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Solutions to Homelessness

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Funders Together supports and promotes a variety of evidence-based solutions for ending homelessness. While the availability of safe, decent and affordable permanent housing is at the heart of all long-term strategies for ending homelessness, there are a number of complementary prevention and intervention strategies for those who are or may become homeless – nearly all of which are based on the housing first philosophy that centers on providing homeless people with housing quickly and then providing services as needed.

Strategies that we know work include rapid re-housing for families and permanent supportive housing with support services for chronically homeless individuals and families. Other key strategies that must be part of any community’s long-term plans to end homelessness include employment training, and effective discharge planning for those coming out of hospitals, jails, and even the foster care system. None of these solutions will work without an effective continuum of care to manage the system, without effective data to track what is working and not working, without collaborative and without systems change that ensures that scarce resources are driven to the appropriate strategies.

This Issues Explorer looks at the core solutions for ending homelessness, with a special focus on the role that funders may play in each of these strategies.

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