Resource Roundup: Housing Support and Stability
To ensure that individuals and families don’t fall back into homelessness, it is necessary to strengthen partnerships with, and connections to, a larger array of federal, state, local, and private programs that serve low-income households. The following resources can help communities begin or continue to advance opportunities and support upward economic mobility, provide connections to health and behavioral health care services, and link people to a range of other programs and systems that support strong and thriving communities.
Mainstream Systems
Enlisting Mainstream Resources and Programs to End Homelessness Federal homelessness programs are vital, but not sufficient, to achieve the goal of ending homelessness for all Americans. We must enlist federal, state, and local “mainstream” programs that serve low-income people, like TANF, Medicaid, and Housing Choice Vouchers, in our efforts to end homelessness.
Enhancing Coordinated Entry through Partnerships with Mainstream Resources and Programs Our guide, and accompanying sample housing assessment questions, help communities ensure their coordinated entry processes include mainstream programs and resources.
Employment
Strengthening Pathways to Employment for People Exiting Homelessness This joint statement from the U.S. Departments of Labor and Housing and Urban Development encourages communities to further strengthen pathways to employment for people exiting homelessness and provides strategies for building cross-system partnerships across homelessness assistance and workforce development programs.
Webinar: Improving Employment Outcomes for Veterans Exiting Homelessness This webinar goes over strategies for successful collaboration between VA homelessness programs and Department of Labor’s Homeless Veterans’ Reintegration programs.
Coordinating Employment and Housing Services: A Strategy to Impact Family Homelessness This report presents lessons, acknowledges challenges, and offers recommendations on how best to assist heads of families experiencing homelessness who want and need to work.
New Report Offers Ways to Build Better Connections Between Workforce and Homelessness Services This report from Heartland Alliance identifies challenges to workforce and homelessness service systems collaboration and recommends strategies for building a more effective relationship.
Education
Supporting In-School and Out-of-School Youth Experiencing Homelessness This brief provides an overview of education and workforce programs that serve youth experiencing homelessness and suggests strategies for cross-system collaboration among these programs to support youth experiencing homelessness.
Case Studies: Higher Education Partnerships for Ending Unaccompanied Youth Homelessness These profiles feature innovative programs from institutes of higher education working to help unaccompanied youth experiencing homelessness navigate the transition from high school to higher education.
Case Studies: Building School/Housing Partnerships for Families Experiencing Homelessness This series of profiles features communities that are using innovative, collaborative practices to increase housing stability and school attendance of children and youth experiencing homelessness.
Health Care
Partnering with Hospitals to End Homelessness describes ways hospitals can work with you to help prevent and end homelessness and improve health and access to effective care for people who experience homelessness.
Innovative Models in Health and Housing (Kresge/California Endowment) To improve outcomes for patients, health care systems in a growing number of communities are coming to the table to help address housing needs.
Case Studies: Connecting Supportive Housing and Health Systems to End Chronic Homelessness among People with Disabilities These case studies were developed to highlight innovative community partnerships between the homelessness services system and health systems.
Eight States Lead the Way – Breaking the Path for Health and Housing System Integration These states participating in the Medicaid-Housing Agency Partnership effort have been breaking the path for future state-level integration of health, behavioral health, and housing systems to scale supportive housing to end chronic homelessness and to transition people from institutions back into communities.
Case Studies: Successfully Connecting People Affected by Opioid Use to Housing These articles and interviews explore how different agencies and organizations support successful housing outcomes and recovery for people who have experienced the effects of both opioid use disorders and homelessness.
Child Welfare
Case Studies: Demonstrating the Effectiveness of Supportive Housing for Families in the Child Welfare System In addition to providing more than 500 families with supportive housing and wraparound services, the demonstration was intended to strengthen partnerships between child welfare, housing, health care, employment, and other local systems, in order to reduce bureaucratic barriers and improve outcomes for the highest-need families.
Building Partnerships to Support Stable Housing for Child Welfare-Involved Families and Youth (HHS) This resource outlines affordable housing and homelessness services and how child welfare professionals can collaborate with those systems to help families.
Criminal Justice
Connecting People Returning from Incarceration with Housing and Homelessness Assistance This tip sheet provides ways for corrections agencies, reentry service providers, state and local governments, and community partners to help people exiting the criminal justice system connect with available housing resources.
TANF
Enhancing Family Stability: A Guide for Assessing Housing Status and Coordinating with Local Homelessness Programs for TANF Agencies This resource is designed for state and local Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) agencies to assess and connect TANF recipients to homelessness services.