Publications on Homelessness

In 2005, the Hilton Foundation gave CSH a five-year grant to launch an initiative in Los Angeles County to reduce the number of long-term homeless people, with a special focus on people with serious mental illness. The Urban Institute, which is evaluating the grant's impact, did a baseline assessment of homelessness and permanent supportive housing in 2005. A 2007 report assessed the policy and system changes that, working with others, CSH efforts had stimulated by that time. This report documents two-year changes in the level of homelessness in Los Angeles and the availability and characteristics of PSH availability. A second policy report will be available in fall 2008.

LA's HOPE is one of five HUD/DOL-funded projects awarded in late 2003 to demonstrate the feasibility of moving chronically homeless adults into permanent housing and helping them return to work. Its structure involved three public and nine nonprofit agencies. LA's HOPE was successful in its primary goals, housing 69 percent of ever-enrolled clients and engaging 84 percent in employment-related activities—54 percent in competitive employment. The project also sought to change the ways that the involved agencies worked together, but was less successful with these system change goals. The report discusses lessons learned, which closely resemble lessons from numerous other evaluations.

Panelists discussed the needs of the frail elderly and homeless populations, the missing pieces in housing options, design solutions that can improve accommodations, and ways to better a delivery system that is highly fragmented across jurisdictions and target populations.

This is the sixth in a series of annual reports about housing in the Washington metropolitan region. It assembles and analyzes the most current data on housing conditions and trends in the District of Columbia and the surrounding suburbs. Last year's report focused on linkages between housing and schools in the District of Columbia and the metropolitan region. This year's report takes a regional perspective, examining how the region addresses housing for special needs populations. More specifically, the report assesses the housing options and services available to the elderly, disabled, and homeless and explores the consequences and opportunities for housing policy across the region.

Despite the recent housing market slowdown, home prices and rents remain out of reach for many Washington-area residents, especially those with physical and mental disabilities, elderly people who can no longer live independently, and the homeless, a new study by the Urban Institute concludes.