ARTICLE #6: Responding to America's Challenges
The Problem: Ending & Preventing Family Homelessness

Homelessness is one of our nation's most serious social problems. While it is often the result of interwoven systemic and personal problems, the primary cause of homelessness among families is the growing gap between housing costs and income. The emergency shelter system is able to accommodate only a small fraction of the growing number of homeless families in need. Families are forced to live in their cars, in garages, in other places unfit for human habitation or to move from place to place with their children, staying intermittently with friends and families. Even a short period of homelessness can lead to depression, mental illness and child neglect, yet increasing numbers of families are homeless for months and sometimes years. Emergency shelters are unable to provide the intensive long-term assistance which homeless families require in order to stabilize their lives.

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, we are now experiencing a period when worst-case housing needs are at an all-time high. According to a study conducted by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, which has developed a 10-year plan to end homelessness, the fastest growing group of homeless people consists of families with children. Many experts attribute the increase in the number of homeless families to a combination of the following factors:

• Welfare reform
• High rates of domestic violence
• Declining purchasing power of low-wage jobs
• Decrease in availability of affordable family housing
  

For most of the past two decades, public and private solutions to homelessness have focused on providing homeless families with emergency shelter and/or transitional housing. While such programs may provide vital access to services for families in crisis, they often fail to address the long-term needs of homeless families. Families need help in finding affordable housing, negotiating leases and developing the skills to stay housed. Once a family becomes homeless, it is extremely difficult to get back into rental housing. There is a shortage of affordable housing available, particularly for larger families with children, and property owners will not rent to a family that has a poor credit history or a previous eviction. Particularly single mothers face enormous obstacles in finding affordable, appropriate rental housing. Most property owners require security deposits along with first and last month's rent, and there are often deposits required to obtain utility service, especially if the renter has a history of nonpayment. Additionally, emergency shelters and transitional programs rarely assist families in overcoming the tremendous barriers they face in accessing permanent housing, such as poor credit and eviction histories, unemployment and lack of move-in funds. Left unaddressed, these factors can result in a family crisis leading to renewed homelessness. 

For those families who do find permanent housing, the vast majority require a variety of supportive services if they are to stabilize. However, there is a dearth of support systems for families who are not living in a shelter or transitional housing program, and most communities either lack programs that address these interwoven causes of family homelessness, or those programs that do exist are not easily accessible.

The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, in its study Families on the Move, Breaking the Cycle of Homelessness (1996), confirmed that recently housed families are at severe risk of becoming homeless again in the near future. This is particularly true today. Long-established homeless providers testify that families in recent years are more dysfunctional than families of a few years ago. Additionally, homeless family members often suffer from extremely low self-images and multiple problems and typically have a history of domestic violence and/or substance abuse.

Housing First Methodology

“Housing first” is an alternative to the current system of emergency shelter/transitional housing, which tends to prolong the length of time that families remain homeless. The methodology is premised on the belief that vulnerable and at-risk homeless families are more responsive to interventions and social services support after they are in their own housing , rather than while living in temporary/transitional facilities or housing programs. With permanent housing, these families can begin to regain the self-confidence and control over their lives they lost when they became homeless.

For over 10 years, the housing first methodology has proven to be a practical means to ending and preventing family homelessness. The methodology is currently being adapted by organizations throughout the United States through  Beyond Shelter's Institute for Research, Training and Technical Assistance and the National Alliance to End Homelessness' Housing First Network . 

Recognized as a dramatic new response to the problem of family homelessness, the housing first approach stresses the immediate return of families to independent living. Created as a time-limited relationship designed to empower participants and foster self-reliance, not engender dependence, the housing first methodology:

• helps homeless families move directly into affordable rental housing in residential neighborhoods as quickly as possible;

• then provides six months to one year of individualized, home-based social services support "after the move" to help each family transition to stability.

The combination of housing relocation services and home-based case management enables homeless families to break the cycle of homelessness. The methodology facilitates long-term stability and provides formerly homeless families who are considered at risk of another episode of homelessness with the support necessary to remain in permanent housing.

The Housing First Approach is Implemented
  Through Four Primary Stages: 

1. Crisis Intervention & Short-Term Stabilization: This phase includes helping families access emergency shelter services and/or short-term transitional housing and address crisis needs.
   
   
2. Screening, Intake and Needs Assessment:  The "needs assessment" results in an action plan for clients, which includes short- and long-term goals and objectives with concrete action steps. This can occur immediately or after families are stabilized in emergency services.
   
   
3. Provision of Housing Resources: After the completion of screening and assessment, the next phase involves assisting families in moving into permanent, affordable housing in a safe neighborhood. This is accomplished by helping them overcome various barriers to obtaining permanent housing.
   
   
4. Provision of Case Management:   Before the move into permanent housing, case management services help to identify clients' needs and to ensure individuals and families have sources of income through employment and/or public benefits. After the move, time-limited case management services focuses on helping families solve problems that may arise and to connect individuals and families with community services to meet longer-term needs.

While acknowledging and addressing the personal factors that contribute to family homelessness, the housing first methodology was designed to more effectively address the economic root causes of the problem: poverty and the lack of affordable housing. The program provides a critical link between the emergency/transitional housing system and the community-based social service, educational and health care organizations that bring about neighborhood integration and family self-sufficiency.

The approach deals with the interrelated problems that homeless families face: poverty, economic development, social infrastructure and housing. Services are provided in an integrated, holistic manner to place families, primarily female-headed households, not only back into housing, but into communities. It involves them in economic and social services after they are stabilized in permanent housing and are no longer traumatized by the crisis of homelessness.

Central to the effectiveness of housing first is the concept that empowerment helps clients identify their own needs, recognize the choices they have, create options for themselves and plan strategies for permanent change in their lives.

Evolving in an era of shrinking resources, the housing first approach places great emphasis on reducing duplication of effort and maximizing the effectiveness of community resources. By situating homeless individuals within the larger community, the program fosters human connection. The methodology is a cost-effective model that coordinates many existing systems and services, rather than creating new ones.

Read More:

The "Housing First" Approach For Families Affected by Substance Abuse (PDF) , an article by Tanya Tull, Beyond Shelter President/CEO. Reprinted from the Spring 2004 edition of The Source, a publication of The National Abandoned Infants Assistance Resource Center.

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