1. A home for everyone Children, youth, and family homelessness
Ruth White, MSSA
National Center for Housing and Child Welfare, 2018

2. Our work NCHCW builds the partnerships necessary to:
prevent families from losing their children to foster care simply because they are poor
and
to ensure that each young person who ages out foster care is able to access safe, decent, affordable permanent housing.

3. Representative Gwen Moore has grabbed control of the child welfare narrative, recently introducing, “The Family Poverty is not Neglect Act of 2018” (HR 6233)
“The condition of impoverishment should never be used as justification for tearing children from their parent's arms," said Congresswoman Moore. "The vast majority of children end up in the child welfare system not because of abuse, but because of symptoms of poverty that officials categorize as neglect. Instead of separating children from their parents, we need to strengthen Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP, and other essential programs that enable families to maintain basic living standards and stay together.”
Reducing the role of child welfare in the lives of America’s poor families

4. Wisconsin data
This is part of what Rep. Moore is referring to in her remarks.
NCHCW has a cost study that takes much of this into account.
Short hand: each child in care will cost an average of $18k. That’s $ 6.4 million
Housing for their families for a year would be $1.1 million
That’s a savings of $5.3 million
This doesn’t even include youth who can’t return home…

5. Our approach to housing advocacy
Policy: We work with advocates & policy makers at HHS, HUD, and DPC; and Congress to increase funding and access to resources for people in need. We successfully advocated for $95 million for new housing subsidies for HUD’s Family Unification Program.
System: We convene public housing authorities, homeless service providers, and child welfare agencies through on- site training and technical assistance to free-up housing resources for families and youth.
Practice: We provides cross-training front line shelter, housing authority, and child welfare staff to prevent homelessness and child maltreatment using the Keeping Families Together and Safe curriculum.

6. Despite all that: families and youth are locked out
Less emergency shelter
Less transitional housing
Less access to domestic violence services
And, less access to HUD’s permanent housing portfolio

7. PSH Renewals
Renewals are comprising an increasingly significant amount of total renewal projects each year. In , PSH renewals accounted for 45 percent of the $1.01 billion. A decade later, PSH renewals would account for over three-quarters of total awards for renewal projects. Patterns suggest that PSH renewals will continue to increase each year until almost all available funding is allocated to this program type.

8. Targeting takes its toll
*Note that while HUD reports that around 30 percent of PSH houses families, it is actually 16%.

9. The history of federal targeting
In 1999, the Continuum of Care model (which was conceived by Andrew Cuomo in NYC and then adopted by HUD), won the Kennedy School of Government’s Innovations in Government Award.
During that time, the CoC portfolio was nearly a split between a variety of permanent supportive housing models (for families and individuals); transitional housing; and emergency shelter (with some prevention funds). About 45% of these funds were used interchangeably between services and shelter/housing.
In 1999, the National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients indicated that 7 percent of homeless people lived on the street only.
In February 2000, at an Urban Institute Forum, national leaders announced a seismic shift in CoC policy that would deliberately reduce federal funding for emergency shelters and transitional housing.
A forum speaker described it as “If you build it they will come.” Meaning that shelters only invite homelessness – if you close them, all but 7 percent of the population will find suitable alternatives.
The history of federal targeting

10. The history of targeting (cont.)
By targeting the “hardest to house” or the “chronically homeless” the idea was that the U.S. could produce PSH through the CoC 10-30% set aside each year; and then transfer the cost for those units, into the Section 8 certificate fund, thus ending chronic homelessness in 10 years. At that time, federal policy could turn to youth and families.
From the outset, it was entirely predictable that renewals would consume the CoC budget, thus the plan to shift the renewals out of the CoC. This parallel legislative strategy failed and there is no plan for transferring the renewals en masse. This is a problem for families which I will describe in a moment.
Each year communities must close programs (reallocation, reprioritization) regardless of the merits, in order to accommodate the growing pot of renewals.
This also means that prioritizing who gets the shrinking pool of resources becomes key. The most vulnerable are those living on the streets continuously for a year.
If you are going to need to live on the street continuously for a year in order to get any help at all, it just makes sense to begin to cobble together a shelter and some order to the day. Hence, a 3,000 percent growth in encampments in the last decade (NLCHP, 2017).

11. After nearly two decades of targeting
Between 2015 and 2017, this population of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness jumped by almost 20,000 (HUD, 2017).
According to the HUD AHAR (2017), street homelessness (now called “unsheltered”) now stands at:
36%

12. Families: The fastest shrinking population in Hud permanent housing portfolio
The total number of households receiving rental assistance from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) rose slightly between 2004 and 2015, even as the number of assisted families with children fell. 
The number of families with children using HUD rental assistance has fallen by over 250,000 (13 percent) since 2004, hitting an 11-year low of 1,740,000 households in 2015.[6]  

13. Locked out

14. Locked out
So if families are locked out of federal preferences for permanent housing and shelter, where do they go? What happens?

15. Why is hud serving less families in ph?
CBPP (2016) has an “aging out” theory: some households continue receiving rental assistance after their children have grown up or left home; in about half of these cases, the household heads were disabled and/or elderly by 2015. 
The less understood phenomenon is that, upon turnover, PHAs are being encouraged to transfer Permanent Supportive Housing Units from the McKinney Vento portfolio to the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program or to homeless veterans and people with disabilities.
Why is hud serving less families in ph?

16. Families and children are losing out and the consequences are severe

17. Criminalizing poverty and housing
New York Times article July 2017 by Jessica Clifford and Stephanie Sliver Greenberg

18. Housing Impacts Families all along the child welfare continuum
Housing affects families at each decision point in the child welfare continuum. Children from families with housing problems are:
More likely to be investigated by CPS (Culhane et al, 2004)
More likely to be placed in out-of-home care (Courtney et al, )
Longer stayers in foster care (Jones, 1998)
Thirty percent of children in foster care are there because of housing problems (Doerre & Mihaly, 1996; Hagedorn, 1995; Thoma, ).
HHS reports that 10% of children who are in out of home care were removed due to housing (this is 27,002 children). This information can be found on page 49 of the 27th Annual Child Maltreatment Report
Housing Impacts Families all along the child welfare continuum

19. State and Local Child Welfare Funding for Housing
Local child welfare dollars are flexible and what they can be used for is at the discretion of the local administrator.
State child welfare dollars are also flexible, and again, these funds are distributed at the discretion of the state child welfare leaders, state budget director and Governor’s office. In Connecticut, for example, Connecticut uses state child welfare dollars to provide bridge subsidies for housing in lieu of Section 8 funding.

20. Federal child welfare funding for housing
Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program
CAPTA
TANF
Social Services Block Grant
Medicaid Targeted Case Management Funding
States may apply for a Title IV-E waiver to use federal child welfare dollars to subsidize housing – this is cheaper than foster care
Our newest child welfare law: The Family First and Prevention Services Act of 2018 (included in Division E in the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 (H.R. 1892))

21. What about unaccompanied minors and older youth?· 
Family Reunification
Basic Center Program
RHYA Shelter Care
RHYA Transitional Housing
Group Home Placement
Supervised Independent Living
Traditional Foster Care Placement
*Homelessness, couch surfing
* Homeless youth are eligible for protection under Title IV-E of the SSA. These young people are also eligible for CoC funding, but are often excluded.
What about unaccompanied minors and older youth?

25. Knit funding streams together to maximize time for youth to achieve self-sufficiency
Age
Independent Living
Title IV-E
Family Foster Care/Residential
FUP for youth
Regular Sec. 8
Other Subsidy
Roommate
Private Housing/LL

26. Future policy work
Ongoing funding ($20 mil annually) for the Family Unification Program
Encourage HUD to use existing authority to issue “vouchers on demand” for FUP youth via the Tenant Protection Fund.
Family Poverty is Not Neglect Act (HR 6233)
Fostering Stable Housing Opportunities Act (HR 2069)
Transfer PSH renewals to the permanent housing account at HUD
Homeless Children and Youth Act
Implementation of the Family First and Prevention Services Act
Encourage HHS/ACF to include supportive housing (of all evidence-based kinds, such as scattered site and project based); and to use Title IV-E

27. Fostering Stable Housing Opportunities Act (HR 2069)
Capitalizes on the predictable nature of youth homelessness
Addresses an obvious synchronization problem with resources allocation in general, and FUP specifically.
Elements of the bill:
Allows early application and placement on the list for Housing Choice Vouchers at a local or state PHA
Directs HUD to issue Tenant Protection Vouchers “On Demand” for the purpose of serving eligible youth (This account has a carryover of AVAILABLE funds of $130 million.
Youth received vouchers through their 25th birthday
PHAs are directed to select a self-sufficiency option which they will help the youth meet; FSS for example is an option.

28. Scope & Size…

29. Homeless Children and Youth Act (HR 1511)
Allows professionals in mainstream programs and other entities such as child welfare to certify homeless individuals and households as eligible for HUD
Restores the Continuum of Care process to its original configuration which includes local control and flexibility in addressing a local gaps analysis.
Aligns federal definitions
Children and youth whose homelessness has been verified by one of eight specific federal programs would be eligible for HUD homeless assistance. They would be able to be assessed for services using the same “vulnerability” indices (including age-appropriate criteria) used currently to prioritize people for assistance.
HUD would be required to ensure that scoring is based primarily on the extent to which communities demonstrate that a project a) meets the priorities identified in the local plan, and b) is cost-effective in meeting the goals identified in the local plan. HUD would be prohibited from awarding greater priority based solely on the specific homeless population or housing model. Local innovation and success would be incentivized.

30. Contact Information
Ruth White, MSSA
Executive Director
National Center for Housing and Child Welfare
4707 Calvert Rd
College Park, MD 20740
(301)

31. Works cited
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. (2016). Rental assistance available to families with children at lowest point in a decade. Available at : lowest-point-in-decade
National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. (2017). Tent Cities USA. Available at:
Urban Institute. (2000). A new look at homelessness in America. Available at:
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2017). Preliminary Estimates for FY 2015 as of June Available at:
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. (2017). The 2017 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress. Available at: 
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. (2018). CoC Housing Inventory County. Available at: reports/