Blog: Homelessness Ends Here

In 2010, the supportive housing industry is facing a moment of both great promise and great challenges. The economic downturn and its subsequent impact on state and local budgets happened just as supportive housing was being embraced and adopted by communities across the country as the central solution to chronic homelessness – and as the supportive housing industry was entering into maturity. To learn more about supportive housing in the current climate, in late January 2010 we solicited responses to an on-line survey about the state of the supportive housing industry. The survey was designed to gather information to help us to better understand the challenges, opportunities, trends, and issues that industry members are facing.

Managing a twitter feed requires two basics: content worth tweeting and the judgment regarding what constitutes worthy content. Content really is a matter of source. In twitterland, sources are traditional news articles, reports, research, and, of course, your followers and fellow Tweeters. This is essentially online press vetted by an online community. Necessarily a great deal of content goes under the twitter radar. This is the press ‘not worth tweeting.’

The William S. Abell Foundation is a small ($70M in assets) private family foundation which has funded nonprofits engaged in helping the homeless in the District of Columbia during the 25 years of its existence. The Foundation decided five years ago that it needed to take a fresh look at its grant-making in the homelessness area. The Foundation’s Board established a Homelessness Committee which undertook an intensive self-education process to determine what was working and what was not in the District and elsewhere. Based on this groundwork, the Board undertook a five year Strategic Initiative during which it has spent $8.3 M in trying to work with others who have been trying to change D.C. from a shelter based model to a model which seeks to end homelessness.

I’m sure it was the warm sunny weather or a pre-April Fool’s Day idea of a joke but a tweet on Twitter caught my attention yesterday. Actually it wasn’t from someone I know or follow - it was in the parlance of Twitter a “retweet” or a post that someone reposts. Nonetheless it read: “Today would be a great day to be homeless.” There is never a great day to be homeless.

Three years ago, Gail Richards and Judy Kishner, local philanthropists and cousins, decided to take on their dream of ending chronic homelessness in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by 2012. To accomplish this dream, they focused on the development of new units of “housing first” affordable housing. Their approach, unique to Tulsa, but beginning to be studied by others around the country, is a “debt free” model of housing, allowing rents to remain low and affordable for people with limited income or no income at all. This debt free model provides housing that is safe, affordable, decent, and sustainable. The specialized housing also provides supportive assistance to the residents when needed.

Just about anyone working to solve the problem of homelessness in our communities recognizes that coordinating public and private efforts is a key ingredient to measurable, sustainable success. On February 10, Funders Together and the Los Angeles Homeless Funders Group co-convened a gathering to explore models of public-private partnerships and reflect on lessons learned. Forty representatives from public and private sector entities participated in the meeting.

A new report entitled, "Inclusive Public Housing: Services for the Hard to House," released last week by the Urban Institute presents fascinating new findings regarding the service needs and vulnerability of families living in public housing. The report find that families living in distressed public housing fall within three categories of need: younger “striving” families who require just basic assistance to achieve self-sufficiency; “aging and distressed” families who have multiple physical and medical challenges; and families who are “high-risk,” with complex health and social challenges and who, without adequate supports, will become tomorrow’s “aging and distressed” families.

Recently, the Ohio Interagency Council on Homeless and Affordable Housing adopted a new State of Ohio Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) Policy Framework intended to create 6,000 new units of PSH for the most vulnerable households with serious and long term disabilities. “By adopting this groundbreaking comprehensive approach to permanent supportive housing – which focuses on preventing and ending chronic homelessness as well as reducing Ohio’s use of expensive and unnecessary institutions – the State of Ohio has become a national leader in PSH policy” said Ann O’Hara, Associate Director of the Technical Assistance Collaborative in Boston, who helped to draft the policy framework.

Funders Together members wear many hats in their communities – they act as investors, spokespersons, issue experts and mentors. One of the most important tools that any funder can use is its own reputation and influence. The Plough Foundation in Memphis, TN offers a perfect example of the potential for foundation leadership at the local level, as described in this profile of the foundation from the Southeastern Council on Foundation's February/March 2010 Interchange newsletter.

"Homelessness among veterans will be ended in five years." This is a bold statement, especially when you consider that an estimated 131,000 veterans remain homeless today with new veterans becoming homeless at unprecedented rates after returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The good news: the federal government has increased public investments in the one programmatic solution capable of ending veteran homelessness in five years: Permanent Supportive Housing.