Permanent supportive housing

Before making investments in this strategy, city and county leaders should ensure this strategy addresses local needs.

The Urban Institute has developed an indicator framework to help local leaders assess conditions related to upward mobility, identify barriers, and guide investments to address these challenges. These indicator frameworks can serve as a starting point for self-assessment, not as a comprehensive evaluation, and should be complemented by other forms of local knowledge.

The Urban Institute's Upward Mobility Framework identifies a set of key local conditions that shape communities’ ability to advance upward mobility and racial equity. Local leaders can use the Upward Mobility Framework to better understand the factors that improve upward mobility and prioritize areas of focus. Data reports for cities and counties can be created here.

Several indicators in the Upward Mobility Framework may be improved with investments in permanent supportive housing. To measure these indicators and determine if investments in these interventions could help, examine the following:

• Housing stability: Number and share of public-school children who are ever homeless during the school year. These data are collected by local public school districts.

• Safety from trauma: Number of deaths due to injury per 100,000 people. These data are available from the National Center for Health Statistics’ Mortality File and the CDC’s WONDER database.

• Access to healthcare: Ratio of residents to primary care physicians. These data are available from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Area Health Resource File.
  

• Launch a coalition: Homelessness prevention initiatives often require a wide range of core competencies, including financing housing developments, delivering medical services, providing case management for individuals, engaging with landlords, and more. An administrative leader (often a local government) should consider bringing together private, public, and nonprofit entities to collaboratively address chronic homelessness.
• Take a “Housing First” approach: The evidence-based housing model secures stable housing for individuals experiencing chronic homelessness before providing any other services. With housing in place, additional services (like on-site support services, education, training, and more) are more likely to be effective.
• Partner with landlords: One of the most significant challenges in addressing chronic homelessness is the lengthy period it can take to identify and lease available units. To address this, program leaders should cultivate a network of property owners who are open to leasing units to individuals previously experiencing chronic homelessness. With a preexisting relationship, landlords are more likely to demonstrate flexibility on payment plans, accept various vouchers, and waive minimum income requirements, all of which can help expedite securing the unit.
• Invest in data capacity and analysis: Oftentimes, homelessness prevention approaches rely on annual point-in-time data, which can convey an inaccurate or incomplete picture. Incorporate the capacity for frequent data collection and analysis at each touchpoint (such as during outreach with individuals experiencing homelessness, during case management sessions, etc.). Doing so will help the program deploy existing resources to ensure better outcomes for tenants and help shape future plans (such as whether to build new housing).