How Communities Prevent Homelessness: Lessons for Howard County

Samantha BatkoNational Alliance to End HomelessnessOctober 28, 2010

•Nonpartisan, nonprofit that works to end homelessness through improving policy, building capacity, and educating opinion leaders.•Promotes pragmatic and evidence based models and best practices.

•The Center for Capacity Building helps communities replicate and customize best practices that can be brought to scale.

Prevention: A Federal Movement

Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP)

Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing Act (HEARTH Act) Important performance measure:

Decrease the number of people and households entering homelessness.

Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG) = Old ESG + HPRP

Prevention: A National Trend

New York City: Home Base estimated that in neighborhoods that they targeted prevention efforts, shelter placements decreased approximately 20%.

Hennepin County, MN and Alameda County, CA: Evaluation of prevention targeting by comparing shelter population to prevention population. Hennepin County: Of families receiving prevention

assistance, 40 percent had incomes below $1,000 per month. This compares with an astounding 94 percent of those who entered shelter, with approximately 70 percent of those families having incomes below $500 per month.

Evaluate & Target Prevention

Importance: Giving the right resource to the right people at the right time.

Compare shelter population to prevention population. Do they share the same characteristics? How many households that entered shelter had

received and/or requested prevention money? Remember: Not every household needs

maximum intervention.

Resources

The Center for Capacity Building thecenter@naeh.org www.endhomelessness.org

Homelessness Prevention: Creating Programs that Work http://www.endhomelessness.org/

content/article/detail/2451 Samantha Batko

sbatko@naeh.org