CSH is proud to present a great new resource for Public Housing Agencies (PHAs) and other stakeholders interested in creating supportive housing and ending homelessness in their communities. Supportive Housing: An Intervention for Ending Homelessness provides specific strategies and concrete examples of the roles PHAs can play in their communities to create supportive housing and end homelessness.
As communities across the country are working to end homelessness, they are employing a wide range of strategies and interventions, from rapid re-housing, to eviction prevention, to supportive housing. These efforts are producing impressive results, and our continued collective success requires that we design and execute an array of interventions, engage a broad set of stakeholders and target the right interventions to the right people. CSH urges public agency staff to engage with their local partners (and for those partners to do the same with public housing agencies) to work together and coordinate efforts to end homelessness in their communities.
This toolkit provides PHA staffs and other stakeholders with the knowledge and know-how to put together a key piece of the puzzle to ending homelessness—supportive housing, an innovative and proven solution to some of communities’ toughest problems. Supportive Housing combines affordable housing with services that help people who face the most complex challenges to live with stability, autonomy and dignity. Supportive housing is best utilized when targeted for the subset of people experiencing homelessness who most need it—individuals and families with histories of homelessness, chronic health conditions (including mental illness and substance use) and costly public system utilization.
If you work for a PHA or an organization that partners with PHAs, you not only work on behalf of people in need, you navigate and implement extremely detailed, thorough regulations that require a tremendous amount of operational precision to maintain the public’s trust. We’ve built this toolkit to give you the how-to information, templates and examples you’ll need to create supportive housing, a proven solution to homelessness. In this toolkit, you’ll learn how to use PHA resources to create supportive housing regardless of how big your PHA is, whether or not you have Moving to Work status, and whether you’re just getting started or taking your efforts to scale.
Whether you found this toolkit or it found you, chances are you’re already doing something to end homelessness in your community. We at CSH applaud you. And we know PHAs can’t do this work alone. In this toolkit, we will show you how to form solid local partnerships, and we will roll up our sleeves and work side-by-side with you along the way.
Acknowledgements
Lead Author
Debbie Canavan Thiele
Key Contributors
Andy McMahon
Jordan Press
Liz Drapa
Funding
This toolkit has been developed with the generous support of J.P. Morgan Chase.
Collaborators
CSH thanks the many people in Public Housing Agencies (PHAs) around the country who have graciously shared examples of their work and offered to provide additional information to users of the toolkit.
CSH is grateful for the assistance we received in creating this toolkit from our federal partners: the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, and the contributions made by the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities (CLPHA). We also appreciete the efforts of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials (NAHRO) for its work to assist PHAs in addressing homelessness.
Note: This toolkit represents CSH’s best interpretation of the policies and regulations described. It is intended to be used hand-in-hand with HUD regulations and input from HUD field offices. This toolkit does not represent direct guidance from HUD. The PHA profiles and templates in the toolkit have not been reviewed or approved by HUD.
Additional Information and Technical Assistance
CSH supports PHAs and their partners in creating supportive housing to end homelessness in a number of ways. At the national policy level, we advocate for the development and sustainability of PHA programs and funding. Locally, we work with PHAs and their partners to implement the initiatives described in this toolkit. If your PHA is interested in taking the next step in ending homelessness and creating supportive housing, please let us know about your efforts and how we might support you!
For technical assistance, please contact your local CSH field office. If we don’t have an office near you, please contact our national Consulting and Training team at consulting@csh.org.
For information on national policy efforts related to public housing authorities, please email us at info@csh.org.
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