Nearly 75 Percent of Surveyed Cities to Change the Way They Help the Homeless and At-Risk
March 5, 2010
Economic Stimulus Funding Makes New Approaches Possible, City Officials Report
Preventing homelessness was one of the objectives of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). In a recent survey of U.S. city officials conducted with support from Abt Associates, 72 percent of those surveyed reported that the Recovery Act would “fundamentally change the way [their] community provides services to people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.”
Many cities see the HPRP program as an opportunity to restructure their homeless service system to be more centralized and efficient.
The officials were referring specifically to the three-year, $1.5 billion Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP) funded under the Recovery Act. HPRP is administered through local and state government entities. The funding supports short-term rental assistance and housing stabilization and relocation services to:
prevent homelessness for people who are unstably housed and would become homeless without assistance, and
rapidly re-house people who are currently homeless.
The city officials were interviewed in an annual survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, first conducted in 1982. In recent years Abt Associates has helped improve the questionnaire design, supported Conference staff in administering the survey, analyzed the data, and prepared the report. Data were collected from officials of the 27 cities that comprise the conference’s Task Force on Hunger and Homelessness. The full report is available at the U.S. Conference of Mayors website.
Cities Will Use HPRP Funds for Rapid Re-housing and for Prevention
The officials who said that HPRP would fundamentally change the way they provide services cited a range of new approaches, many of which involved preventing people from becoming homeless in the first place. For example:
Cleveland is using HPRP funds to develop a homelessness-prevention initiative, to assist households in immediate danger of losing their current housing through eviction. The program will provide multiple services — including landlord-tenant mediation; temporary help with rent and utilities; help with housing relocation, including moving costs and security deposits; case management; and linkages to social services.
Working with the surrounding King County, Seattle is combining HPRP funds with other local resources to rapidly re-house homeless families, and is linking these families with employment and asset-building services. HPRP funds will also be used to expand homelessness-prevention services, and to enhance these services’ connections with mainstream benefits for program participants.
For the first time, Charleston and Providence will offer services to attempt to prevent people from becoming homeless.
Several cities, including Dallas, Miami, and St. Paul, are developing a regional approach to providing services to the homeless and precariously homed in their areas. For the first time, each of these cities is coordinating with surrounding jurisdictions (other cities or counties) to design and implement a comprehensive plan to provide rapid re-housing and homeless prevention services.
Many cities see the HPRP program as an opportunity to restructure their homeless service system to be more centralized and efficient. For example, Philadelphia reports that case managers will now assess households’ long-term service and housing plans before these households enter shelter. The city hopes that early assessments will help the city provide households the services they need to stabilize their housing, and decrease waste by reducing inefficient and ineffective services.
