Homelessness Prevention & Rehousing Accelerator
Overview
In the United States today, jurisdictions of all sizes face a crisis of housing affordability and availability. Governments are struggling to support an overextended homeless response workforce and grappling with what comes next as COVID-19 support resources are diminished or expired. Yet long before COVID-19, the pressure has been mounting on homeless response systems. Originally designed to address temporary housing emergencies, local systems have been stretched too thin as housing needs have expanded. Their scopes have grown to include managing the diverse and often complex needs of currently unhoused individuals. At the same time, they also recognize the urgent need to build a sustainable system that incorporates prevention for future inflow and expanded housing options for outflow.
In response to this challenge, the Government Performance Lab called for jurisdictions to seek applied research support and technical assistance to explore targeted prevention and rehousing models. Over 100 jurisdictions applied. Ultimately, the Government Performance Lab (GPL) awarded four jurisdictions – Chicago, Colorado, Detroit, and Los Angeles – pro-bono dedicated capacity for one year through the inaugural Homeless Prevention & Rehousing Accelerator.
“Jurisdictions know that to sustainably reduce homelessness, they need both a comprehensive prevention strategy to curb inflow and bold approaches to reimagine the rehousing process. Cities and states of all sizes are asking how to better coordinate housing assistance within the community and how to make the subsidized housing process faster, smoother, and more effective for both households and housing partners...Through the Homelessness Prevention & Rehousing Accelerator, the GPL will support these jurisdictions to advance this urgent work.”
— Carin Clary, GPL Director of Homelessness & Housing
The 2023-2024 Homelessness Prevention & Rehousing Accelerator will support jurisdictions in testing promising innovations in four areas:
Preventing people from exiting a system (e.g., criminal justice) into homelessness
People experiencing homelessness frequently touch other systems prior to becoming homeless, such as the child welfare system, the criminal justice system, and/or emergency departments at hospitals. These touchpoints offer an earlier, structural opportunity to intervene and to try to prevent homelessness, as well as an opportunity to support other partner system’s goals (e.g., decreased risk of child removal for families who are stably housed). However, jurisdictions may struggle to act because they have limited data, unclear ownership of these cross-system dynamics, and restrictions on housing-resource eligibility for individuals exiting systems into homelessness.
The GPL can help jurisdictions’ systems assess methods to work together to leverage data, align on goals, and jointly implement interventions. This can include creating or adapting screening tools to identify individuals at high risk of becoming homeless, and piloting new discharge, referral, and aftercare processes to connect people to best-fit housing resources.
Anchor Project – State of Colorado: In the inaugural Homelessness Prevention & Rehousing Accelerator, the GPL will support the State of Colorado to connect individuals in state prisons to housing services pre-release to reduce the likelihood of future homelessness.
"The Colorado Department of Local Affairs' work with the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab is an exciting opportunity to enhance our capacity to deliver effective and efficient public services to Coloradans across the state. By leveraging their expertise in data analytics and performance management, DOLA can better understand and aim to address the complex challenges facing our communities."
— Rick M. Garcia, Executive Director, Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA)
Coordinating homelessness prevention systems
Jurisdictions across the country say that current efforts to prevent homelessness are decentralized and fragmented. The result is that unstably housed residents, including those at imminent risk of homelessness, have no clear place to go for assistance, or believe they must become homeless to begin to get help. Furthermore, governments often do not know who is at risk of becoming homeless and what services or resources may be available and effective for a particular person. With the landscape of services and resources changing in the aftermath of the COVID-19 emergency response, and evictions again rising, jurisdictions are eager to build on new funding and partnerships and address this challenge now.
The GPL can help jurisdictions define subpopulations of unstably housed individuals, including those at highest risk of becoming homeless. Then, the GPL and jurisdictional counterparts will bring together stakeholders to identify available supports, assess gaps, and improve coordination, dissemination of information, and referral processes. In doing so, vulnerably housed individuals may be more easily and effectively connected to best-fit supports.
Anchor Project – City of Detroit: In the inaugural Homelessness Prevention & Rehousing Accelerator, the GPL will support the City of Detroit in exploring the establishment of a comprehensive, coordinated, and strategic upstream homelessness prevention system to connect unstably housed individuals to appropriate supports, including legal defense for eviction cases.
"The City of Detroit is excited to join the Homelessness Prevention & Rehousing Accelerator to support our residents experiencing housing instability. Last year, 2,570 Detroit households entered the City's emergency shelter system. With limited resources in the homelessness response system, it is critical that we design effective upstream interventions that prevent households from becoming homeless and in turn allow us to focus our homelessness services on households with the highest needs."
— Julie Schneider, Director, Detroit Housing and Revitalization Department
Streamlining the rehousing process
Solving homelessness requires both optimizing existing housing programs and creating new housing opportunities. However, requirements for unhoused individuals entering subsidized housing can be cumbersome and confusing, resulting in move-in delays and empty units, hurting both housing-seekers and providers alike. To create more housing opportunities, and to make sure the most vulnerable residents are successfully connected to housing opportunities in a timely fashion, it is critical to make the rehousing process simpler and more efficient for those in need of housing, those providing houses, and the systems supporting both.
The GPL can help jurisdictions measure the baseline rehousing process, set target timeframes for completion of key move-in process steps, develop monitoring systems to spot delays in real time, create toolkits and templates for scalable efficiencies, and co-design user-friendly materials for clients, landlords, and/or housing staff.
Anchor Project – City of Chicago: In the inaugural Homelessness Prevention & Rehousing Accelerator, the GPL will support the City of Chicago to test streamlining the permanent supportive housing process to address the length of time individuals are homeless, improve the client experience, and increase program financial sustainability.
“Support from the GPL’s Homelessness Prevention & Rehousing Accelerator will help the Chicago Continuum of Care (CoC) increase its ability to house people experiencing homelessness faster. All Chicago, along with essential City partners including the Chicago Department of Family and Support Services, the Chicago Department of Housing, and the Chicago Department of Public Health, will build upon our existing partnerships to improve the rehousing process, such as reducing barriers related to complicated documentation and eligibility requirements.”
— Carolyn K. Ross, President & CEO, All Chicago Making Homelessness History
Advancing Racial Equity Across Services
Many jurisdictions across the country have identified racial disproportionality in their homeless populations and/or disparities in service access and outcomes, but don’t know where to start in addressing these inequities.
The GPL can help jurisdictions unpack their data and conduct qualitative research to better understand drivers of racial disproportionality and disparities in service delivery and outcomes. The GPL can then help jurisdictions translate those findings into action – changing outreach methods and language, improving referral processes, identifying service gaps, and bringing service providers together to identify and spread best practices for delivering services to specific communities.
Anchor Project – Los Angeles: In the inaugural Homelessness Prevention & Rehousing Accelerator, the GPL will support Los Angeles in researching recent increases in Latinx homelessness and designing and testing service models to more equitably connect those in need to housing .
“We are excited to work with the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab’s Homelessness Prevention & Rehousing Accelerator. Latino homelessness rose nearly 26% based on our 2022 point-in-time count. Gaining a better understanding of the reasons behind this increase and the specific barriers that Latinos face will allow us to create a more equitable system and bring us closer to solving homelessness in Los Angeles.”
— Dr. Va Lecia Adams Kellum, CEO, Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority
Overview of Accelerator Applied Research & Technical Assistance
The GPL provides selected jurisdictions with significant dedicated capacity for 12 months with the possibility for extension. The GPL team often works shoulder-to-shoulder with government staff and other stakeholders. on research support and testing the application of public management tools. In addition to dedicated staffing, selected jurisdictions also receive:
- Exposure to relevant models and research from other jurisdictions and facilitated opportunities to workshop implementation efforts with jurisdictions tackling similar initiatives.
- Training modules to build agency staff capacity on core GPL tools around data-driven performance management, designing service arrays and referral pathways, and/or procurement.