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Here at the Alliance we’re gearing up for our annual National Conference on Ending Homelessness in Washington, DC, which will take place this Wednesday, July 15, to Friday, July 17. We’re looking forward to seeing many of you there!

As you may already be aware, the Alliance holds a Capitol Hill Day each year in conjunction with our July conference. It’s a chance for our conference attendees to visit Capitol Hill where they can meet face-to-face with their Senators and Representatives and congressional staffers. This year we’re holding the event on Friday, July 17.

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Originally from North Carolina, my passion for working in the nonprofit sector brought me to the D.C. Metro Area where I now live, work, and study as an M.P.A. Student at George Mason University.

Working as the Community Relations Manager of a direct-service nonprofit in North Carolina first showed me how to translate my personal commitment to serving others into a fulfilling professional career. Studying Nonprofit Management and working as the Development Assistant for George Mason’s School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs has since left no doubt in my mind that my career lies in fundraising and development.

On any given day, hundreds of thousands of Americans experience homelessness and interact with the homeless assistance system. Fortunately, many of them will become housed. Though the end point—housing—is the most important part, the process of accessing housing can vary greatly from person to person.

The homeless assistance system offers a variety of interventions: emergency shelter, transitional housing, permanent supportive housing, and rapid re-housing. While some of these interventions (emergency shelter and transitional housing) are designed to be temporary, others (permanent supportive housing and rapid re-housing) are long-term solutions to homelessness.

Why do people become homeless? This is a complicated question with numerous, complex answers. For some people, it may be because they lost a job or had an unforeseen medical crisis. For others, it may be because the cost of rent rose and they were unable to afford the payments.

Every person who experiences homelessness has a unique situation. However, research shows that homelessness often is a result of two factors: economic problems and/or housing problems. Economic problems include poverty and unemployment. In other words, if you don’t have the money to pay for housing, you’re vulnerable to homelessness. Housing problems include severe housing cost burden—in which a poor household pays over half of their income in rent—and living doubled up—in which people live with family or friends. Housing problems generally stem from a lack of affordable housing.