Brief Rapid Re-housing’s Role in Responding to Homelessness
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What the Evidence Says
Mary K. Cunningham, Samantha Batko
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Rapid re-housing is a short-term, crisis response intervention intended to minimize a household’s time spent homeless. The approach aims to help people exit homelessness and stabilize in housing as quickly and efficiently as possible. It provides housing search services, short-term financial assistance (e.g., help paying rent and move-in costs), and case management services. Research on rapid re-housing is still emerging. This paper reviews the evidence to date, which shows that the model has been successful in helping families and veterans exit homeless shelters to live in housing units in the private rental market faster than they would on their own and for lower cost. Most families and veterans do not become homeless again; though many struggle with ongoing housing affordability, like other low-income renters. These findings suggest that rapid re-housing could be a scalable and cost-effective crisis response intervention that could help communities address homelessness more effectively.


This brief was updated on October 11, 2018 to fix formatting. No findings or data changed.

Research Areas Families Social safety net Housing
Tags Homelessness
Policy Centers Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center