HOMELESSNESS PREVENTION SERIES: Spotlight on Family Homelessness
This is part of a new series on local and federal efforts to prevent homelessness. Read the other spotlights and the first-ever federal homelessness prevention framework at usich.gov/prevention.
After more than a decade of national drops in family homelessness, the number of caregivers and children living without a home is on the rise again, according to the 2023 Point-In-Time (PIT) Count. The PIT counted 57,563 families (covering 186,084 people), meaning almost three of every 10 people experiencing homelessness on a night in 2023 were children and parents. 17,385 of those families were living unsheltered on the street, in a car or other place not meant for human habitation. For mothers and children living on the streets or in shelters, domestic violence is a major cause of homelessness, and the consequences of both are devastating.
Half of children experiencing homelessness under four also experience developmental delays—a rate three to four times higher than their housed peers. The trauma of homelessness can lead to lifelong chronic health conditions, mental illness, and substance use disorders. When unable to provide a safe home for their kids, parents disproportionately suffer from major depressive disorder, and having a depressed parent often results in worse medical, mental health, and educational outcomes, compounding the overall impact of homelessness on children.
Given the devastating lifelong consequences of homelessness on the entire family, our systems should work to prevent families from losing homes in the first place. Communities across the country are exploring how to do just that.
Local Efforts
Projects that concentrate on early rental assistance are showing promise. In Boise, Idaho, for instance, the Jesse Tree of Idaho prevented evictions from occurring in approximately 30% of all cases filed in Ada County in 2023 by providing tenants with rental assistance and case management directly in court.
In Cincinnati, Ohio, Strategies to End Homelessness uses predictive data analytics to identify and help families who are at risk of homelessness and proactively offer them financial assistance and services.
Other programs focus on families in subsidized housing, who are among the most difficult to rehouse. To do that, Massachusetts’ statewide Tenancy Prevention Program embeds social workers in the Housing Court Department to identify and help people with a disability or other health condition putting them at risk of eviction. Together, the social workers and courts prevented 80% of eligible households from becoming homeless in the last year, thus reducing the cost of resources that would otherwise need to be spent through emergency shelter and services, including hospitalizations.
Homelessness is a multi-system problem, and it requires multiple systems to work together. One promising collaboration is between schools and community-based organizations. To help families on the cusp of eviction, Albuquerque Public Schools formed partnerships with two local nonprofits—Amparo, which provides emergency housing and rental assistance, and Los Ojos De La Familia, which provides utility assistance. Meanwhile, the school district’s social workers are required to network regularly with local housing agencies, landlords, and various stakeholders to advocate for families and clear up issues that could result in evictions and homelessness. For an average cost of $1,263 per family, Albuquerque has been able to help more than 200 children and 300 caregivers.
In addition to these models, direct cash assistance—which helped prevent a rise in homelessness between 2020 and 2022—is being explored across the country to both prevent and help people overcome homelessness. For example, Growing Strong, a shelter provider, is launching a pilot program to give $1,400 a month for two years to 100 single mothers with a child under the age of two living in New York City shelters. Each family will also be assigned a peer who navigated the local homeless services system and has since moved into and maintained permanent housing.
Federal Action
All In: The Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness cites many strategies and actions to prevent family homelessness, including:
- Reduce housing instability among survivors of domestic violence, including family violence and intimate partner violence.
- Promote child welfare funding and services that support families who are at risk of homelessness and child welfare involvement.
- Encourage states and cities to review and update their zoning laws and policies to include more land for multi-family housing.
- Increase the supply and impact of permanent supportive housing for families with complex service needs—including pregnant and parenting youth and young adults.
- Identify and promote lessons learned through successful federal programs, such as the Supportive Services for Veteran Families Program and the Family Unification Program.
- Strengthen coordination between early childhood, education, housing, health care and public health, aging and disability network organizations, employment and vocational rehabilitation, and homeless services providers as part of a whole-family approach to improve both child and family outcomes through meaningful connections to community-based programs and resources that target and prioritize the assessed needs of the entire household, including infants and young children, for sustained housing stability and economic mobility.
In the last year, the federal government has taken the following actions, among others, to prevent family homelessness:
- President Biden asked Congress to invest more in families, including $2,600 child tax credits for 39 million families; $7.7 billion so every eligible mother and child can benefit from the Women, Infants, and Children Program; $8.5 billion to expand child-care assistance to more than 2 million low-income children; and free preschool for every four-year-old who wants it.
- The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded $10 million in housing vouchers through the Family Unification Program to prevent children from being placed in foster care primarily because of insufficient housing.
- The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) created the Affordable Housing and Supportive Services Demonstration Program to help owners of affordable housing build and strengthen their capacity to provide supportive services to residents, including child-care, financial literacy and coaching, transportation assistance, early childhood and youth programs, and mental health services.
- The Department of Education offered training on Providing Emergency Preparedness Supports for Students Experiencing Homelessness to help incorporate the needs of students experiencing homelessness in school safety efforts (e.g., security, emergency management).
- ACF’s Office of Head Start produced communication and technical assistance materials designed to support the enrollment of more families with young children experiencing homelessness.
- The Department of Veterans Affairs published a podcast episode on “Homeless Prevention and Rapid Rehousing through Supportive Services for Veteran Families.”
Through these efforts, we are working to strengthen the safety net woven around the family unit to keep roofs over their heads and prevent them from ever experiencing the lifelong trauma of homelessness.