
  14. ↑ "Cities Are Hiring This Controversial Homelessness Consultant". nextcity.org. Retrieved 2020-05-29.
  15. ↑ "Consultant On Homelessness: Cities Enable The Poor". NPR.org. Retrieved 2020-01-26.
  16. ↑ Walker, Alissa (2019-12-10). "Trump's new homeless czar a 'real-life horror,' say housing advocates". Curbed. Retrieved 2020-05-25.
  17. ↑ Dissertation, Marbut, Robert Gordon, May 2005
  18. ↑ Affairs, Office of Public; Claremont, Communications 400 N. Claremont Blvd (17 May 2002). "Robert Marbut, CMC '82 Honored by Psychology Department". cmc.edu.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  19. ↑ "Chicanochannel.com". chicanochannel.com.
  20. ↑ Journal, Stefan FatsisStaff Reporter of The Wall Street (2002-11-26). "Pentathlon Fans Parry Thrust To Condense Olympics Games". Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved 2020-01-26.
  21. ↑ "USOC's Image Has Reached 'All-Time Low'". Los Angeles Times. January 25, 2003.
  22. ↑ CNNSI.com - Olympics Sports - Top USOC leaders in revolt against president - Tuesday January 21, 2003 10:13 PM
  23. ↑ "U.S. Olympic Committee flap has S.A. connection". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 2020-01-26.
  24. ↑ Sports Hall of Fame - 2009 Coaches and Administrators - SpursReport.com
  25. ↑ Hunger, Kate. “Court Gives Marbut Joint Custody of Son.” San Antonio Express-News, 24 Sept. 1999.
  26. ↑ Casey, Rick. “Beyond Weakness: The Marbut Affair.” San Antonio Express News, 26 Sept. 1999.
  27. ↑ Casey, Rick. “Robert Marbut: Politics of Paternity.” San Antonio Express-News, 15 Mar. 1998.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.