The Welcome Home Coalition’s steering committee of advocates with lived experience of housing instability and social service providers sent local leaders a policy brief about solutions to our homelessness crisis. We hope you’ll take a moment to read it too.
Nationally, the metro areas that have reduced homelessness cite Housing First as the reason for their success. This should make us eager to follow in their footsteps. We must support local leaders to learn from and implement their practices with urgency.
Last year, homelessness grew by 18% nationally. Yet, a handful of metro areas actually saw a decrease in their homeless population. While each of these Metro areas had unique political, economic, and regulatory environments that generated barriers to equitable housing access, each metro area was able to reduce its homeless population through implementing a common framework – Housing First.
Housing First, in its simplest definition, prioritizes solving the most common factor underlying people experiencing homelessness – a lack of housing. This framework works to rapidly remove any barriers and unnecessary steps to move someone from homelessness into housing that meets their needs. That said, an effective Housing First framework requires more than just providing housing. The five core principles of the Housing First strategy:
1. Providing Immediate Access to Housing without “readiness conditions”
2. Ensuring consumers have choice & self-determination in their path to housing
3. Taking a recovery-oriented approach that provides the resources individuals identify as needed to re-stabilize their lives
4. Individualized & person-driven supports for addressing their personal circumstances
5. Facilitating social & community integration.
As a coalition that represents Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas County, we encourage you to email this brief and your support of it to your local city council members and commissioners to steer our region in a direction that puts Housing First, Not Housing only practices at the forefront of our homeless response strategies.
