Housing First for Families
Our Housing First consulting services are targeted to homelessness prevention and program development that empowers and “lifts up” vulnerable households.
“ Referrals to homeless services should be the ‘referral of last resort.’ ”
— Tanya Tull
The Housing First approach to ending family homelessness is premised on the belief that families are more responsive to interventions and support from a stable housing base — not shelter.
THE FOUR KEY COMPONENTS
1. crisis intervention and short-term stabilization
2. assessment and planning for housing and services needs
3. assistance in relocating to affordable rental housing (or stabilizing in current housing)
4. case management before, during, and after the move for a transitional period of time
We believe that the “lessons learned” in helping homeless families to stabilize in housing are easily adaptable to families experiencing diverse indicators of housing instability.
Housing First is an approach — not a program — and can also serve as a major framework for homelessness prevention.
Studies have shown that the majority of families seeking shelter services have been sharing housing with relatives or friends who have taken them in during a housing crisis.
The vast majority of families with children can stabilize quickly in rental housing on their own, when rents are affordable and a period of transitional support is provided.
The longer a family remains in temporary housing or emergency shelter, the more unstable that family can become.
To end and prevent family homelessness, communities must ensure that decent and affordable rental housing is accessible to low-income households.
This requires across-sector and collective impact strategies within and between diverse services systems to ensure that local, state and federal resources are coordinated at every level and targeted to a continuum of housing needs.
We recommend adapting Key Components of Housing First
Many proven interventions in Housing First for Families are applicable and adaptable to families experiencing diverse indicators of housing distress: severe rent burden, poor housing quality, overcrowding, forced incumbent dislocation, and homelessness evidenced by sharing housing temporarily with relatives or friends.
Early interventions to indicators of housing distress along a continuum of housing-related needs should be provided through diverse mainstream and community-based services systems — including schools, child and family services programs, healthcare and community healthcare systems, neighborhood and community centers, community food banks, and other programs that interact with low-income households on a regular basis.
Some additional guidelines for “Housing First”
Housing First means just that: HOUSING FIRST
Rapid Rehousing is a term used to define a subset of Housing First in which rent subsidies are provided for a limited period of time. Unfortunately, new screening tools and the addition of temporary rent subsidies have in some localities inadvertently resulted in the exclusion of the typical early candidate for “housing first” programs. For heads-of-household with little to no employment histories, some assessment tools serve to screen them out of Rapid Rehousing programs until a federal Section 8 subsidy is available.
Although Housing First program protocols and practices have been tested and implemented successfully by longtime practitioners, many families considered to be “high risk for recidivism” are forced to wait for hard-to-access Section 8 vouchers or permanent supportive housing units for months and sometimes years at a time.
NOTE: Because the safety of children must come first — it’s vital that common sense overrule often arbitrary and/or intentional protocols and practices.
Housing First for families differs greatly from housing first for the chronically homeless in this respect: if there is a danger to children due to a mental health or active substance abuse, then interventions must come first. This faulty interpretation of a successful intervention for vulnerable families was never meant to endanger a child due to parental addiction, physical or emotional abuse or neglect, or any other potentially child-endangering behaviors!
