An Urban Institute study, just out, concludes that “the 100,000 Homes Campaign had a major impact on national efforts to end homelessness.” Researchers noted that communities that participated in the Campaign reported greater reductions in unsheltered, veterans, and chronic homelessness than non-participants. Over the life of the campaign, the average community saw a 262% increase in the percent of the community’s homeless population housed each month.
This news is great for us locally because we are working toward incorporating best practices that evolved from the campaign, particularly in Hampden County, where we are participating in the follow-up Zero 2016 campaign.
As noted in a Community Solutions blog post, several of the Campaign’s core strategies were associated with greater reductions in homelessness, including:
- Transparent, monthly tracking and reporting Communities that publicly tracked the number of people moving into housing each month against predetermined monthly targets on the Campaign’s website saw significantly greater reductions in homelessness than communities that neglected this measurement-based approach.
- Registry weeks Communities that completed a registry week, in which community members document every person experiencing homelessness by-name, saw chronic homelessness decline by 26 percent, while those who did not complete registry weeks saw reductions of only one percent.
