We know what works.  Philanthropy can help take it to scale.

		1501 Pacific Avenue, Ste 400  Tacoma, WA 98402 Phone: 253-597-7491 www.uwpc.org

Organization Type

United Way

Mission

United Way of Pierce County is committed to making measurable improvements in the lives of people in our community.

Our mission is best executed when we identify critical issues and then use your gift to fund a combination of programs and initiatives to best address those issues.

Funding Areas

• Education
• Health care
• Housing

Supported Strategies

• Affordable housing
• Education about homelessness
• Emergency shelter
• Funding advocacy
• Permanent supportive housing
• Prevention
• Public policy/systems change
• Rapid re-housing
• Supportive services
• Transitional housing
• Workforce development

Mary Cunningham, Author of ‘Vital Mission: Ending Homelessness Among Veterans’ published by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, and Director of the Homelessness Research Institute 

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Twenty years ago, dilapidated, high-crime public housing developments populated by impoverished, female-headed households were a powerful symbol of the failures of U.S. social welfare policy. HOPE VI was a key element of a bold effort to transform these public housing communities and demonstrate that housing programs could produce good results for residents and communities. The program provided grants to housing authorities to replace their most distressed developments—those with high crime rates, serious physical decay, and obsolete structures—with new, mixed-income, mixed-tenure communities. In a departure from earlier efforts to “rehabilitate” public housing, HOPE VI sought to move beyond “bricks and mortar” and provided funding for supportive services for residents to help them move toward self-sufficiency and improve their life circumstances.

There is no question that HOPE VI has changed the face of public housing—hundreds of those dilapidated structures have been replaced with attractive new developments, and the program has sparked innovations in financing and management.  However, the program has not been a solution for the most vulnerable families—those “hard to house” families with multiple, complex problems that make them ineligible for mixed-income housing or unable to cope with the challenges of negotiating the private market with a Housing Choice Voucher. In many U.S. cities, public housing has served as the housing of last resort for decades, with the poorest and least desirable tenants warehoused in the worst developments. As these developments have been demolished, vulnerable families have often simply been moved from one distressed development to another, and with a concentration of extremely troubled families and a lack of adequate supportive services, these new developments have the potential to become even worse environments than those from where these families started.

This report provides an overview of the Chicago Family Case Management Demonstration and its progress to date, and then focus on one of the major challenges for providers serving vulnerable families: identifying which clients require the full intensive services, and which would benefit from a different approach. 

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Health care and housing are closely intertwined and access to both is necessary for ending homelessness.  This report looks at the Vulnerability Index as a way to assess the crisis in the Capitol Region of Connecticut.  In order to be categorized as “vulnerable” an individual must have been homeless for at least six months and self identify as having one or more of the eight health risk factors.

In this report, Journey Home used the Vulnerability Index to identify and create a list of those who have been homeless the longest and are most at risk of mortality.  Results from the Vulnerability Index can be used to estimate the healthcare resources spent on those surveyed.

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Heath care providers are seeing that supportive housing is a critical intervention in improving the health of long-term homeless persons.

City leaders want to end homelessness in downtown, yet by criminalizing it, they will be wasting precious resources.

Every summer the National Alliance to End Homelessness conference on ending homelessness has been a highlight for me. It reinvigorates me. It teaches me. It reminds me why we do this work – day in and day out.

Homelessness is a complex issue but it is not an unsolvable problem. It can be ended and philanthropy has a vital role to play.

A new study reveals that a large number of clients served by the supportive housing program qualify for Medicaid, and the majority of services being provided would be considered eligible for Medicaid reimbursement.