Share the Vision

Raise awareness of homelessness and existing local ten year plans to end homelessness, while building public will for long-term strategies locally and nationally.

There are a number of components that make up a successfully crafted 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness: Creating Data Systems:

• Collect good information: outline strategies to create Homeless Management Information Systems (HMIS)
• Homelessness Prevention: emergency prevention (e.g., one-time rental or utility assistance, help negotiating an eviction with a landlord, etc.), and systems prevention activities, such as discharge planning from correctional facilities, foster care systems, or mental health facilities.
• Outreach: efforts to engage people living on the streets
• Shortening Time of Homelessness: Shortening the time that people spend homeless by providing permanent housing to homeless people or rapid re-housing.
• Links to Services: Once individuals or families are in housing link them with mainstream services

Stakeholder involvement is an important component of 10 year plans. Philanthropy should use their influence within the community to gather parties with a vested interest in ending homelessness. This typically includes groups such as hospitals and health care providers, banks, for-profit housing developers, Chambers of Commerce, landlords, and other philanthropic organizations.

Public stakeholders that will likely need to be involved include the Departments of Human or Social Services, Housing Authorities, Departments of Community or Economic Development, police departments, mayors’ offices, Departments of Mental Health, Departments of Public Health, and Departments of Corrections.

See: A New Vision: What is in Community Plans to End Homelessness, October 2006 for additional suggestions on implementing an effective ten year plan.

THE EVIDENCE

Some successes within 10 Year Plans:

City of Chicago

• By the end of its second year, the Street-To-Home Initiative (STHI) had moved 154 individuals who had been living outside, unsheltered directly into housing. Of the 154, 80% have remained stably housed.
• Between 1/27/05 and 1/25/07 the number of homeless dropped from 6,715 to 5,922. (See: There’s No Place Like a Home: Chicago’s 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness State of the Plan, December 2007)

King County, WA

• A total of 662 new units or dedicated subsidies opened in 2008, with another 1,242 in the pipeline.
• The Funders Group, comprised of all the major funders committed to ending homelessness within King County, formed in 2008 to align resource and planning efforts focused on housing production and system efficiencies.
• More than 4,600 individuals in almost 3,000 households were able to leave homelessness. These successes included people in our nationally recognized programs that help people “graduate” from service-intensive housing to affordable community housing.(See: The 2008 Annual Report 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness in King County)