Research and News Roundup:
October 2024

The Research and News Roundup is a monthly blog series that features a curated list of recent news and research related to housing instability, homelessness, and affordable housing. Together, these topics provide insights about the full housing continuum and provide community stakeholders with information about emergent research, promising practices, and innovative solutions related to housing and homelessness.

This month’s Research and News Roundup highlights the recently released USICH Federal Homelessness Prevention Framework, one community’s plan to end chronic homelessness, and research focused on equity-oriented affordable housing.

HOUSING INSTABILITY

Ending Homelessness Before It Starts: A Federal Homelessness Prevention Framework

In late September, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) adopted and released: Ending Homelessness Before It Starts: A Federal Homelessness Prevention Framework. The Framework, developed in partnership with several federal agencies and persons with lived expertise, provides clear definitions of homelessness prevention categories, outlines recommendations for how communities can develop a coordinated, cross-sector approach to homeless prevention, shares promising practices, and provides an extensive list of Federal resources that can be used for homelessness prevention. A future series of blogs will be focused on unpacking the framework and examining what is already being done locally and how the resources and recommended practices might supplement that work.

HOMELESSNESS

Community leaders unveil new plan to end chronic homelessness by 2030

Shawnee County and Topeka, Kansas community leaders have announced a new plan to end chronic homelessness by 2030. In a joint City-County Work Session, leadership outlined the cost of chronic homelessness in their community and how, in partnership with Community Solutions Built for Zero, they plan to address it. In their presentation, they shared an estimated annual public cost (law enforcement, health and social services, and shelter) of $38 million for 672 people experiencing chronic homelessness. For context, Mecklenburg County currently has 753 people experiencing chronic homelessness.

Strategies outlined in the plan include:

• Investing in data mapping and ongoing analysis of policy impacting people experiencing homelessness.
• Strengthening and expanding identification of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness through homeless outreach program expansion.
• Taking services into the unsheltered community via a Coordinated Mobile Access Partnership.
• Developing a One Stop Shop Homeless Resource Center that provides mental health, financial, employment, life skills, basic needs, and shelter and housing services.
• A variety of sheltering resources including low barrier shelter that does not require sobriety, non-congregant transitional housing (with and without programming), and congregate shelter with intensive case management services.
• Additional permanent housing units, subsidies, and associated financial assistance to support homelessness exit and housing stability.

AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Evidence Drives Efforts to Promote Equity in Affordable Housing

This article provides an overview of content presented at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Policy for Action event: Policies to Expand Equity-Oriented Affordable Housing. The article presents research on multiple topics and approaches to insuring equity in affordable housing. One study highlights the prevalence of communities in concentrating their affordable housing planning efforts in lower income regions, while another presents the benefits of incentivizing affordable housing by providing access to a more streamlined permitting process for affordable housing. The latter has resulted in affordable housing being built in affluent areas with highly ranked schools.