Looking to the End of Family Homelessness: A Pledge We Make to Our Children 

A blog from USICH Policy Director Katharine Gale 

Opening Doors sets a national goal of ending family homelessness by 2020. In one way, this goal is audacious and bold, and in another, it's too far off-we need to end family homelessness as soon as possible. Each day we do not, children's lives are torn off course and their futures are threatened. Homelessness is life-disrupting and potentially traumatizing for anyone, but it is particularly so for children; instability and lack of security can negatively impact children's health, development, and academic achievement.

Unfortunately, in the last Point-In-Time count report, family homelessness was up slightly, 1.4 percent, from the previous year. Given that the 2012 PIT followed the deepest point of the recession this slight uptick wasn't surprising. In fact, family homelessness would almost certainly have been much worse had it not been for the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Rehousing program, funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which assisted more than 1.3 million individuals and families with prevention and rapid rehousing assistance. 

In many communities, HPRP also influenced positive changes in the way homeless systems operate - building lasting new partnerships with mainstream employment, education and child care programs, improving data collection, testing assessment tools, and facilitating the adoption of lighter-touch approaches, like progressive engagement, to rapidly rehouse more family households.

Research has helped us understand a lot about homeless families. In most ways they are like other very poor families; the potential range of crises that a low-income family may face, from a medical crisis to job loss to eviction to domestic violence can all lead to housing loss, though only a small number of those that face such crises actually enter the homeless system. We also know that homeless families are often headed by young people, and/or are families with very young children. They don't have the support systems they need in the moment they face homelessness to help keep them out of it. 

Our job then is to address their immediate need for shelter and housing while helping them make the links to other supports, formal and informal, that can support them in the rest of their journey.  We may not stop them from being poor, at least not right now, but we can help them achieve the most basic condition of being a family - sharing a home together.

Read more from Katharine Gale on the blog

Read all of our updated content on ending family homelessness

Progressive Engagement uses the lightest touch possible to help each household reach stability 

Progressive engagement provides an opportunity to use

Photo courtesy of St. Stephens Human Services, Minneapolis

resources differently to appropriately serve as many households as possible. The progressive engagement model fits neatly with one of the major themes of Opening Doors, retooling the crisis response system. Creating a crisis response system means looking at all the resources communities currently invest in addressing homelessness and figuring out how best to deploy them to meet the goals of reaching all who need assistance and returning homeless households to stable housing more quickly. The lessons learned from HPRP and other programs that used progressive engagement techniques across the country are important to scale up now, as all communities look to stretch dollars further and help the most people possible. 

Progressive engagement refers to a strategy of starting off offering a small amount of assistance initially, and adding more if needed to help each household reach stability. This strategy uses the lightest touch possible for each household to be successful, knowing more assistance can be added later if needed. Communities learned from HPRP and conveyed to Federal policymakers that most families need only short-term assistance to gain and retain housing. However, some families need more help, which can be challenging to determine. The progressive engagement model is a promising practice to help assist families who have varied levels of need. 

We encourage you to take a look at our full article on progressive engagement to find out how it works and how to implement this model in your community.

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USICH Regional Coordinator Amy Sawyer reflects on NAEH Conference 

During the last full week of February national leaders, practitioners, advocates, educators, and people who have experienced homelessness converged in Seattle, Washington to participate in the National Conference on Family and Youth homelessness sponsored by our partner, the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

The goals of the week were to learn about a new vision for ending youth homelessness, share new initiatives from the Federal government to end youth and family homelessness, and understand how to build from the work being done in local communities. During morning coffee, throughout sessions, over lunch, in the course of community visits, and over evening gatherings participants connected. We asked questions, shared successes, and pondered challenges we've come across.  Collectively, the emerging conversations linked research with promising practices to create a shared vision for applying effective system-wide strategies in an environment that demands efficient and targeted use of resources.

In her blog, USICH Regional Coordinator Amy Sawyer reflects more on the importance of this conference and collective work in her role as a Regional Coordinator. 

Read it here

The second year of implementation of Opening Doors was met with continued commitment from Federal leaders of the 19 agencies on the Council and greater collaboration among State and local governments and nonprofits to reach the goals. USICH and its partners are continuing to improve the data we collect, the partnerships we forge, and the innovations we help stimulate in cities across the United States to invest in only the most cost-effective and evidence-informed solutions.Opening Doors 

Department of Housing and Urban  Development