Housing First: An Overview

1
Housing First An Overview

• Anne B. Shlay, Professor
• Temple University

2
Premise

• Alternative to and replacement for emergency and
  transitional housing
• Institutionalized housing continues and
  exacerbates problems of homeless people
• Homeless people needs support and services to
  raise children, support themselves, and maintain
  their housing
• Problems should be solved in a community, not an
  institutional, context

3
Basic Features

• Provide permanent, non-shelter housing to
  homeless families and individuals
• Rapid re-housing remove people from emergency
  shelters to quickly end stint of homelessness

4
Two major components

• Housing

• Social Services

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Housing Component

• Relocation services
• Develop and maintain relationship with landlords
• Provide assistance with housing costs
• Avoid eviction
• Develop stable rent/credit history for families

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Social Services

• Case management action plan
• Coordinate receipt of existing resources (housing
  subsidies, TANF, child care subsidies, food
  stamps, medicaid)
• Family orientation needs of adults as well as
  children
• Monitor school attendance
• Early warning for emergencies

7
Problems with institutionalized approaches

• Maintains housing instability
• Does not address problems with entering and
  staying in low income housing market
• Creates special class of poor people
• Stigmatizes problems of homelessness
• Expensive

8
Housing First approach

• Provides people with housing stability in a
  normal community context
• Does not segregate homeless poor from the
  non-homeless poor
• Mainstreams problems and teaches valuable life
  skills
• Helps provide necessary income and work supports
• Does not abandon families stays with them
• Cost effective

9
Policy focus rental housing for low income
populations

• Need to radically reemphasize need for policy to
  support low income rental housing
• Most housing programs geared towards low income
  homeownership.
• Little housing counseling for renters, only
  would-be homeowners
• Housing solutions cannot and should not depend on
  homeownership
• Need focus on both public and private provision
  of affordable rental housing.

10
Policy focus supports for working poor

• Need to treat homeless families not as special
  class but as subset of the working poor
• Contemporary emphasis within policy spheres on
  supporting work and family
• Poverty policy not targeted at income maintenance
  but at supports for working families
• Include Earned Income Tax Credit, SCHIP/Medicaid
  (health insurance), child care subsidies, housing
  subsidies, and Food Stamps.

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Housing First caveats

• Many versions being implemented
• All feature placing people in permanent housing
• Shown to be viable in tight housing markets
  (e.g., LA and NYC) and for mentally ill/substance
  abusers
• Some depend on Section 8 vouchers (housing
  subsidies). Most do not.
• Some mandate case management. Others do not.

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Does Housing First work?

• First and foremost Housing First puts housing
  first.
• What are the outcomes from providing stable,
  private housing to compared to institutionalized
  housing?
• What are the life circumstances of people
  participating in Housing First compared to poor
  people in private housing without any services?

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The Housing First Model

• Model for solving problems of homelessness
• Model for providing coordinated service delivery
  and support for acutely poor families.
• Model for preventing the reoccurrence of
  homelessness.