Library — Solutions Brief

The resource provides an overview of how some communities are using TANF funds for short-term rent assistance and how TANF agencies can help improve the self-sufficiency of families.

This promising strategy profile examines a unique partnership between a homeless service provider and a state agency administering the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families  to help homeless Idaho families rapidly exit homelessness and re-stabilize in homes of their own.

This document is intended to help answer key questions communities may have about the assessment and referral pieces of coordinated assessment and provide guidance based on work the National Alliance to End Homelessness has done with other communities.

This promising strategies profile examines how Utah Workforce Services and The Road Home are using resources from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program to provide an integrated employment and housing intervention for homeless families in Salt Lake City.

This solutions brief describes how one homeless service agency has partnered with the TANF agency in their community to reduce family homelessness. The Mercer County Board of Social Services (MCBOSS) and Mercer Alliance to End Homelessness (Mercer Alliance) are working together to expand rapid re-housing services and change how TANF resources are used. In a two year period, the number of families in shelter or transitional housing on any given day declined by 20 percent and the number of families residing in motels over the course of a month declined by 66 percent.

Rural youth experiencing homelessness often face with severely limited resources compared to their urban counterparts. In areas where services are offered, providers are typically underfunded and youth lack transportation options to access them. This brief includes an overview of the host homes model that can be tailored to meet local needs, and service provider strategies for outreach to youth.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can be caused by the experience of homelessness. This brief includes an overview of PTSD, implications for providers, and principles of trauma-informed care.

This brief describes how family rejection increases the risk for negative outcomes such as homelessness, substance abuse, depression, and suicide for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth. It also provides information on the Family Acceptance Project (FAP), an initiative designed to help diverse families decrease rejection and increase support for their LGBT children.

Many stakeholders in your community are committed to ending youth homelessness and are willing to participate in the planning and implementation of the PIT Count. This brief identifies key partnerships to develop to ensure that your community's Point-In-Time (PIT) Count successfully includes youth and youth stakeholders.

The transgender community makes up less than half a percent of the American population but accounts for up to five percent of the homeless youth population. This one-page brief provides guidance for service providers seeking to competently meet the needs of this vulnerable population.

Across the country, communities are implementing rapid re-housing to respond to family homelessness, and they are demonstrating impressive results. Communities are successfully, and quickly, re-housing families at a minimal cost by providing assistance locating new housing, short-term rental assistance, and follow-up case management focused on employment. In doing so, they are improving the lives of families.

This tool may be helpful for the purposes of determining what services and level of subsidy a household eligible for rapid re-housing needs. Communities would ideally use this tool only after prevention or diversion had been ruled out as options as part of the coordinated assessment process and before or very shortly after admitting a household to an emergency shelter program if they have no place else to stay. This tool should be used as a starting point; communities are encouraged to refine the tool to reflect local data and system outcomes.

This assessment tool, based on Minneapolis/Hennepin County, Minnesota’s and Columbus, Ohio’s assessment forms, will be of use to communities attempting to determine if a household needs prevention or diversion assistance. This should be administered as soon as a household enters an assessment center to determine if they will need shelter or if they can be assisted and housed without having to enter the homeless assistance system.