1. Strategies to Prevent and End Homelessness
Samantha Batko, National Alliance to End Homelessness
NCSHA Conference
September 27, 2016

2. Today’s Presentation Snapshot of homelessness in US Changes in policy
Research
State examples
Strategies for State Housing Agencies

3. CHAPTER ONE HOMELESSNESS IN AMERICA
NATIONAL TRENDS IN HOMELESSNESS
The January 2015 point-in-time count identified about 565,000 people experiencing homelessness. In 2007, that number was nearly 650,000. So, since, 2007, homelessness has decreased in the US by 13 percent.
While the trend line on the screen shows only the overall population, it is also important to note that, since 2007, homelessness has decreased across every subpopulation.
The most dramatic decreases in homelessness have been amongst veterans (35 percent decrease since 2009), people living in unsheltered locations (32 percent decrease since 2007), and people experiencing chronic homelessness (31 percent decrease since 2007).
The question then becomes why? Based on economic and housing factors—measures of the cost and availability of housing have shown worsening in the market, particularly for low income populations, we went through years of extremely high unemployment and wages have stagnated, there are more people now than prior to the recession living precariously. So, why has homelessness decreased?
We think, at least in part, the reason is due to a shift in the homeless assistance field.

4. HEARTH Act
“to establish a Federal goal of ensuring that individuals and families who become homeless return to permanent housing within 30 days”
- HEARTH Act Purposes – Sec. 1002(b)
That shift was the HEARTH Act.
Set a federal goal:
The changes made by the HEARTH Act can be summarized as a number of shifts in what is funded and encouraged.
Instead of just funding and evaluating a collection of programs in a community, there is much more focus on the system. This is evident in the way administrative costs are funded, in the match requirements, and especially in the way homeless assistance is evaluated.
The HEARTH Act streamlines funding, eliminates several requirements, and shifts the emphasis from activities and compliance to achieving outcomes.
The HEARTH Act includes much more funding for prevention activities and shifts the emphasis of shelter funding from just providing shelter to preventing homelessness when possible.
Instead of helping people slowly transition out of homelessness, the HEARTH Act also places much more emphasis on rapid re-housing
Most of you are probably aware of a number of these shifts by now—shifts in ESG to RRH, changes in match within the CoC program, new CoC program types, and shifts in priorities between those program types—specifically with regards to transitional housing.
But most significant change has been and will probably be the shift to system-wide performance.
Number of homeless persons;
Length of time persons remain homeless;
Permanent housing placements;
Returns to homelessness;
Employment improvements;
Number of persons who become homeless for the first time; and
Permanent housing placement;
You can see from these performance measures, the obvious pressure is to move to Housing First models—either permanent supportive housing or rapid re-housing. To understand why HUD did this, we have to review some of the research from the late 90s through the early 00s.

5. Understanding the Dynamics of Homelessness
Short-term (80%)
Longer-term or Repeatedly (10-15%)
Longer-term with disability (5-10%)
Discuss Typology:
The emergence of HF in NYC and RRH in localities.
Prior to the passage of HEARTH – RRH demo,
Concurrent to the passage of HEARTH – HPRP
What does research tell us about TH?
Some research came before HEARTH’s passage, some after, but has reinforced the movement toward permanent housing: TH…
Emergence of research on RRH: still in the early stages, but what we know is encouraging

6. Shift in Homeless Resources
Outcomes from HEARTH shifts.

7. STATE TRENDS IN HOMELESSNESS
CHAPTER ONE HOMELESSNESS IN AMERICA
STATE TRENDS IN HOMELESSNESS
While national trends are helpful when examining homelessness as a social issue, they do not provide a complete picture of homelessness across the country. Individual states and localities do not necessarily follow the national trends.
Most states have followed the national trends year over year. I’m going to talk about a couple of notable states where the state housing agency has played a particular role.

8. ENDING CHRONIC HOMELESSNESS
CONNECTICUT
ENDING CHRONIC HOMELESSNESS
Connecticut has increased investment in permanent supportive housing over the years and saw large decreases in chronic homelessness from 2014 to An example of aligning discrete goals with federal priorities and using data on the state level to create prioritiy lists for targeting.

9. VIRGINIA ENDING FAMILY HOMELESSNESS
Similar to chronic homelessness, some states have clearly shown the impact that rapid re-housing can have on family homelessness. For several years, the state of Virginia focuses on reorienting it’s state policy focus to rapid re-housing. My fellow presenter Kelly will touch on this in more depth later, but you will see that as rapid re-housing capacity grew, family homelessness in Virginia decreased.

10. Strategies for State Housing Agencies
Focus on rent assistance
Coalesce around specific goals: use the HUD CoC performance measures as guidance (example – long stayers initiatives)
Leverage competitive processes to spur change
Advantage: data sharing