Bills by Sen. Susan Collins and Rep. John Baldacci pose the question of whether HUD can really provide Continuum of Care grants for homeless assistance if the agency won’t do it on a continuum. Their proposal to guarantee states a base level of funding would let organizations that serve the homeless count on at least minimal, ongoing assistance.

The legislation, called the Homeless Assistance Fairness Funding Act, springs from Maine’s unfortunate experience of being kicked in the pants by the Department of Housing and Urban Development repeatedly in the last year. The drama of the missing ice-storm money and the failure to win grants for the homeless show the need for legislation that would bring a measure of predictablity to what has proven to be an unpredictable agency.

The identical bills by Sen. Collins and Rep. Baldacci would guarantee that each state receives at least one-half of 1 percent of the funding from the three programs that make up the Continuum of Care initiative — the Supportive Housing Program, the Shelter + Care Program and the Section 8 Moderate Rehabilitation Program. At the current level of allocation, that works out to states getting at least $3.5 million.

That amount of money might seem small by Washington standards, but it means that states like Maine, which came within 1 or 2 points last winter of winning grants for more than $4 million, won’t suddenly be cut off without a penny. The legislation is a way to protect the homeless in states that are trying their best. HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo, for instance, visited several Maine homeless-assistance projects last year and presented them with “Best Practices” awards before defunding them a couple of months later.

Maine wasn’t alone in losing money for 1999 — North Dakota, Kansas and Nebraska also lost out. If there is a tendency at HUD to assume that only states with large urban regions need money to deal with homelessness, its own representatives in rural America can point to serious need everywhere. Maine’s small population of 1.2 million people contains 14,000 who are homeless.

Shelter operators or providers of transitional housing point to a consistency of resources and opportunity to guide the homeless out of their situation, but it is hard to have either if they do not know whether next year’s budget will include several million dollars or nothing. The Collins-Baldacci legislation solves this problem and reduces the chance that HUD will provide unpleasant surprises in the future.