Welcome to the Community Action Housing Opportunities and Homelessness Prevention Resource Hub. Here you can explore various tools and resources related to housing access and affordability, homelessness, and more.
Tools and Resources
Tool: Rapid Re-Housing Toolkit
This toolkit, created by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, is intended to help current and potential rapid re-housing providers design and operate effective rapid re-housing programs that are successful in ending homelessness for individuals and families through the use of the three core components of rapid re-housing. It provides details on recommended rapid re-housing program design and practice. It is based on what is currently considered best practice by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, Abt Associates, and high-performing rapid re-housing programs.
Tool: Homeless System Evaluator
The National Alliance to End Homelessness‘ Homeless System Evaluator helps communities understand the performance of their homelessness system, different programs, and program types within the system. Specifically, this tool helps determine whether a community’s homeless assistance system moves people into permanent housing quickly, helps people remain in housing, and generates these and other positive outcomes cost-effectively. Communities enter data from HMIS, APRs, and program budgets into the tool, which then displays the data in charts and graphs that can help communities identify trends.
Tool: Housing Justice Narrative Toolkit
The Housing Justice Narrative Toolkit offers a scaffolding for us to stay centered in the future we are reimagining. It supports our ability to speak to a base of individuals most aligned with housing justice—the anti-racist and persuadable base—in ways which are authentic and that they can hear. This toolkit grounds the core truth of housing justice. It guards against the distraction of the opposition by offering opportunities for us to avoid the pitfalls of repeating the same stories we have been told, or that we continue to tell, that haven’t moved us towards housing for all.
Resource: Housing Justice Hub
The Urban Institute Housing Justice Hub endeavors to better understand this growing field by drawing on Urban’s deep expertise in housing research and policy, racial equity analytics, and strategic advising on cross-sector housing solutions. As we learn more, our team is creating and sharing data tools and analyses to inspire research, policy solutions, and advocacy. Equipped with these evidence-informed insights, policymakers and community partners can strengthen how they design, implement, and monitor policies and programs to achieve housing justice for all.
Tool: Trauma-Informed Organizational Toolkit for Homeless Services
With support from the Daniels Fund, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, the Homelessness Resource Center, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the National Center on Family Homelessness (NCFH) has created the Trauma-Informed Organizational Toolkit to provide programs with a roadmap for becoming trauma-informed. The Toolkit offers homeless service providers with concrete guidelines for how to modify their practices and policies to ensure that they are responding appropriately to the needs of families who have experienced traumatic stress.
Brief: Unsheltered Homelessness: Trends, Causes, and Strategies to Address
This brief by the National Alliance to End Homelessness discusses possible causes of high rates or increasing counts of unsheltered homelessness. Data are from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Census Bureau. Other information is from surveyed communities with large or increasing unsheltered populations, and members of the Alliance’s Leadership Council and Research Council.
Resource: School House Connection
SchoolHouse Connection is a national non-profit organization working to overcome homelessness through education. We provide strategic advocacy and practical assistance in partnership with early childhood programs, schools, institutions of higher education, service providers, families, and youth.
Resource: National Center for Housing & Child Welfare
NCHCW works at the local, regional, and national level to create cross-agency partnerships to enable communities to respond appropriately to families and youth who are caught at the intersection of housing and child welfare.
Webinars
Housing Expansion Opportunities and Homeless Prevention: Rapid Re-Housing
This introductory webinar will provide an overview of Rapid Re-housing and its role in developing an effective community-wide response to homelessness. Participants will explore the role that Community Action Agencies can play in leading, supporting, and/or augmenting Rapid Re-housing in the jurisdictions they serve. Participants will also explore strategies to increase housing placements while rental markets continue to tighten.
Expanding Diversion: Using Problem-Solving to Reduce Homelessness
Shelter diversion and problem-solving interventions play a critical role in reducing homelessness. Shelter diversion helps people experiencing a housing crisis to identify safe and appropriate alternatives to entering shelter or unsheltered homelessness. This intervention plays a critical role in reducing homelessness by lessening shelter demand, allowing scarce shelter resources to be preserved for those without safe alternatives. Problem-solving can also be used to help people exit homelessness or to preserve their housing, helping them avoid further housing instability and the trauma of homelessness. This webinar dives deep into problem-solving and how it can be used for shelter diversion and to assist people already experiencing homelessness.
Targeting Homelessness Prevention in the Midst of COVID-19
This webinar examines a variety of innovative Homelessness Prevention practices in the midst of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Join us for insights from our guests Marcy Thompson and Gregory Barchuk of ICF. View this webinar to gain knowledge of the elements of a successful homelessness prevention strategy, approaches to targeting prevention for maximum effectiveness and explore concrete examples of effective approaches to homelessness prevention at the community level.
Targeting Homelessness Prevention to Those at Greatest Risk
How are frontline providers helping people seeking shelter identify alternative housing options to prevent homelessness and shelter stays? This third webinar in a series focusing on targeting prevention assistance to those at greatest risk of homelessness will explore diversion practice. Participants will learn about effective problem-solving conversations, strategic points of intervention, the growing use of flexible financial assistance to accompany the intervention, and the impact diversion is having in alleviating shelter entries.
Highlighted Housing Initiatives
📍 Rapid City, SD
The Western South Dakota Community Action (WSDCA) has partnered with the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and B&T Manufacturing to design and build Tiny Houses in Rapid City, South Dakota.
Affordable Rural Housing Opportunities
📍 Rich Square, NC
Choanoke Area Development Association of North Carolina, Inc. (CADA) invests in affordable rural housing opportunities that build equity, create healthy homes, and improve neighborhoods.
📍 Yorkville, IL
Kendall-Grundy Community Action Agency’s Project New Start connects families with vouchers and other services to move towards permanent housing and stability. The project utilizes a coordinated interagency effort with the Kendall County Health Department.
📍 Gray, KY
Ryan’s Place, run by KCEOC Community Action Partnership, is a crisis center for youth aged 18-24 who are experiencing homelessness.
Tenant Eviction Assistance Project (TEAP)
📍 Phoenix, AZ
Tenant Eviction Assistance Project (TEAP) provides legal assistance, advocacy, and representation to tenants who are residents of the City of Phoenix, affected by COVID-19, and experiencing an eviction crisis.
📍 Phoenix, AZ
Project Haven is a temporary emergency shelter erected in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is operated by a sub-grantee agency: Centralized Arizona Shelter Services (CASS) who, in partnership with the Regional Coordinated Entry System (CES) and a local homeless medical provider agency, Circle The City (CTC), prioritize shelter beds for the medically vulnerable and seniors experiencing homelessness within the City of Phoenix.
Institutional Release Housing Program
📍 Kalispell, MT
Community Action of Northwest Montana (CAPNM)’s Institutional Release Housing Program assists individuals who are exiting an institutional setting into homelessness and who have a recent history of homelessness.
East Decatur Community Impact Project
📍 Decatur, AL
The focus of Community Action Partnership of North Alabama’s East Decatur Community Impact Project is on improving neighborhood conditions within a targeted geographic area through community building and engagement activities centered around health, safety, stabilization, and revitalization.
📍 Garden City, ID
El-Ada Community Action Partnership is developing up to 70 units of affordable rental housing in various sizes over seven years.
H38 East Apartments – Moving Forward 2.0
📍 Lafayette, IN
Area IV Agency on Aging and Community Action Program, Inc.’s H38 East Apartments complex is a 32-unit affordable housing community which includes a wellness and fitness center, business and technology center, double classroom, nutrition demonstration kitchen, vertical and community gardens, bike share and car share programs, net zero solar apartments, Life Skills Coach and onsite management.
📍 Girard, KS
“Tiny Houses, Big Beginnings” is a two-generational approach to Transitional Housing for homeless families with children who are eligible for or receive Head Start services in Southeast Kansas Community Action Program (SEK-CAP).
Garrett County Senior Housing and Support
📍 Oakland, MD
Through the Senior Housing and Support initiative, Garrett County Community Action Committee created an environment where senior residents will have shelter, food, access to health care, and support/advice on life skills, as appropriate.
📍 Spartanburg, SC
Piedmont Community Action, Inc. is the owner and operator of three Section 202 senior housing apartment complexes developed to address a shortage of affordable independent housing for older Americans.
📍 Lincoln, IL
Veterans living in Central Illinois need permanent, supportive housing situations to ensure safety and stability. Existing services in Illinois are not located nearby, creating significant gaps in service availability geographically. Veterans, who have built a broad coalition across the Community Action Partnership of Central Illinois service area, drive this project.
📍 Raleigh, NC
The Healthy Homes Initiative is a statewide program addressing social determinants of health. This initiative is administered through the North Carolina Community Action Association (NCCAA) to local Community Action Agencies across North Carolina.
Trammel Community Revitalization Project
📍 Abingdon, VA
Trammel, Virginia is of the earliest “coal camp” communities in the Appalachian Mountains of southwestern Virginia. People Incorporated was approached by the Dickenson County Board of Supervisors to assist in a community revitalization project.
📍 Lowell, MA
Secure Jobs, a project by Community Teamwork, provides intensive case management to clients who live in a shelter and/or receive RAFT (Residential Assistance for Families) and need to secure and maintain employment.
Owner-Occupied Housing Rehabilitation Program
📍 Beaufort, SC
Beaufort Jasper Economic Opportunity Commission (BJEOC)’s Owner-Occupied Housing Rehabilitation Program provides customers with direct housing rehabilitation services.
If you have questions or comments, please contact Tayla Daniel, Senior Associate, Learning and Dissemination.