As communities are becoming more advanced in their efforts to end chronic homelessness they are taking steps to secure funding in systemic ways and from a variety of sources, including Medicaid.
Chronically homeless people make up just a small part of the overall homeless population (15 percent on a given night), but they are the hardest to help. All chronically homeless people struggle with serious physical or mental disabilities, including mental illnesses like schizophrenia and alcohol or drug addiction, that make obtaining and maintaining housing on their own extremely difficult.
You might have heard of the Homeless Children and Youth Act (S.256), which was introduced by Senator Dianne Feinstein to address family and youth homelessness. The Alliance opposes this bill because it will not solve the housing problems of families and youth that it aims to, and makes significant changes to the homeless assistance system that are unnecessary, burdensome, and harmful. This document explains three detrimental impacts this bill would have and suggests alternative approaches to address the problems the bill aims to address.
Those of us who have been engaged in efforts to end family homelessness over the past decade need to acknowledge one of two things: Either the work is extremely complex and difficult, or we’re not very good at our jobs. While both of these statements could be true, given the time, talent, and passion that so many have been focusing on this issue for so long, we conclude (and hope) that the first statement is more accurate.
There are many different crises that can catapult a family into homelessness: Loss of a job, domestic violence, accidents or serious illness, and inter-generational poverty – to name just a few. In addition, despite efforts to coordinate, past experiences in responding to homelessness have shown us that, although admirable, fragmented, non-integrated efforts to solve this problem by organizations and systems working independently and on their own have not stemmed the tide of this crisis.
It is a generally acknowledged truth that kids can be difficult, particularly teenagers. Homeless kids are difficult, too—but I’m not talking about mood swings or rebellion. I’m talking about data. Counting homeless unaccompanied children (below age 18) and youth (ages 18 to 24) is one of the many challenging tasks that homeless advocates face.
Each January, communities across the country conduct Point-in-Time Counts. These counts give a national snapshot of homelessness on a single night, and are a valuable tool in monitoring trends in homelessness. Point-in-Time Counts are challenging, and they became even more so in 2013 when the federal government mandated that communities begin counting homeless unaccompanied children and youth.
Communities that have achieved significant reductions in veteran homelessness generally have something in common: the key stakeholders responsible for addressing the issue meet on a very regular basis.
You may have noticed in a lot of the Alliance materials around veteran homelessness we talk a lot about getting together on a weekly basis with your partners to address the issue. In turn, we have heard a lot of feedback about whether or not such frequent meetings are necessary. Our response is pretty simple: yes, they are. Regular, frequent meetings serve numerous purposes, including keeping everyone on task and allowing for regular assessments of the problem in your community.
