Housing-Focused Responses to Unsheltered Homelessness: Spotlight on Newark, NJ 

Racial Inequities

Like the rest of the United States, historical discrimination in housing and economic policy segregated Essex County’s racial groups. While white people are the largest racial group in the County, (49 percent of the population), 50.5 percent of Newark city’s residents are Black and 24.8 percent are white. In addition, 38.6 percent identify as Hispanic or Latino. Years of divestment from Newark’s black communities made it more difficult for black residents to secure stable housing. This greatly contributes to Newark’s high rates of unsheltered homelessness compared with the rest of the County. As the reductions in unsheltered homelessness indicate, Newark’s Office of Homeless Services is actively making progress to correct these disparities in partnership with service providers who are part of the CoC. 

Housing Costs

These efforts to rehouse people and prevent homelessness are especially important right now because housing costs in Newark are increasing rapidly. 

• Fair Market Rents (FMR) increased 31 percent from 2020–2024. 
• In addition to the end of federal investments in COVID-era relief programs, increasing rents contributed to a resurgence in unsheltered and overall homelessness from 2023 to 2024. 

Still, Newark’s Office of Homeless Services remains committed to its approach: its leaders know that strategic, informed investments in street outreach; temporary shelter; permanent, affordable housing; and wraparound supports are what drove down unsheltered homelessness from 413 people in 2020 to just 125 people in 2022 — a 69.7% decrease. Without the Office of Homeless Service’s work and the work of numerous homeless service organizations in Newark, it is likely that homelessness would have increased much more quickly during this time. 

Laying the Foundation to End Homelessness 

Newark identified two key factors that were foundational to ensuring the success of their unsheltered homelessness strategy — 1) effective collaborations and 2) a strong workforce. Both factors required investment and support from the city, state, federal government, and local community partners. 

While the data reflected in this case study is from 2019–2024, the efforts identified have continued through 2025. Early results from the 2025 PIT count indicate that the Essex County/City of Newark CoC saw reductions in homelessness despite large increases across much of New Jersey. 

City Efforts 

In part, reductions in homelessness occurred because in early 2022, the City of Newark established the Office of Homeless Services through the Mayor’s office, which established a strategy to address homelessness in the city. The office is primarily staffed by people with lived experience of housing insecurity and who have long-term ties to the city. They met with more than 100 community members, including those who have experienced homelessness, business leaders, philanthropic organizations, and leaders from medical and educational institutions to develop the strategy. As this case study explains, Newark’s Office of Homeless Services made, and continues to make, a concerted effort to make shelter more accessible and connect more people — especially those experiencing chronic homelessness — with permanent housing. 

Building Effective Collaborations and Sustaining the Homelessness Workforce 

Newark’s strategies to end homelessness are grounded in system-wide collaboration and a strong workforce. Newark’s Office of Homeless Services plays a prominent role in bringing together the resources and systems necessary to end homelessness in Newark. The city works closely with service providers that are part of the Essex/Newark Continuum of Care. Together, the city and the CoC providers partner with New Jersey’s Department of Community Affairs (DCA), public and private funders, and private housing providers. These partnerships are critical to many of the programs and strategies discussed throughout the case study. 

Even when intentional collaboration occurs, efforts to address unsheltered homelessness often overlook the staff capacity and expertise that rehousing people requires. Despite providing essential services that require technical expertise and training, workers who provide these services are often underpaid and overworked. Yet, maintaining a strong, stable workforce is essential for any community to make progress on unsheltered homelessness. 

Newark and its partners are trying to address these challenges in four primary ways. 

1. Investing in Staff Retention 

Beginning in 2019, New Jersey’s Office of Homelessness Prevention utilized state resources appropriated by the legislature to prevent homelessness locally. To do this, the Office develops, implements, and helps to expand a range of programs that prevent homelessness and help to rehouse people. New Jersey worked with Newark’s Office of Homeless Services, as well as the CoC, to analyze providers’ data and understand what factors promote more stable, permanent housing for clients. 

• A key predictor of maintaining permanent housing in New Jersey and in Newark specifically turned out to be the length of time a client’s case manager had been in their role. Pay is linked to retention, so the Office increased the rates they pay providers throughout the state. They also made it easier for providers to increase pay for their staff by implementing administrative changes that created a more certain financial environment. Specifically, the Office now makes payments to organizations less than 30 days after the organization bills the state for its services. The Office also advances the majority of an award to trusted partners in its first payment. 
• When organizations know they have a steady and certain funding stream, they feel more secure spending the money required to pay a living wage. They also are more eager to partner with the state, which allows the state to encourage best practices. 
• Because the Office of Homelessness Prevention is funded by the state, it is not dependent on shifts in federal priorities. While the Office does not fund every program in New Jersey or in Newark (instead focusing on homelessness prevention and diversion programs), community leaders noted that the Office’s attention to prompt payment processing has helped reduce delays in payment that can disrupt services and prevent clients from receiving life-saving services. 

2. Providing Training 

The majority of homelessness response staff across the country say that their organizations do not have the resources (including adequate training for staff) to provide housing and services effectively. To help address this challenge, New Jersey and Newark try to empower workers with the skills they need to do their work. 

• For example, after conducting background research on how providers collect and use data, the Office developed a 12-week course that helps local staff — in roles ranging from street outreach to upper management — maintain data quality and use their data to make strategic decisions. 
• Additionally, Newark’s Office of Homeless Services partnered with the Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey and Rutgers University to build a new training program for frontline staff. This helps to equip staff with the tools they need to support people in crisis and transition out of homelessness. 
• Some providers (like Collaborative Support Programs of New Jersey [CSPNJ], a peer-led housing and recovery organization), also train their outreach teams independently to conduct person-centered and trauma-informed street outreach. This includes partnering with — and training — staff from other organizations. Investing in staff capacity continues to build confidence and improve service access and quality. 

3. Building Cross-Organizational Feedback 

The CoC also facilitates peer-led monitoring and evaluation. Staff from one provider organization will spend an afternoon shadowing a case manager at another shelter, drop-in center, or housing unit. They speak with clients and staff to learn about the program. This offers an opportunity for both organizations to offer feedback and learn new skills. 

4. Increasing Staff Capacity 

To support rehousing goals, Newark worked with local providers to expand the number of staff in their various programs. This allows staff to work with clients more closely and address their needs more carefully. For example, in the past couple of years, the number of outreach teams increased from three to seven. They also added 24/7 coverage and created a plan to reach more areas of the city. By making outreach workers a more consistent presence, they laid the foundation to build trust with the unsheltered community more effectively. Newark and the CoC indicated that they hope to continue building their outreach capacity to respond to the community’s changing needs. 

Strategies to End Homelessness 

Building these collaborative partnerships and staff capacity made it easier for Newark’s Office of Homeless Services — in partnership with CoC providers – to: 

1. Reduce Barriers to Affordable Housing. Newark implemented zoning reforms as well as affordable housing development tax incentives to promote public-private partnerships that can increase the production of deeply affordable housing. Newark also allocated more resources to housing vouchers, making it easier for people to pay rents. 
2. Invest in Data Collection and Analysis. Newark is funding data projects that help providers make strategic decisions about how it coordinates its work and reaches people in need. 
3. Expand Street Outreach. Larger, better coordinated programs make it possible to connect with more residents in need — especially people experiencing chronic homelessness. 
4. Expand Opportunities for People Experiencing Homelessness to Connect with Resources: Newark’s network of partners which include the transit agency, medical system, legal system and city business leaders, support and even help to fund, the city’s outreach and rehousing efforts. 

1. Reduce Barriers to Housing Development 

Service providers, Newark’s Office of Homeless Services, and the state’s Office of Homelessness Prevention recognize that housing in Newark is increasingly unaffordable. Since 2021, Newark has been taking significant steps to expand the availability of affordable units, including connecting people with the subsidies they need to sustain housing. To accomplish these goals, Newark is: 

Effectively Using National Resources 

Providers rely heavily on federal grants to help provide housing that is affordable to households making less than 30 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI). Additionally, in 2021, the federal government recognized that COVID-19 made it especially difficult for local communities to meet their residents’ need for affordable housing. Across many of their federal awards, New Jersey and Newark are prioritizing resources to people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. 

• State lawmakers expanded resources using funding from the American Rescue Plan Act. This allowed Newark to fund 120 additional housing vouchers that target people experiencing or at risk of homelessness. However, Congress has not extended funding for Emergency Housing Vouchers in its Fiscal Year 2026 Budget. If the budget is passed without additional emergency vouchers, this will impact some of these recipients and make it more difficult for Newark to provide permanent housing to people experiencing homelessness. 
• In 2024, the Mayor’s Office, in partnership with the Newark Housing Authority (NHA), designated 200 public housing units to move people experiencing chronic homelessness inside. Once housed, the City of Newark’s Office of Homeless Services — with staff from Bridges Outreach, Inc., and other community partners — provide supportive services, including housing navigation, behavioral health counseling and treatment, financial assistance, and other assistance to help residents move to permanent housing. 
• The state Office of Homelessness Prevention prioritizes Tenant-Based Rental Assistance from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to people living unsheltered. This helps expand permanent housing opportunities and prevent people from reentering homelessness. 
• Most recently, Newark also received a four-million-dollar grant from HUD’s Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing program. Among other things, this grant will be used to implement some of the zoning and development policies described below. 

Building Local Funding Streams 

Beginning in 2021, the City of Newark expanded financing for dozens of new housing development projects for extremely low income residents. These projects also set aside units for people experiencing homelessness or people who are at risk of becoming homeless. In 2021, the mayor’s office contributed to this effort by directing Newark’s Department of Economic & Housing Development to: 

• allocate two million dollars to meet financial gaps in new affordable development projects; and 
• sell vacant city-owned land at a rate far below market price to residents as well as private and public developers who commit to long-term affordability requirements. 

The City also continues to encourage and facilitate partnerships between private housing developers and CoC-funded providers who offer wrap-around services for residents who want and need them. 

Reforming Housing Policy 

Newark requires housing developments with 15 or more units to set aside 20 percent of these units for affordable housing, targeting households who make less than 40 percent of the Area Median Income. The city also instituted a density bonus, allowing properties with more affordable housing to be larger. This bonus helps developers recoup some of the revenue they lose on affordable units. New Jersey also maintains an Affordable Housing Trust Fund and instituted a series of other policy reforms aimed at addressing its wider deficit of affordable housing. 

Incentivizing Landlords 

To incentivize property owners to lease to voucher recipients, the Newark Housing Authority provides one-time, $400 payments to landlords when they lease a unit to a voucher recipient for the first time. They also work closely with landlords, allowing them to call local providers if the resident is experiencing challenges. 

These are important first steps. Newark recognizes that to meaningfully address homelessness, it must make private market housing more affordable and provide income support to more people who cannot afford housing. Despite proposals to cut key federal programs that help communities meet these goals, the city is trying to find new ways to fund and incentivize the preservation and development of housing that serves all of Newark’s residents. 

2. Investing in Data 

Newark is increasing its available housing resources. However, to fully address unsheltered homelessness, they also aim to continuously address gaps in their response system’s data infrastructure. Doing so makes it easier for people experiencing homelessness to access services, reduces inflow into the response system, and helps providers identify future needs. Thus, homeless service providers have: 

Introduced New Data Collection Systems 

In addition to using the Homelessness Management Information System (HMIS) to maintain client data across programs, outreach providers have integrated tools to confidentially map, and keep track of, people living in encampments. This allows their teams to communicate with each other more easily. When street outreach workers return to an encampment, they can identify where their clients live and track the services previous workers already provided. Coordinating (and not duplicating) services saves resources and helps to improve provider engagement with clients, since clients are not asked for the same information more than once. 

Leveraged Lived Experience to Improve Outreach Data 

The CoC evaluated the type of data being collected in these systems. For example, the CoC’s lived experience committee recommended including targeted, qualitative questions in addition to demographic and geographic data. They added a category to their existing HMIS system that allows workers to describe the tone or temperature of client interactions. If a conversation had a negative cadence, the team noted this in order to allow team leaders to send workers who have the skills or services necessary to effectively reach the client and meet their needs. The CoC hopes that in some cases, matching clients with the appropriate staff member can lead to improved interactions. Importantly, regardless of the tone of the interaction or the client’s specific needs, staff make every effort to return and support clients. 

Used Data to Prevent Inflow 

The City of Newark also works with the state of New Jersey to identify parts of Newark where the greatest number of people are entering unsheltered homelessness. The state’s Office of Homelessness Prevention targets resources like Emergency Rental Assistance and housing navigation to households who live in these areas and are at immediate risk of homelessness. This helps Newark connect with housed residents when they face a crisis and ensure they can access the support they need to stay housed rather than entering shelter or unsheltered homelessness. 

The Office also works with service providers to build partnerships with eviction courts and access eviction data. This allows Newark and its community partners to connect with people much sooner, when they are facing eviction but have not yet gone to court. This program also includes landlord mediation programs that provide funding to legal service organizations who can negotiate with housing providers and even pay back arrears. While many people who are evicted will not become homeless, this earlier intervention helps stabilize people long before they need assistance from the homeless response system. 

Reevaluated Data to Identify Emerging Needs 

Finally, the City of Newark and CoC providers constantly analyze their data, reallocating resources when necessary to respond to their community’s changing needs. When the Alliance spoke with members of the CoC’s governance board in the winter of 2024–2025, they were performing a regular review of their resource gaps and exploring how these gaps changed during the winter. They also explore who was successfully housed in the previous three months, who returned to homelessness, and whether there were any gaps in resources for specific populations. Asking these types of questions and answering them with accurate, up-to-date information is critical as service providers make strategic decisions about where to invest resources. 

Improving data systems in Newark and other communities in New Jersey also has important consequences for the state’s broader efforts to end homelessness. By improving systems across the state, New Jersey was able to use this data to apply for a Section 1115 waiver from the Center for Medicaid Services. With this waiver from the federal government, New Jersey’s service providers should be able to bill Medicaid for health-related social needs like move-in fees and short-term rental subsidies, potentially expanding the resources that are available for people experiencing homelessness. Given their specific effort to rehouse people experiencing chronic homelessness, this may have an especially significant impact on Newark. However, Congress expanded Medicaid eligibility requirements during the budget reconciliation process. This will likely make it more difficult for many people experiencing homelessness to connect with health services, including those that address social determinants of health (like housing). 

3. Expanding the Function and Capacity of Street Outreach 

Using these improved data systems, Newark is also taking steps to expand and improve outreach to people experiencing unsheltered homelessness by: 

Clarifying the Goal of Street Outreach 

Service providers are clear-sighted about their outreach teams’ goal: to help people access housing and services. Outreach staff are trained Coordinated Entry Assessors, ensuring that people who are unsheltered are considered for housing opportunities without having to go to a drop-in center or shelter. Housing navigation specialists are also embedded in outreach teams. They offer pre-tenancy supports (including employment services, public benefits enrollment, ID applications, and referrals to healthcare) as well as tenancy supports once they are housed. Outreach teams are also trained to know about the various permanent housing programs available in the city so they can help clients complete applications for public housing and permanent housing vouchers. 

Embedding Health Services in Outreach 

City- and CoC-funded outreach teams closely collaborate with outreach workers from SAMHSA’s federally funded PATH (Projects for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness) teams. PATH provides clinical case management, behavioral health care and substance use treatment for people who want and need it. This collaboration involves case conferencing and making joint decisions about which programs or services are best suited to meet an individual’s specific needs. Providers also noted that PATH helps build trust with clients who may be experiencing a mental health crisis. Having access to a non-congregate setting can help some clients feel safer and more comfortable engaging with services; in some instances, PATH outreach involves showing clients a non-congregate shelter or housing unit. Newark’s Office of Homeless Services also partners with nurses and doctors affiliated with Rutgers University Medical School to bring robust medical care to people living unsheltered, rather than requiring that they leave their belongings behind or travel long distances to access care. 

Prioritizing Peer Support 

Providers try and ensure that people who have experienced homelessness are present on all outreach teams as part-time or full-time staff. This helps Newark and local organizations identify where people might be living — even if these locations are less familiar to housed workers and therefore missing from their data. For example, Bridges Outreach, a CoC provider organization, noted their worker’s experience with homelessness helped their outreach team connect with new clients living in Newark’s Penn Station. Because many unhoused people are concerned about their safety and may want to stay out of the public eye, this worker’s ability to build trust was critical to enrolling people in services. CSPNJ also embeds peer support in the medical and behavioral health care they bring to people living in unsheltered settings. This includes harm reduction services to make sure that when their clients use drugs, they are safe. 

Structuring Outreach to Build Strong Relationships with Encampment Residents 

Case managers are encouraged to spend time getting to know clients they encounter during street outreach. For example, Bridges responded to feedback from providers with lived expertise and started bringing warm meals to clients more frequently. Workers noted how this helps build trust and makes it easier for them to assist people with housing applications and other matters. Many outreach staff also build trust by maintaining relationships with the same clients throughout their housing journey or facilitating warm handoffs to housing providers in the lead up to move-in. 

Building Bridges with Other Groups Like Transit 

Because of Newark’s proximity to New York City, it is a major travel hub, and transit workers frequently interact with people experiencing homelessness who may rely on train or bus stations for shelter. Targeted outreach and support can help address their immediate needs, plan for their long-term needs, and move them inside quickly. To accomplish this, Newark’s Office of Homeless Services built a close partnership with NJ Transit — as well as numerous state-wide and CoC health, housing, and outreach providers. Most recently, these partnerships led to the establishment of “Gateway to Hope,” a set of focused initiatives that aim to connect with and house people near Newark’s Penn Station. These partners work with NJ transit staff to bring dedicated, interdisciplinary medical outreach teams who can address both medical and housing needs. If someone is riding without a pass, sleeping on a train, or breaking other transit rules, they receive a mock ticket detailing local providers’ information so they can connect to available assistance. 

4. Coordinating to Expand and Improve Access to the Homeless Response System 

Newark also prioritized connecting with more people by creating a more safe and accessible system. Newark’s Office of Homeless Services and its CoC partners identified innovative housing options, expanding the availability of shelter and permanent housing (especially in 2022 and 2024). 

Newark’s Office of Homeless Services and its CoC partners are working to: 

Increase Accessibility of Drop-in Centers 

Newark’s Office of Homeless Services vastly expanded its drop-in centers from one central location to four sites throughout the city. The City of Newark also plans to open a new 8,000 square foot center in its downtown. The center will remain open 24/7 to provide continuous access to social services, communal areas for reading, meal services, and laundry facilities. The increased capacity is possible because two organizations agreed to jointly manage the center using funds from the City, CoC and their own general funds. The two organizations spent years getting to know each other’s programs, partnering on street outreach and learning to jointly contribute to data collection. They are hopeful this will make the collaborative partnership more effective. 

Increase Efficiency of Shelter Services 

When someone enters a center, local providers’ goal is always to move them to shelter or navigation services within a few hours. The CoC and City of Newark try to ensure that the longest someone should have to wait for a shelter bed is the end of the day. While everyone needs access to a safe place to sleep, some people need a bed immediately due to their health or age. Providers at the center communicate closely with shelters throughout the city to find priority openings. Although providers cannot always meet this goal, and people still worry about going inside since it may mean losing their belongings or sleeping in a congregate setting, setting a specific goal encourages service providers to collaborate and innovate to meet their clients’ needs as quickly as possible. The CoC and City are also working to track providers’ ability to meet this goal 

Expand Resources in Temporary Settings 

Daily, CSPNJ serves 200 people in a downtown drop-in wellness center, which provides health-specific wraparound services ranging from housing counseling to respite care. The respite center is designed for people who are referred from hospitals and have longer-term health needs. It provides intensive medical support as well as shelter for ten days. During this time, residents work closely with a housing navigator and a case manager to find a long-term housing placement that meets their needs. The respite center is intended to provide individuals experiencing homelessness with the level of medical care they need to rebuild their health but in a setting that is more focused on long-term housing, case management and comfort than an emergency room. 

Increase Shelter Variety 

Newark is innovating with new shelter options: expanding existing shelter while trying to ensure there is a good option for everyone in need. HOPE Village, built from 24 empty container units in 2021, braided funds from the federal CARES Act, Newark’s Office of Homeless Services, and a private health foundation to create another shelter option. These low-barrier units allow onsite community health experts, including peer support workers, to connect residents with healthcare and ensure safety. The city is adding a second and third HOPE Village in response to demand for these units. 

Conclusion

Newark has demonstrated that it knows how to end homelessness, and the city is not backing away from doing what it can to expand available resources to address its residents’ needs. Newark continues to reduce chronic homelessness and shelter more Black residents who have traditionally faced more barriers accessing the response system. While Essex/Newark CoC’s 2024 Point-in-Time Count increased from 2022 and 2023 as more people than ever entered homelessness and needed support, early indicators demonstrate reductions in 2025. This is despite large increases across most of New Jersey. Undoubtedly, a tough housing market and uncertain federal investments makes maintaining this progress more difficult. Meanwhile, federal funding proposals and changes to Medicaid threaten to drastically slash homeless program budgets, potentially limiting the resources that communities like Newark have to invest in solutions to unsheltered homelessness. If the federal government and state of New Jersey continue to invest in Newark, and local providers have the resources they need to double down on their efforts, local leaders are confident that they can build on their success to drive renewed reductions in unsheltered homelessness. 

Acknowledgements 

The Alliance is grateful to the service providers and community leaders in the City of Newark and Essex County for their time and partnership.