In any single night in the United States, approximately 650,000
individuals are without safe and stable housing. One in 500
Americansand one in 67 Americans living below the poverty lineis in
a shelter or on the street every night. While these numbers are
staggering, our nation has made significant progress over the last
decade to reduce chronic (or long-term) homelessness.
The leading solution to ending chronic homelessness has been the
development of permanent supportive housingaffordable rental
housing coupled with supportive services that target the specific
needs of an individual or family. Communities have accomplished
this by collaborating with key local agencies and stakeholders
serving those experiencing homelessness.
In May 2009, President Barack Obama and Congress charged the United
States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) to develop a
national strategic plan to end homelessness with enactment of the
Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing
(HEARTH) Act. USICH, an independent federal agency composed of 19
Cabinet secretaries and agency heads, coordinates the federal
response to homelessness through partnerships at every level of
government and with the private and nonprofit sectors.
Developing the Plan
Capitalizing on progress at the local level, USICH began developing
Opening Doors Across America, the nations first federal strategic
plan to prevent and end homeless-ness. The council decided the
development of the plan should be:
- collaborative
- solutions-driven and evidence-based
- cost-effective
- implementable and user-friendly
- lasting and scalable
- measurable, with clear outcomes and accountability.
Throughout the development process, USICH stressed the importance
of transparency. The agency encouraged multiple opportunities for
input, feedback, and collaboration from researchers, practitioners,
state and local government leaders, advocates, people who have
experienced homelessness, and federal agency staff. In fact, more
than 750 leaders of regional and state interagency councils and
stakeholders from across the country participated in regional
meetings. USICH generated additional input through meetings and
conference calls with mayors, congressional staff, and national
advocacy organizations, and through an interactive website for
public comment on the plans themes.
Presenting a Bold Roadmap for Joint Action
On June 22, 2010, the council submitted Opening Doors to the
President and Congress at a White House event that included four
cabinet secretaries and the director of the Domestic Policy
Council. The plan has four goals:
- finish the job of ending chronic homelessness by 2015
- prevent and end homelessness among veterans by 2015
- prevent and end homelessness for families, youth, and children
by 2020
- set a path to end all types of homelessness.
Opening Doors presents strategies that build upon the lesson that
mainstream housing, health, education, and human service programs
must be fully engaged and coordinated to prevent and end
homelessness. Among its 10 objectives and 52 strategies are these
tenets:
- Increasing leadership, collaboration, and civic engagement,
with a focus on providing and promoting collaborative leadership at
all levels of government and across all sectors, and on
strengthening the capacity of public and private organizations by
increasing knowledge about collaboration and successful
interventionsto prevent and end homelessness.
- Increasing access to stable and affordable housing by providing
affordable housing and permanent supportive housing.
- Increasing economic security by expanding opportunities for
meaningful and sustainable employment and improving access to
mainstream programs and services to reduce financial vulnerability
to homelessness.
- Improving health and stability by linking health-care with
homeless assistance programs and housing, advancing stability for
youth aging out of systems such as foster care and juvenile
justice, and improving discharge planning for people who have
frequent contact with hospitals and criminal justice systems.
- Retooling the homeless response system by transforming homeless
services to crisis response systems that prevent homelessness and
rapidly return people who experience homelessness to stable
housing.
Opening Doors represents the first time the federal government is
measuring progress against clear numerical targets. The first three
measures are population-specific measures that tie directly to the
goals outlined. USICH also is tracking the change in the total
number of people experiencing homelessness. The two other measures
track progress against two overarching strategies in the plan: the
change in the number of permanent supportive housing units
(nationally) and the change in the number of households exiting
homeless assistance programs with earned income or mainstream
benefits. Opening Doors and USICH are committed to the philosophy
that what gets measured, gets done.
Invest in Best Practices and Break Down Silos
From years of practice and research, successful approaches to end
homelessness have emerged that place housing at the center of the
solution to the myriad problems facing those experiencing
homelessness. Evidence points to the role housing plays as an
essential platform for human and community development.
Stable housing is the foundation upon which people build their
livesabsent a safe, decent, affordable place to live, it is next to
impossible to achieve good health, positive educational outcomes,
or reach ones economic potential. Indeed, for many persons living
in poverty, the lack of stable housing leads to costly cycling
through crisis-driven systems such as foster care, emergency rooms,
psychiatric hospitals, emergency domestic violence shelters, detox
centers, and jails. By the same token, stable housing provides an
ideal launching pad for the delivery of healthcare and other social
services focused on improving life outcomes for individuals and
families. Collaboration, then, is critical for ending homelessness.
People experiencing or most at risk of homelessness are in a
heightened state of need. The situations that threaten them with
homelessness are varied and complex. Challenges are not neatly
divided into discrete problems. For instance, getting a veteran
into a decent-paying job is tied to transportation, to housing, and
to healthcare. Systems to address these specific issues must work
together on behalf of the people they serve rather than expecting
those who need assistance to navigate complex bureaucracies.
Opening Doors calls upon the federal government to partner with
state and local governments and the private sector to employ
cost-effective, comprehensive solutions to end homelessness. The
plan recognizes that the federal government needs to be smarter and
more targeted in its response and role, which also includes
supporting and learning from the work that is already being done on
the ground.
Strategic Implementation
Over the last year, there has been unprecedented collaboration
among federal agencieswith one another, and with state and local
governments and nonprofits in efforts to implement Opening Doors.
The federal government has laid the groundwork for future successes
through better collaboration, better data collection, better use of
mainstream resources, and by engaging states and local communities
in the plans goals and strategies.
A number of key implementation themes have emerged:
- Better data collection, analysis, and reporting. Agencies
within the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and
Veterans Affairs are working with the U.S. Department of Housing
and Urban Development to coordinate these efforts. Good data are
essential to measuring what works, what doesnt, and what we need to
do better. A concrete example is the issuance of the first veterans
supplement to the Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) that HUD
prepares for Congress each year.
- Adoption of proven tools to prevent and end homelessness. For
example, the VA has pushed a clear charge out to its medical
centers, local providers, and partners to initiate community
planning and adopt best practices such as housing first and
critical time intervention.
- Better use of targeted resources. The American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009 helped fund the Homelessness Prevention
and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP), which has assisted more than
935,000 people in its first two years. This is three times more
than projected, with more than one year remaining. Equally
significant is that the program paved the way for a fundamental
change in the way many communities respond to homelessness, moving
from shelter-based systems to cost-effective systems of prevention,
diversion, and rapid re-housing.
- Improved access of mainstream resources. Implementing the
Affordable Care Act of 2010 has been a major focal point in the
past year, with HHS playing a catalytic role in helping communities
prepare for the opportunities that lie ahead. With careful planning
now, implementing Medicaid expansion will significantly increase
access to healthcare for people at risk of and experiencing
homelessness.
- Increased engagement with states and local communities. One
example is the meaningful engagement of USICH and its federal
partners with community stakeholders in Los Angeles to increase
progress on ending chronic and veterans homelessness.
The federal government has a sense of urgency to work with
Congress, mayors, governors, legislatures, non-profits, faith-based
and community organizations, and business and philanthropic leaders
across the country to ensure that every American has an affordable,
safe, and stable place to call home. The federal government invites
states and local communities to align their efforts with Opening
Doors. By working together and implementing the most cost-effective
solutions, we can be both fiscally prudent and set a clear path to
ending homelessness.