As someone well into my second decade of NAEH conferences, I always come to the gathering with the hope and expectation of learning about new solutions to homelessness, engaging with interesting people, and honing my own skills in the field. This year, I was (once again) not disappointed.
The level of knowledge – and sophistication – that our field has achieved is impressive. We can, with increasing confidence, say that we know what it takes to make homelessness rare, brief and non-recurring, and how to apply our shared wisdom in urban, suburban and rural settings to minimize, or even prevent, the crisis of homelessness for unaccompanied youth, adults or families.
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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A few years ago, the Commonwealth of Virginia decided to make a major change in the way their homelessness funding and strategies worked.
In Virginia, like many communities, state funds were invested heavily in emergency shelter operations. Based on the success with rapid re-housing Virginia experienced when implementing the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP), they decided to adopt rapid re-housing as the commonwealth's primary intervention for homeless families.
From 2010 to 2014 Virginia reduced the number of families experiencing homelessness by 25 percent. One important factor in this success was that Virginia shifted from a shelter and transitional housing-based system to one based much more on the use of a rapid re-housing approach. This paper outlines the major activities and lessons learned from this project.
