Home / Children and Families

Category: Children and Families

Here’s How Communities Can House More Homeless Families

March 20, 2015

Today when a family facing a housing crisis seeks shelter in Los Angeles or Mercer County, NJ, they will encounter a very different homeless service system than they would have just a few short years ago. That’s because both communities have radically transformed their homeless service systems to increase their capacity to help families.

In the past, families in L.A. would call programs all over the county to find a vacancy. Due to the county’s size, they might find a program 25 or even 50 miles from their previous residence. Too often, they would be forced to turn to an adult shelter program or a facility in Skid Row that was poorly equipped to support families with children. Today, the city has Family Solutions Centers strategically located through the county to assesses families’ housing needs and refer them to the most appropriate shelter or housing intervention in their own community.

Some Thoughts on the 2015 National Family and Youth Conference

February 27, 2015

Alliance staff people are back in the cold weather in Washington, DC, after an enlighteing experience at the 2015 National Conference on Ending Family and Youth Homelessnessin San Diego last week. The final count was 950 people attending, an all-time high for our family and youth conference. Traffic on Twitter was robust, giving people all over the country who couldn’t attend a taste of what was going on.

And once again, the impression we were left with was the overwhelming enthusiasm and determination that people in this field have, despite obstacles and challenges, to celebrate successes, to push themselves to do better, and never give up on the youth and families who are homeless. In the closing plenary Friday afternoon, Alliance President and CEO Nan Roman shared her thoughts on some things that had impressed her over the course of the conference. Here is a look at some of the highlights.

See You Tomorrow at the 2015 Family and Youth Conference!

February 18, 2015

We’re looking forward to seeing you in San Diego this week for our 2015 National Conference on Ending Family and Youth Homelessness. Here in DC, as you may already be aware, we just had a ton of snow dumped on us. Some of us had our flights to San Diego canceled, and we’ve had to scramble to make new arrangements. But so far it looks like we’re all going to make it.

If you’re going to be there, please consider sharing your experience on social media using the conference hashtag #NAEH15. If you aren’t attending, you can keep up with the conference on Twitter, on the Alliance blog, and the Alliance Facebook page. Alliance staff will be tweeting about conference content, events, and speakers throughout the event.

Employment and Housing: Early Findings from the Family Self-Sufficiency Study

February 3, 2015

Here at the Alliance, we often say that the answer to homelessness is housing. Though there are many ways to ensure people have access to housing, one of them is by connecting them to employment. If people are employed in living-wage jobs, they should be more able to afford housing.

Over the past several years, MDRC, a nonprofit that conducts research on social policy, has examined a demonstration project to explore ways to increase employment and earnings for families living in subsidized housing. In 2012, MRDC released early findings from the project in a report, “Working Toward Self-Sufficiency: Early Findings from a Program for Housing Voucher Recipients in New York City.” (MDRC will release a second report of longer-term findings soon.)

MRDC focused on the Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program, a federal program that works to decrease reliance on housing vouchers by providing case management to prepare families for and connect them to employment, increasing families’ share of the rent as their income increases, and diverting families’ increased rent payments into interest-accruing accounts that are paid out to them upon program completion.

PAGE: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18