The Pressure Points resource series is intended to highlight key, continuously evolving strategies and practices for ending homelessness, and provide guidance and clarity to help communities execute them more effectively.
Shared Housing
Shared Housing is a strategy that maximizes housing resources in a community to get people housed quickly and reduce system strain. Sharing housing is often used as a response to a lack of affordable housing, as it reduces the rent burden for all parties involved – tenants, landlords, and the homelessness system itself.
Additional Resources
- Presentation: Cutting the Rent in Half: Shared Housing (LA Family Housing & Homeless Outreach Program Integrated Systems (HOPICS))
- Sample Document: Shared Housing Agreements (Friendship Place, Washington, D.C.)
Progressive Engagement
Progressive Engagement is a strategy to maximize a community’s limited resources by tailoring assistance to each household’s unique strengths, needs, and changing circumstances, and scaling them up or down as needed over time.
Additional Resources
- Blog: Understanding Progressive Engagement
- Slideshow: How Progressive Engagement and Diversion Can Help Your Community End Homelessness (OrgCode Consulting, Inc.)
Housing First
Housing First is a philosophy rooted in the understanding that the most effective way to end a person’s homelessness is to connect them with permanent housing as fast as possible, without unnecessary preconditions, while offering on-going support through connection to optional services. Truly becoming a Housing First provider, however, demands more than just agreement with that philosophy; it requires a broad shift in strategy, philosophy, operations, and practices.
Additional Resources
- Blog: What Housing First Really Means
- Data Visualization: The Evidence on Housing First
- Brief: An Overview of the Housing First Approach for City Leaders (National League of Cities; free download, registration required)
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