U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH)

Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules in the Grants Pass case, laws that make homelessness a crime are ineffective and expensive. For communities looking for long-term solutions to help people move off streets and into homes, USICH just released "19 Strategies to Address Encampments Humanely and Effectively."

"There’s been a lot of work around helping end homelessness once people are already there ... it’s just as important to focus on prevention," said USICH Director Olivet on the federal government's first-ever homelessness prevention framework released last month. Read (or listen) to the full interview:

"Our policies and decision-making are stronger when those who have experienced challenges firsthand can lead." - Education Secretary Miguel Cardona With the launch of the National Youth Homelessness Partnership, USICH elevates the voice of youth with lived expertise of homelessness in federal and national efforts to prevent and end it.

Almost 3 of every 10 people experiencing homelessness on a night in 2023 were children with a parent. This new blog in our homelessness prevention series explores how the federal government and communities are strengthening safety nets to prevent families from ever experiencing the lifelong trauma of homelessness. For instance, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently awarded $10 million in housing vouchers to prevent children from being placed in foster care primarily because of insufficient housing. And the state of Massachusetts embeds social workers in courts, preventing 80% of eligible households from experiencing homelessness in the last year.

In Hurricane Helene's wake, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development deployed Rapid Unsheltered Survivor Housing (RUSH) funds to North Carolina, which can be used to: ➡️ Provide emergency shelter, rapid rehousing (including up to 24 months of rental assistance), financial assistance for move-in costs, and supportive services for people experiencing homelessness before the disaster ➡️ Invest in homelessness prevention (including up to 24 months of rental assistance), utility assistance, supportive services, and outreach assistance to meet urgent needs of people at risk of homelessness before the disaster

Have you read the latest USICH newsletter? Read, subscribe, and share it with someone working to end homelessness.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded $15.4M to help young adults transitioning out of foster care and experiencing or at risk of homelessness—and more funding is still available.

Between October and August, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs helped house 43,116 veterans experiencing homelessness, and 96% of them remain housed. "We won’t rest until every veteran has a safe, stable, accessible and affordable home to call their own,” said Secretary Denis McDonough.

Nearly one-third of Americans have a criminal record, and more than 50,000 of the people released from jail or prison every year have nowhere to go but the streets or shelters. To end homelessness, we must close the justice system's revolving door to and from it. This new blog focuses on local and federal efforts to do just that. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, for instance, 97% of the people helped by the Center for Housing Solutions, Inc. have maintained housing in the first year after exiting jail, and 90% have not had any new criminal charges. Learn how.

USICH just launched a new blog series on local and federal efforts to prevent homelessness long before it starts. The first focuses on youth and on the foster-care system, which nearly 1/3 of youth experiencing homelessness have been in. For instance, President Biden asked Congress to guarantee a housing voucher for every youth aging out of foster care. And at the local level, Ventura County, California, prioritized this population for transitional housing with integrated support services, resulting in more than 90% of those helped remaining housed one year later.