The problem of housing instability and homelessness has taken center stage in Charlotte-Mecklenburg amidst an unabated pandemic. Reports of increases in homeless encampments and families with children paying week-to-week to stay in hotels are stark evidence of a worsening crisis. In the health and safety interests of families and the entire community, there is an evident and urgent need to address the lack of available and affordable permanent housing. Historically, communities have focused on sheltering and re-housing people experiencing homeless as quickly as possible. This makes sense: access to sustainable, permanent housing is the antidote to homelessness. However, we know little about the effectiveness of community systems, structures, and resources in helping households that are precariously housed avoid homelessness in the first place. In May 2020, Mecklenburg County Community Support Services launched a community project called “Evaluate Upstream: Optimizing the Homelessness Prevention Assistance System” focused on homelessness prevention. The project is funded by a Continuum of Care (CoC) planning grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The goals of the project are to document existing prevention resources across Charlotte-Mecklenburg and determine whether and how they work together; to design an optimally functioning prevention network; and to develop an evaluation framework for a homelessness prevention system that is truly impactful in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. This blog post will share in-depth information and updates about the planning grant project; it will also describe the project’s unique approach to the work and what it could mean for Charlotte-Mecklenburg.