Focus on Housing Stability & Homelessness Prevention

A national network of funders supporting strategic, innovative, and effective solutions to homelessness

Focus on Housing Stability & Homelessness Prevention

Last updated: January 8, 2021

Throughout the course of the pandemic response, we’ve seen the communities understand the importance of moving people from congregate shelters settings into individual housing options that allow for proper “sheltering at home” and ability to adequately quarantine. The political and public will was built in a short amount of time, but it needs to be sustained and communities must not revert back to previous methods of sheltering and housing people experiencing homelessness and the community must be acutely aware of the large inflow to homelessness that is inevitable if we don’t focus on housing stability and homelessness prevention.

New recommendations (but not examples) are denoted with ***

***Continue to mobilize scaled-up investments into permanent housing options, including permanent supportive housing as needed to exit people from unsheltered homelessness and from shelters, including from new sheltering options created. (A Framework for an Equitable COVID-19 Homelessness Response)
***Push and support the transition from congregate shelter models to permanent housing solutions and enact mechanisms of accountability to ensure communities do not fall back into simply evolving congregate settings, but rather eliminate the model in favor of sustainable permanent solutions.
***Ensure prevention funding is being provided to an array of community-based organizations, including non-traditional partners best able to reach into highly-impacted communities. (A Framework for an Equitable COVID-19 Homelessness Response)

Examples & Resources:

Project Homekey - State of California: Administered by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), $600 million in grant funding will be made available to local public entities, including cities, counties, or other local public entities, including housing authorities or federally recognized tribal governments within California to purchase and rehabilitate housing, including hotels, motels, vacant apartment buildings, and other buildings and convert them into interim or permanent, long-term housing. Of the $600 million in Homekey grant funds, $550 million is derived from the State's direct allocation of the federal Coronavirus Aid Relief Funds (CRF), and $50 million is derived from the State's General Fund.
Chicago Homelessness and Health Response Group for Equity (CHHRGE)
Housing Is How We End Homelessness, Not Police Sweeps
How Philanthropy Can (and Can’t) Help Prevent Evictions during the Pandemic - The Urban Institute
From Hotel to Home: Key Considerations for States and Local Jurisdictions Exploring Hotel/Motel Acquisitions as a Housing Strategy for People Exiting COVID-19 Shelters - CSH

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Lauren Bennett published this page in COVID-19 Response and System Redesign: Recommendations for Philanthropy to Support Solutions to End Homelessness 2020-10-18 20:49:32 -0400

We joined Funders Together because we believe in the power of philanthropy to play a major role in ending homelessness, and we know we have much to learn from funders across the country.

-Christine Marge, Director of Housing and Financial Stability at United Way of Greater Los Angeles

I am thankful for the local partnerships here in the Pacific Northwest that we’ve been able to create and nurture thanks to the work of Funders Together. Having so many of the right players at the table makes our conversations – and all of our efforts – all the richer and more effective.

-David Wertheimer, Deputy Director at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Very often a lack of jobs and money is not the cause of poverty, but the symptom. The cause may lie deeper in our failure to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities, in a lack of education and training, in a lack of medical care and housing, in a lack of decent communities in which to live and bring up their children.

-President Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964 State of the Union Address

Funders Together has given me a platform to engage the other funders in my community. Our local funding community has improved greatly to support housing first models and align of resources towards ending homelessness.

-Leslie Strnisha, Vice President at Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland

Our family foundation convenes local funders and key community stakeholders around strategies to end homelessness in Houston. Funders Together members have been invaluable mentors to us in this effort, traveling to our community to share their expertise and examples of best practices from around the nation.

-Nancy Frees Fountain, Managing Director at The Frees Foundation