IV. An Effective Housing Crisis Response System

Effectively addressing homelessness means that the community has a comprehensive response that ensures homelessness is prevented whenever possible or, if it cannot be prevented, it is a rare, brief, and one-time experience. This requires a robust menu of services, programming, and housing options to meet the diverse and complex needs of community members. This comprehensive response is what we refer to here as the housing crisis response system. This is a system designed to:

1. Quickly identify and engage people at risk of or experiencing homelessness,

2. Intervene to prevent the loss of housing and divert people from entering the homelessness services system, and

3. When homelessness does occur, provide access to shelter and crisis services. At the same time, permanent housing and appropriate supports are being identified, and people are quickly connected to housing assistance and services to help them achieve and maintain stable housing.

The graphic above is not representative of every program or service available; rather, it provides a framework for the components that must be present in a community to address homelessness. What makes each community unique is the need to identify the right size of each component and intervention. An effective housing crisis response system has five key components:

1. Outreach and Coordinated Entry

2. Diversion and Homelessness Prevention

3. Emergency Shelter

4. Rapid Rehousing

5. Permanent Supportive Housing

These components work best when there is a strong foundation and a Continuum of Care (CoC) comprised of all the relevant organizations necessary to address homelessness. The foundation requires a community collaboration that (1) uses a systems approach, (2) focuses on specified outcomes, and (3) makes decisions based on data and best practices. Below, we offer a description and analysis of each part of the system.