In 2010, Common Ground, a homeless services and supportive housing provider, launched an effort to house some of the most vulnerable people in the country. They called it the 100,000 Homes Campaign. The following year, a group within Common Ground created Community Solutions, a separate, independent organization, to expand the work. Over four years, Community Solutions enrolled 186 communities in the campaign, including nearly every major city in the country.
The campaign followed a few guiding principles.
- Know the names and circumstances of every person living on the streets and in shelters.
- Prioritize permanent housing to those with the greatest need.
- Employ the Housing First model of providing housing up front instead of making it contingent on maintaining sobriety, employment, or reaching other milestones.
- Carefully track progress toward housing the chronically or vulnerable homeless.
- Improve local homeless systems “to target resources to the most vulnerable individuals and families quickly and predictably.”
Participating communities exceeded their goal, securing permanent housing for 105,580 people. And during the campaign, cities and towns that participated experienced larger drops in street homelessness, homelessness among veterans, and chronic homelessness than nonparticipating jurisdictions.
[For more of this story, written by Josh Leopold and Lionel Foster, go to http://blog.metrotrends.org/20...h-doesnt-impersonal/]
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