100,000 Homes Campaign

SUMMARY: 100,000 Homes Campaign, an ambitious campaign to spark a “”national movement to house America’s most vulnerable homeless people”” by reframing the issue as a health crisis and transcending entrenched mindsets to figure out how to effectively collaborate and how best to allocate existing financial resources.

PROBLEM SPACE: For most, homelessness is a short-term crisis, but for a small subset of roughly 100,000 people, it becomes a chronic condition. These individuals and families have extremely complex health and social needs that prolong their homelessness. They also draw on costly government services that fail to deliver lasting or cost effective results. Research suggests that targeting these individuals for permanent housing saves money and lives; and yet, many communities across the country are stuck in an entrenched first-come, first-served model that screens out the most costly and vulnerable as undeserving or impossible to help.

The 100,000 Homes Campaign is a growing movement to do things differently. By framing homelessness as an urgent public health crisis, the Campaign has mobilized 189 communities to adopt good design thinking as a way of rapidly transforming the way their local public systems approach the issue. Through a strong Collective Impact approach at the local and national levels, we have knit together multiple sectors, bringing design thinking and Quality Improvement principles to a field (homelessness) where they were never before applied. These practices and transparent data feedback loops allow communities to maximize use of existing resources to house people.

SOLUTION: The 100,000 Homes Campaign, coordinated by Community Solutions, is a national movement of communities finding permanent housing for 100,000 homeless Americans by July 2014. The Campaign draws on public health and design strategies to help communities do more with less, ending homelessness in measurable, efficient, and cost-effective ways.

CONTACT PERSON: [email protected]