Some Good News About Homelessness, But Not Time to Declare Victory

Some Good News About Homelessness, But Not Time to Declare Victory

Raphael Bostic, Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research About a month ago, HUD released the results of the annual “point in time” estimate of the number of homeless individuals and families across the country on a given night. This number is constructed using two sources of data that are collected on a single night in January: the number of people residing in shelter or transitional housing, plus the number of homeless people found sleeping unsheltered, as counted by a team of volunteers who fan out in over 3,000 communities and look for people sleeping in parks, under bridges, in cars and other places not fit for human habitation. On this particular night in January 2011, a total of 636,017 people were homeless, representing a 2.1% decrease over last year’s point in time count.

This decrease is counterintuitive. The unprecedented housing crisis and deep recession dramatically increased housing vulnerability among American families. For example, PD&R’s Worst Case Needs report showed that the number of low-income families with extreme housing burdens increased by 20 percent in just 2 years. One might have expected this to leave more people unable to overcome housing uncertainty and find themselves homeless.

Advocates are quick to point out the flaws in the methodology of the one night count. For example, the quality of the estimates produced rely heavily on a community having a sufficient number of counters and a comprehensive approach to ensuring that counters are trained properly and able to search the whole community. In addition, a leading national organization has noted that this modest decline masks more erratic state-by-state changes. All that noted, overall, the national year-over-year figures are comparable, and the decline appears to be credible. So what is going on?

HUD, and many in the advocacy community, credit the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP). HPRP received funding through the Recovery Act and provided states and localities with $1.5 billion over three years to fund homelessness prevention and rapid re-housing programs. Thus, just as the economy began unraveling, communities across the country were infused with resources that effectively doubled the amount of funding available to implement these new programs to address a potential rising tide of homelessness. To date, 1.2 million households have been served through the HPRP program, but the three year program is quickly drawing to a close, and the funds will expire by September of 2012. It is imperative that we focus on ways to sustain declines in the number of persons experiencing homelessness.

Evidence also indicates that targeted efforts to reach and assist veterans appear to be having an impact. The HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) voucher program, initiated in 2008, combines Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) rental assistance for homeless veterans with case management and clinical services provided by the Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA). Since 2008, HUD-VASH has served more than 33,000 homeless veterans. HUD is also collaborating with the VA and the Department of Labor to implement the Veterans Homelessness Prevention Demonstration (VHPD) in 5 sites across the country. The VHPD combines outreach and case management, financial housing assistance, and training and employment services. These investments have paid a real dividend. Recent estimates show a decline in the incidence of homelessness among veterans between 2009 and 2010 (Veteran Homelessness: A Supplemental Report to the 2010 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress).

The Obama Administration is committed to ending all forms homelessness in ten years. Secretary Donovan has personally invested considerable energy towards making this a reality and we all will continue to do so. A key to successfully achieving this goal is to make sure that the local need is met with sufficient resources devoted to effective interventions. The count is an important means for identifying need. Regarding effective interventions, we must be committed to making all interventions as evidence-based as possible to ensure funding is used most effectively.

Currently PD&R is sponsoring research projects related to homelessness prevention and rapid re-housing for homeless families, in addition to several other studies related to housing and service interventions for persons experiencing homelessness, and we expect the findings from these studies to shape our thinking about how to end homelessness moving forward into the future. There is an imperative to gaining this knowledge, as HUD’s Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act is rolling out in communities this year. It provides communities with greater flexibility in how they allocate their homeless assistance funding from HUD, including mechanisms to continue funding for homelessness prevention and rapid re-housing programs that were initiated using HPRP funding. As newer interventions, these programs add to a growing set of options available to communities to address homelessness.

Homelessness is a complex social issue, and “homelessness” is not a uniform phenomenon. Just as we have developed targeted programs for veterans and victims of domestic violence, other populations may need to be reached out to, identified and supported in ways tailored to the motivations and circumstances that lead to their homelessness. For example, homeless and runaway youth, recently released populations and homeless families may typically have particular kinds of needs—families may be in greater need of childcare services and parenting training, while both youth and single mothers may benefit from job training and education. Even as we build evidence around successful models for preventing and ending homelessness for one population, structural shifts in the economy and other factors may create new vulnerable populations and new challenges to our efforts. We therefore must continue our work to understand the underlying factors that cause homelessness, as well as the interventions that are most effective at ending homelessness for all populations.

Homelessness is a clear case of why and how housing matters. We need a broad-based group of effective and creative researchers to join us in the effort to eradicate it. So, as you think about your work and future research, consider adding homelessness and how to prevent and reduce its incidence and costs to your agenda. The potential benefits are great.