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Addressing Homelessness Through Continuums of Care

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The results of the first nationwide study on
Continuums of Care and their development, structure,
and likely future is now available in a new HUD report
entitled "Evaluation of Continuums of Care for
Homeless People." A Continuum of Care (CoC) is a
system for helping people who are or have been
homeless, or who are at imminent risk of homelessness.
Ideally, every CoC should include prevention, outreach
and assessment, emergency shelter, transitional
housing, permanent supportive housing, affordable
housing, and supportive services. The report provides
a rich array of information on the activities of 25
high-performing CoCs in all regions of the country and
answers questions about whether CoCs have achieved
measurable results in fostering a coordinated response
to homelessness.

This report documents the progress of each studied
community along the many dimensions of a comprehensive
approach to homelessness prevention and remediation.
It concludes that, for the high-performing communities
studied, HUD's implementation of the CoC funding
process generally improved communication within local
communities in their response to homelessness. As a
result, respondents generally agreed that the CoC
approach allowed more people to receive a greater
number of services and participate in better-
coordinated programs. In the most advanced
communities, the response shifted toward the far
broader goal of attempting to integrate all available
funding and services to address homelessness.

By adopting a community-wide approach to distributing
its competitive homeless assistance dollars, HUD has
encouraged communities to conduct extensive planning
and program development activities. This innovative
response to the urgent problem of homelessness would
not have occurred without the application of the CoC
approach. The report also notes that, given such
successful results, COCs should continue to be
maintained and strengthened.

A complete copy of "Evaluation of Continuums of Care
for Homeless People" is available at
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publications/povsoc/continuums.html
or through HUD USER.

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