Understanding the Connections Between Family Homelessness and TANF: Tips for Funders
Today, in every state, a family that relies entirely on TANF for income cannot cover the cost of fair market rent. Funders can play an important role in addressing the gaps.
Read morePromising Practice: Facilitate and Convene Workforce Boards
Promising Practice: Strategically partner with Workforce Investment Boards to refine communication and collaborate efforts that target individuals and families who are at risk of homelessness, or homeless.
The majority of persons who find themselves homeless want to work. Yet, homelessness often creates barriers to employment. Homeless people lack a fixed address, stability, flexibility and encounter many situational complications that render them less attractive employees. Others suffer from physical and mental health conditions that are better managed in supportive work environments. Without viable employment options these persons are likely to experience long term homelessness or cycle in and out of homelessness due to financial instability.
It is essential that those working to end homelessness partner with employment services and Workforce Investment Boards to find innovative ways to serve those who find themselves homeless.
The Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County (WDC) has championed homeless employment initiatives for almost 20 years, believing that employment services should be part of the range of support and assistance for homeless men and women.
They have outlined the following 11 best practices for homeless work force development:
- Regional shared vision and goals
- Increase access
- Collaborate--develop multiple cross-system partnerships
- Plan enough time
- Don't duplicate--"stay in your own lane"
- Collaborative work groups
- Flexible funding--combine public and private
- Innovate
- Employer relationships
- Employment emphasis in local planning
- Workforce Investment Act (WIA)/Policy support
King County has also entered into a formal partnership to promote system integration between housing and employment services in King County and begun work on a pilot program that targets homeless persons. The program uses employment system navigators to better serve high barrier homeless job seekers and is outlined in the chart bellow:
Credit: Workforce Development Council of Seattle - King County
Houston, Texas has also had success serving homeless populations. Houston has overhauled its system and moved away from its quota-based method. This has increased the number and diversity of people being served within One Stop Centers. Houston’s old service model, operated similarly to most Workforce Investment Boards current model, and concentrated on serving families and individuals who met certain benchmarks and funding categories. Houston, however, has discarded this model and instead focused on a new customer service based system. Their service centers concentrate on providing customer service to all persons who enter, and have proved to be more effective in serving vulnerable homeless populations.
According to Rodney Bradshaw, who was instrumental in this shift, the following principals guide their new service agenda:
Customer service focus (Clients)
- Well trained staff
- Serving more people
- Solutions focused service
- Community referrals
- Provide programming and training based on need
- Concentrated on more sustainable employment options – not minimum wage positions
Customer service focus (Employers)
- Capture more of their jobs through sound customer service and a focus on providing workers who best meet their needs
- Labor market information is, therefore, delivered to staff through close employer relationships
No categorical thinking
- Discarded practice of dedicating funds to specific populations; this practice restricted who could be served and promoted “creaming” for clients with best anticipated outcomes
- Streamlined approval systems to provide staff with more agency to deliver person-centered services
Access to employment for the most vulnerable populations is crucial. Implementing the above-mentioned strategies across the country can be a vital component in the fight to end homelessness. Philanthropy can help spread the message, provide assistance to programs that work and highlight those that do not. Employment opportunities for the homeless, in the long-term, promote stability and self-sufficiency. Inclusive models, like the one implemented in Houston, ensure that the homeless population is served.
Ending Homelessness Through Employment
Employment opportunities are key to the prevention of, and successful transition out of, homelessness. Without a viable income many individuals, families and youth are unable to sustain housing over the long term. Therefore, funding programs that support employment services for vulnerable populations is an effective strategy for ending and reducing homelessness.
Strategies for Funders
- Fund strategies that are effective in connecting vulnerable and homeless job seekers with employment.
- Fund and promote transitional jobs, subsidized jobs, career ladder programs, appropriate alternative staffing programs, and social enterprise with built-in social supports for people with high barriers to employment.
- Fund pilot programs that bond and strengthen connections between employment and homelessness solutions.
- Fund and promote programs that place clients in jobs that meet their interests, not just jobs that are available.
- Look for opportunities to co-locate programs, connecting homeless providers with employment programs.
- Fund and promote the successful engagement of private sector employers in hiring homeless and formerly homeless people, publicizing promising-practices.
- Leverage the Workforce Investment Act, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and other government funding and collaborate work between the public and private sector.
- Promote the strategies employed by the Pathways Back to Work Act.
- Fund and promote opportunities that facilitate and convene workforce boards with local and state homeless officials to brainstorm how they can better work together.
- Facilitate workforce conferences to cross-pollinate ideas and share best-practices.
Inadequate and Inconsistent TANF Funding is Driving Families into Homelessness
Funders Together's new interactive map demonstrates the shortcomings of the TANF program in preventing family homelessness in the United States.
Read moreUse TANF Payments to Create Subsidized Jobs and Provide Work Supports for Families Living in Poverty
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Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs should expand opportunities for families living in poverty to increase their incomes through work. Many of the adults in families experiencing homelessness and other very poor families face barriers to employment, including low levels of education, limited skills and work experience, poor health, lack of transportation or childcare, criminal records, and other challenges.
What are subsidized jobs?
Subsidized employment or transitional jobs programs are designed to overcome employment barriers by combining paid work and job skills training, and they often include additional support services. These jobs, created in partnership with public or private sector employers, provide income for participants as well as the opportunity to learn workplace expectations and skills in a real work environment. Participants also get current job references and help finding unsubsidized jobs. Subsidized employment programs are particularly effective for workers who have been unemployed for a long time.
What are the promising practices?
Researchers and practitioners have identified promising program models and a set of best practices that work to increase employment and incomes for people who have significant barriers to employment, including people experiencing homelessness. Some of the most promising approaches:
Provide a pathway to greater economic security for families by offering training, coaching, and support services in addition to employment opportunities; and
Work with employers to create or expand job opportunities that are accessible to people who want to work but face barriers to getting and keeping jobs in the competitive labor market
These programs help workers move beyond entry-level jobs and pursue opportunities for career advancement and higher earnings
How can TANF help?
Funding from TANF programs, supplemented by support from philanthropy or other sources, may be used to subsidize a portion of the costs of wages, support services, and other programs costs.
For more information about best practices in creating employment opportunities for people experiencing homelessness, see these resources created by the Working to End Homelessness Initiative
For more information about using TANF to provide subsidized or transitional jobs, and the evidence that these programs work, see
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Strengthen Connections Among Welfare-to-Work, Job Training, and Homeless Assistance Programs
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Families experiencing or at risk of homelessness need adequate incomes to pay rent. Many of the adults in these families want to work, and they need access to employment and training services that are effective for people who face barriers to getting and keeping good jobs. They may also need work supports such as child care and transportation assistance, and some families need other services to address additional barriers to employment and housing stability.
Why should we strengthen connections among programs?
Strong linkages and ongoing collaboration among housing and employment services will:
- Provide families with the supports they need to care for children in their own homes and to pursue opportunities for self-sufficiency; and
- Help each system achieve its goals. Housing solutions provide a stable platform for parents to achieve employment goals. Connections to employment and work supports such as childcare and transportation assistance increase families’ incomes and promote housing stability.
How can we do it?
- TANF agencies should be active partners in statewide, regional, and local efforts to prevent and end homelessness, through participation in the Continuum of Care and other cross-sector structures for planning, coordinating, and investing in housing and services for families experiencing or at risk of homelessness.
- TANF agencies and homeless assistance programs can create interagency partnerships to coordinate and streamline services delivered across the two systems, using formalized referral processes to expedite connections to appropriate services and agreements to share client-level data with consent.
- Welfare-to-work and other employment and training services can be co-located with homeless assistance programs that serve families with children.
- Navigators can help families experiencing homelessness meet TANF requirements and use employment and training services effectively, while also offering individualized and flexible supports.
- Cross-training for front-line staff can help TANF workers better understand the needs of homeless families and the resources and strategies available to prevent and end family homelessness, while also helping staff in homeless assistance programs better understand TANF program rules and the resources and supports that can be available to families in need.
For more ideas about partnerships and examples of state TANF agency initiatives, see this TANF Information Memorandum from the Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families.
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Get a Job, Buster!
