Many communities around the country are repurposing or reallocating their transitional housing projects to create new rapid re-housing subsidies and permanent housing units.
Our new Transitional Housing Conversion: A Building Owner’s Toolkit offers transitional housing building owners a step-by-step guide to addressing funding and use restrictions.
Overall, HUD estimates that funding for youth homelessness increased by 50% in this award cycle. Indeed, across all housing models, approximately twice as many unaccompanied youth will be served in HUD-funded projects as last year. And as I looked through the list of awards, I was able to calculate around $15 million in funding for youth RRH, and at leat $11 million of that is for new projects.
On May 25, 2016, the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) and the California Department of Social Services held the second webinar in a four part webinar series on Rapid Re-Housing (RRH), designed for providers who operate or are interested in operating a RRH program funded through the Calworks Housing Support Program (HSP) or the Emergency Solutions Grants (ESG) Program. The second webinar, RRH: Housing Identification, focused on approaches to housing identification for participants in a manner consistent with the new RRH benchmarks and standards published by the National Alliance to End Homelessness. The webinar included brief presentations from two rapid re-housing providers who shares their experience on recruiting and retaining landlords and assisting program participants to identify and secure permanent housing.
In early May the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced Tier 2 awards to local Continuums of Care (CoCs). Our analysis of the results suggests a lot more individuals, families, youth and survivors of domestic violence will receive rapid re-housing in the upcoming year, but more services are needed to support families than homeless programs can provide on their own.
The goal of rapid re-housing case management is to help participants obtain and move into permanent housing, stabilize in housing, and get connected to services and supports if needed. Since rapid re-housing is a short-term intervention, the intent of case management is to assist a household in accessing and stabilizing long term in a housing unit. Case management should focus on helping participants navigate barriers to tenancy and build a support system by connecting them with people and programs in the community.