Robert G. Marbut, Jr. is an American homelessness consultant and professor who was appointed by President Donald Trump as the Executive Director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, which coordinates programs across 19 federal departments.
Political career
In 1989, Marbut was selected for a White House fellowship in the executive office of President George H. W. Bush. In 1995, Marbut won a council seat representing a city district of San Antonio. He was re-elected in 1997. In 2009, Texas Governor Rick Perry appointed Marbut as a board member of the OneStar National Service Commission Board, a state agency promoting community service in Texas that oversees the administration of all AmeriCorps programs in Texas.
Haven for Hope
Marbut was the founding president and CEO of Haven for Hope of Bexar County, Inc., which opened in 2010 and described itself as a transformational campus. In a 2013 press release, the organization stated that since its founding, with the assistance of co-located services "nearly 1,100 people have been guided from homelessness to permanent housing". He served as CEO until August of 2010. The project was praised by Texas GovernorGreg Abbott and some San Antonio city leaders, but others were critical of Marbut's approach. 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.
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. 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". 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. Some activists called Marbut's approach outdated, punitive and patronizing to homeless people, and more effective at hiding them from downtowns than at solving homelessness. In response, Marbut said, "I believe in Housing Fourth" — awarding permanent housing after residents have shown their personal lives are in order. "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." 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. 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. 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. "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."
In December 2019, Marbut was chosen to lead the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness in the Trump administration, succeeding Matthew Doherty. The appointment was opposed by homeless advocacy groups including the National Low Income Housing Coalition and Invisible People, along with 75 members of Congress. 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.
Marbut served as chair and president of USA Pentathlon and as its executive director and secretary general. As a volunteer, Marbut was active with the United States Olympic Committee: on the USOC board of directors, a member of the executive committee, an officer on the USOC officers group, 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. Marbut worked as an administrator for the San Antonio Spurs.
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. This affair produced a child simultaneous to his own wife's pregnancy. 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.
