If President Bush wants to end homelessness, he should protect federal rent subsidies. There are no magic carpets that whisk people out of homelessness, but subsidies work. Poor people pay 30 percent of their income in rent with a so-called Section 8 voucher, and the federal government pays the rest.

Unfortunately, Bush's 2005 budget proposal is $1.6 billion below the amount needed to maintain the current level of assistance and could cause 250,000 households to lose vouchers, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit research organization in Washington.

Bush's budget would also distribute voucher funding in block grants and loosen the rules. This could lead to states requiring payments of more than 30 percent of income for rent, an impossible burden for the poorest residents.

In Massachusetts there is no money for new vouchers. In April, people who had vouchers almost lost them when the state's Department of Housing and Community Development faced a funding shortage, and officials prepared 650 eviction notices. The crisis was avoided after the state's congressional delegation and Governor Romney objected, and the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development increased funding to account for inflation.

But if Bush's 2005 proposal goes through, more than 8,000 people in the Massachusetts voucher program could face eviction, according to the state. That would be 44 percent of the state's 18,500 vouchers.

It's a bad time to kick people out of their homes. The state is still working its way through a list of more than 2,000 people who were promised vouchers; more than 620 are still left. And the state can provide these only through attrition: Each month some 80 households leave the program and their vouchers are reused.

There are an additional 50,000 names of those who want vouchers on the state's waiting list. Housing officials say they can use attrition to meet their needs, but not until 2005.

In a report released last month by the Center for Social Policy at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, researchers estimate that 28,800 individuals were served by the state's emergency homeless shelters in 2003, up from 25,000 in 1999. Of those surveyed, 60 percent cited financial problems or unemployment as the cause of their homelessness.

Shelter workers are seeing more chronic problems because of state cuts in health insurance coverage and the loss of thousands of drug and alcohol detox beds. And without vouchers, staffers say, average stays are stretching from months to a year or more.

With housing costs at record levels, even people who get services and jobs will still need rent vouchers to afford apartments. Bush should invest more wisely. For many homeless people, vouchers are the key to getting a home.

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