Homelessness & Housing

Challenge

Today, jurisdictions of all sizes are facing a crisis of housing affordability and availability, struggling to support a homeless response workforce that is strained from more than two years of managing the pandemic, and grappling with what will happen as pandemic-related resources and protections come to an end. But the pressure has been mounting on homeless response systems since long before the pandemic. Local systems originally intended to address temporary housing emergencies have been stretched too thin, responsible for managing the rising numbers of unhoused individuals while also recognizing the urgent need to build a sustainable system that incorporates prevention for future inflow and expanded housing options for outflow. 

Approach

Homelessness cannot be solved without a strategy for preventing individuals and families from becoming homeless in the first place and for optimizing and expanding deeply affordable housing opportunities. Responding to this outsized charge requires alignment and coordination of systems beyond homeless response agencies to create broader local ownership of the problem of, and solutions to, homelessness.  To move this work towards a sustainable model that reduces homelessness, jurisdictions need additional capacity that is positioned to effectively engage other systems and that can be protected from the day-to-day emergencies of agencies’ operational work. To this end, the GPL Homelessness & Housing team helps governments advance practices that reduce homelessness in the following priority areas:

  • Prevention: Working with governments to reduce inflow to homelessness through upstream systems or community intervention points and targeting of housing assistance investments.
     
  • Rehousing: Working with governments to optimize existing subsidized housing opportunities by shortening the lease-up time through streamlined, client-centered processes, and expand housing opportunities for priority populations through new models.

The Government Performance Lab (GPL) is working with a small group of jurisdictions to move prevention and/or rehousing initiatives forward over the course of one year. Check for updates on our Homelessness Prevention and Rehousing Accelerator page.

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Training Homeless Response System Staff 

In addition to direct project work with jurisdictions, the Homelessness & Housing team is also testing strategies to build the capacity of homeless response system staff through training and coaching. In 2024, the GPL is leading a 12-week, data-focused training program for the state of New Jersey on using data-driven performance management to help reduce homelessness in the state. The 56 participants of the program are members of eight New Jersey Continuums of Care, including data analysts, people with lived experience of homelessness who sit on advisory or decision-making committees, and executive and agency leaders. The course culminates with two days of in-person classes and capstone presentations by participants at the Harvard Kennedy School.  

The GPL, in collaboration with Delivery Associates, is training participants on core skills of data-driven performance management, such as the fundamentals of interpreting graphs, visualizing data, tracking performance, and using insights from data to drive action. Throughout the program, participants will apply the skills they are learning to a capstone project drawn from a homelessness challenge in their communities.   

“Our Continuums of Care are filled with dedicated people who want to reduce the number of New Jerseyans experiencing homelessness. This training will give them valuable tools so they can start using the data we have more strategically to inform programming and policy decisions, such as identifying earlier opportunities to prevent homelessness or ways to make the rehousing process more efficient and equitable. Our goal is to equip communities to gain actionable insights that build toward meaningful progress on reducing homelessness.”   — Michael Callahan, Director, Office of Homelessness Prevention, NJ Department of Community Affairs 

 

Keep in Touch

If you are a government or nonprofit interested in keeping in touch and being notified of future GPL TA opportunities and resources, please sign-up up for the GPL newsletter and be sure to click “Homelessness & Housing” to receive policy-specific resources and announcements. Additional questions? Feel free to email us at Housing_GPL@hks.harvard.edu.

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Our Work

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Events

2024 Feb 22

Homelessness in the US: Insights from the Annual Homeless Assessment Report

1:00pm to 2:00pm

Location: 

Zoom

Join us on February 22, 2024, from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm ET for a virtual event featuring insights from Jeff Olivet, Executive Director of The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), as he discusses the recent Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR). Following his remarks, ...

Read more about Homelessness in the US: Insights from the Annual Homeless Assessment Report

Our Team