OVERALL HOMELESSNESS For the staff of the Alliance, ending homelessness is not an abstract. We measure our own performances by whether there are fewer homeless people.   We don’t work alone. We HAVE to partner to find out what works. We HAVE to partner to get solutions implemented. We partner, but at the same time we have the independence to decide for ourselves what we think is the best way to end homelessness. We have been very grateful for the support of the Oak Foundation in our work. This request is the logical next step to your last grant to us. Your confidence means a tremendous amount. Your leadership in this arena also means a lot to us, and we are grateful for ALL the strategic investments you make in housing and homelessness in the US. Homelessness is going down in the US. And even as the number DECREASES, federal funding for homelessness INCREASES. The fact that homelessness is going down is not just because of the Alliance. But we know—and it means a lot to us to know -- that we have had a role in it. With your support, we hope to continue that.

HOMELESSNESS: THE NUMBERS 578,000 homeless people 31% unsheltered; 69% sheltered 63% individuals; 37% people living in families 45,000 unaccompanied youth 50,000 veterans 100,000, or 17% chronically homeless Several years ago I met a man named David in Washington DC.   He was disabled, suffering from mental illness and addiction. After being released from prison, he got a job and moved to a shared house for people in recovery. There was a lay-off at his job, though, and as the last hired, he was the first fired. He had to leave his house because he couldn’t pay the rent. He became homeless. He went to an 800-bed shelter where he stayed for the maximum six months.

HOMELESSNESS: THE TRENDS Homelessness: The Numbers Homelessness down 11 % (2007-14) Veteran homelessness down 33% (2009-14) Homelessness down in 34 states; up in 17 states (2013-14) Homelessness decreasing in every major subpopulation Several years ago I met a man named David in Washington DC.   He was disabled, suffering from mental illness and addiction. After being released from prison, he got a job and moved to a shared house for people in recovery. There was a lay-off at his job, though, and as the last hired, he was the first fired. He had to leave his house because he couldn’t pay the rent. He became homeless. He went to an 800-bed shelter where he stayed for the maximum six months.

RAPID RE-HOUSING: CORE COMPONENTS Homelessness: The Numbers Housing Identification Rent and Move-In Assistance (Financial) Rapid Re-housing Case Management and Services Several years ago I met a man named David in Washington DC.   He was disabled, suffering from mental illness and addiction. After being released from prison, he got a job and moved to a shared house for people in recovery. There was a lay-off at his job, though, and as the last hired, he was the first fired. He had to leave his house because he couldn’t pay the rent. He became homeless. He went to an 800-bed shelter where he stayed for the maximum six months.

So what’s an example of our strategy at work?   Our staff recently met with some families in Virginia. One woman, Vera, had fled her home to protect her two daughters from an abusive husband. Vera had always worked, and she made enough to pay the bills – but just. When she fled, all she wanted was to move into a new apartment – a place to be safe with her kids. But she couldn’t, because she didn’t have the money for the deposits So Vera went to a shelter. She stayed there for a month, and then she went to a transitional housing program. When she moved there, her daughters had to change schools, which upset them tremendously. Their school performance plummeted. And while Vera was grateful for a place to stay while she got back on her feet, she didn’t feel that she needed, or wanted, the transitional program. The mandatory classes on budgeting and parenting -- the group meetings -- the counseling -- they didn’t really solve her core problem – that she was poor. And they sometimes even interfered with her working, and other things. For example, the seemingly arbitrary rules and way the staff treated her undermined Vera’s authority with her own children, who began to act out. It took Vera a year and a half tin that transitional program to save saved enough money to move into an apartment. The cost of giving Vera a place to stay while she was saving up $3,000 for deposits was $44,000.

As with Vera, most families are homeless for economic reasons As with Vera, most families are homeless for economic reasons. They’re poor, they lose housing, they don’t have the $2-3,000 to get back into an apartment. So communities spend $25,000 plus on facilities where they can stay while they come up with that $3,000. And of course, while they’re there, they are homeless. And that is not good for them or their kids.   Surely there is a smarter way. The Alliance started to look for alternatives to this approach and we found that some communities had starting just giving the families the money for deposits to move back into an apartment and connecting them with services there. Their outcomes were terrific. We called this rapid re-housing, and began to develop the case for it. So contrast Vera’s experience with that of Payne and Kelly, two other moms in Virginia. Payne and Kelly each had several kids, and they lived together with a third adult, who was the leaseholder. Everything was fine until that third person stopped sending the rent to the landlord, and Payne and Kelly and their kids were evicted. Like Vera they lacked the savings for rent deposits. Like Vera, they moved to a shelter, and it wasn’t a good experience, but immediately they were hooked up with a rapid rehousing coordinator. She helped them find and negotiate a house large enough for their combined families, and they soon moved in. The rapid rehousing program paid deposits and first months’ rent, plus a portion of second and third month’s rents. The cost of rapid rehousing and two months in shelter for Payne and Kelly was $4,000.

SMARTER APPROACH TO FAMILY HOMELESSNESS   VERA & CHILDREN PAYNE, KELLY & CHILDREN REASON FOR HOMELESSNESS Domestic violence: had to leave housing Fraud: evicted INTERVENTION Transitional housing Rapid re-housing TIME HOMELESS Almost 2 years 2 months COST $44,000 $4,000 OUTCOME Housed, employed, kids in school Nearly two years homeless at a cost of $40,000; or 2 MONTHS homeless at a cost of $4,000; to get the same outcome. Which is smarter?   In 2008, based on the knowledge we had developed about rapid rehousing and our connections with the incoming Obama Administration, the outgoing Bush Administration and the Congress we were able to suggest $1.5 billion for Rapid Re-Housing in the stimulus. Money went to every jurisdiction, and over 100,000 people were rehoused because of it. We’re now working on federal policy to make this the usual practice approach to crisis homelessness. The bottom line is we listened, we learned, we built knowledge, and we advised policy. And the reason we met with these families in Virginia is that we have just wrapped up a 3-year capacity-building project with the Commonwealth of Virginia to re-tool, to scale, its homeless family approach over to rapid re-housing. Nationally, family homelessness is down 11% since 2010.