Tom Ridge, the Department of Homeland Security’s first secretary, testified before the 9/11 Commission on a May morning in 2004. Ridge spoke before a hall packed with emotional New Yorkers, about two miles from the site of the World Trade Center. His subject, however, was Washington.

The Department of Homeland Security announced yesterday that it’s giving $100 million of stimulus funds to the Emergency Food and Shelter National Board Program — an organization that supplements emergency social service groups. It seems like a pretty legitimate use of the funds: The homeless setting up tent cities in California sure could use emergency housing, and food banks have fielded increasing demand for months. But the EFSP, a grant program overseen by FEMA, is just a little bit short-staffed, according to a recent report by DHS’s Inspector General.