Overview
  • Overview
  • Increasing Housing Supply
  • Dedicated Funding Sources
  • Land Use Regulation and Approval Reforms
  • Inclusionary Zoning
  • Regional Housing Target Enforcement
  • Ending and Preventing Homelessness
  • Systems-Level Racial Equity Analysis
  • Emergency Response Resources
  • Housing First
  • Master Leasing
  • Household and Community Protections
  • “Just Cause” Eviction Laws
  • Anti-Gouging Rent Regulations
  • Strategic Code Enforcement
  • Community Benefit Agreements
  • Community Power-Building
  • Community Ownership
  • Alliance and Coalition Building
  • Community Organizing
  • Tenant Organizing
  • Opportunity and Wealth
  • Mobility Assistance Programs
  • Rent Reporting
  • Reparations
  • Fair and Equitable Appraisals
  • Acknowledgments
    • Housing First

    Overview

    Housing is foundational to stability. Once a person is stabilized in housing, they can focus on other ways to improve their quality of life, such as finding employment or addressing substance use issues. Housing First is a philosophy and practice that recognizes housing as a human right, prioritizing moving people into permanent housing without prerequisites around mental health treatment or other services. Housing First also promotes the idea that people deserve the right to agency, regarding both where they live and whether they participate in support services. This approach has been proven effective for increasing housing stability for people exiting homelessness, and it remains effective when adapted with culturally responsive and anti-racist practices.

    A common program model that uses the Housing First approach is permanent supportive housing (PSH). PSH is typically targeted toward people with multiple barriers to housing, including those struggling with chronic homelessness, diagnosed disabilities, or substance use. It offers long-term affordable housing with case management and supportive services so that individuals and families are empowered to live independently.

    Rapid rehousing, another Housing First program model, provides short-term financial assistance, aiming to quickly connect a person or a family to housing and shorten the amount of time they experience homelessness. Through rapid rehousing, a person or family can be connected to a suite of community-based supportive services to address barriers to stability and help them gain their footing in a home.

    Evidence has shown that Housing First can help people with behavioral health issues and criminal legal system involvement. This approach can also address racial disparities in the homelessness system.

    Examples of This Strategy in Action

    • As a response to the inequitable outcomes for Black residents experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles, the Downtown Women’s Center, an organization committed to serving and empowering women with lived experience of homelessness, created the Housing Justice Program in 2019. This program, originally piloted as Project 100, aimed to serve 100 women affected by systematic oppression through culturally responsive services, such as peer specialists with lived experience of homelessness. Considering the differing needs of the target population, the Housing Justice Program provides either PSH or rapid rehousing, depending on the level of support needed. Although long-term housing stability outcomes aren’t clear yet, as of 2020, the program had housed at least 26 women with a 96 percent housing retention rate.

    • In King County, Washington, the Family Homelessness Initiative supported Mother Nation and Chief Seattle Club in developing two rapid rehousing projects that provided culturally sensitive services for Indigenous people. Although only 1 percent of the county’s total population is Indigenous, this group represented 15 percent of its population experiencing homelessness. Mother Nation and Chief Seattle Club are native-led community-based organizations that regularly serve Indigenous people experiencing homelessness and that center cultural identity in their design. Mother Nature created a trauma-informed aftercare program for families that had exited rapid rehousing, with wraparound healing services for people who were victims of gender-based violence. In addition to their rapid rehousing program, in 2022, Chief Seattle Club opened an affordable housing building with supportive services called “?ál?al”—meaning “home” in Lushootseed—to provide a culturally tailored healing space for Indigenous people.

     

     

    Next intervention: Master Leasing