Community Action to End Family Homelessness
Communities across our nation are seeing their resources dry up while simultaneously being faced with substantial increases in family homelessness. The 2010 AHAR report showed a 20% increase in family homelessness from 2007-2010. Because of these challenges it is important for communities to step back and take a systems level look at how family homelessness is being addressed. It is clear that the only way to make headway ending family homelessness is to make all systems work in concert to achieve early interventions. Many communities have figured out how to do just that. There is much we can learn from these communities and from the success of local programs around the country.
Below are six strategies and accompanying questions to ask to help communities make sure they are effectively using their resources to prevent and end family homelessness:
- Collaborate strategically. Ending family homelessness begins with having the right people at the table and committed to the goal. The discussion needs to include TANF and child welfare, schools and health care, workforce centers and housing. Does your community have a cross sector group of leaders steering this work? Is your community operating as a strategic and deliberate system to prevent, reduce, and end family homelessness, or is it a disconnected set of programs?
- Improve access to mainstream resources and make sure that those who work to distribute these resources act in partnership with those who need the resources. Do existing programs to assist people in getting a job, affordable housing, health insurance, food and income support reach the families who need them most? Is it easy for families experiencing homelessness to reach people who can help them access benefits and support? Can these supports be provided quickly? Can schools direct homeless families to affordable housing? Can affordable housing connect people to income supports? Can workforce programs connect people to the range of housing and income supports they need?
- Target resources (both prevention and homeless and other services) to those who need them most. one of the biggest challenges for programs that help families at risk of homelessness is to figure out when to let families resolve their problems without much assistance, when to use prevention dollars, and when additional support is needed, for example, through short-term or long-term rental assistance. What we are learning from HPRP is that when prevention resources are targeted to families with extremely low incomes, few social supports, and histories of housing instability, they help the most people for the least cost. The more resources and stability a family has, the more likely they are to be able to resolve a crisis that threatens housing stability, without outside assistance. The same is the case with families who do become homeless and enter shelter. Who will resolve their situation largely on their own? Who needs short-term assistance, and who needs the far more expensive and intensive interventions of transitional and permanent supportive housing? Although we still have a lot to learn to be able to predict who needs which, we know that we cannot afford to end homelessness if families who need less support end up in our most expensive programs.
- The best and most cost-effective way to end family homelessness is to get families out of shelters and off the streets and into more permanent housing as quickly as possible. Targeted homeless programs should be working to connect families experiencing homelessness to resources quickly so that the experience is a short one. Are targeted homeless programs effectively and quickly connecting those in need to services that can get them back on their feet?
- Let data and best practices inform policy and systems operation. USICH is asking communities to partner with us to take a fresh look at how homelessness assistance dollars are spent, who is helped, and who is not. HMIS data provides a great picture of who is helped by HPRP and who is ending up in shelter, and for those who do end up in shelter, how long they stay there. Similarly, what are the characteristics of people using transitional housing? Is your programs cost effective at providing transitional support? Are there transition-in-place models? And for those families with the greatest needs, are there supportive options that are not time limited? HMIS can provide communities with the data they need to assess the performance of programs and the impact overall. Is your community using the data it collects to guide strategic planning and to make course corrections?
- Effectively preventing homelessness means making sure people have access to education, jobs, living wages, affordable housing, child care, and affordable health care. In many communities many of these are out of reach. What can your community do to improve access to these needs for low-income residents?
