The U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) formally adopted and released its first-ever federal homelessness prevention framework, Ending Homelessness Before It Starts, on September 23. Additionally, USICH launched a new blog series highlighting federal and local efforts to prevent homelessness. The first spotlight focuses on youth homelessness.
The USICH framework is an actionable guide to help government agencies, Tribal nations, non-profits, funders, people with lived experience of homelessness or housing instability, and other partners with an interest in preventing and ending homelessness to work together to better support housing stability and prevent homelessness. The framework provides recommendations for coordinating a community-wide approach and defines three categories of homelessness prevention for resource mapping and prevention planning: Prevention, Diversion, and Rehousing and Stabilization. Lastly, the framework shares promising practices for homelessness prevention programs and lists federal resources that can be used for homelessness prevention.
USICH’s framework highlights how partners can work together to effectively allocate and distribute resources and assistance in a targeted manner to help people quickly access housing and improve housing stability once they are housed. The framework also notes that Housing First principles can be applied to homelessness prevention by reducing barriers that prevent people from maintaining their housing or obtaining new housing.
“To make progress toward ending homelessness as we know it, we must close this revolving door and stop homelessness before it starts,” said USICH Director Jeff Olivet. “To do that, USICH urges communities to work together across systems and sectors, using this prevention framework and our new homelessness prevention spotlight series, to keep people from ever experiencing the trauma of living without a home.”
Read the full federal homelessness prevention framework at: https://tinyurl.com/bdfpabtk
Read the press release announcing the framework at: https://tinyurl.com/2xa3bfs2