Giving Compass' Take:

• Josh Leopold shares five ways in which the HEARTH Act changed homelessness assistance in the United States and points out opportunities to build on the success of the act. 

• How can funders best work to improve homelessness assistance policy? What is working in the fight against homelessness in your community? 

• Read more about ending homelessness. 

Ten years out, HEARTH has changed how we respond to homelessness in five major ways, some of which we are still learning about. As Congress considers new homelessness legislation, we can learn from the HEARTH Act’s successes, missed opportunities, and remaining challenges.

1. Accelerating the shift from shelter to Housing First
Housing First focuses on helping people experiencing homelessness get into permanent housing as quickly as possible, rather than conditioning permanent housing on sobriety, treatment, employment, or other milestones.

2. Creating a Federal Strategic Plan to End Homelessness
HEARTH expanded the mission of the US Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) to “coordinate the federal response to homelessness,” creating partnerships across the government and with the private sector. It also directed the agency to develop a National Strategic Plan to End Homelessness.

3. Expanding the definition of homelessness
HEARTH expanded the definition of who should be considered homeless to include people at imminent risk of homelessness, previously homeless people temporarily in institutional settings, unaccompanied youth and families with persistent housing instability, and people fleeing or attempting to flee domestic violence.

4. Creating systems performance measures
The HEARTH Act established system-wide performance measures for homeless Continuums of Care (CoCs). The performance measures relate to the national goal that homelessness be rare, brief, and nonrecurring. It includes measures of time spent in homeless programs, returns to homelessness after exit, and the number of people in the community experiencing homelessness for the first time.

5. Establishing coordinated entry
HEARTH committed CoCs to establish coordinated entry systems, creating a standard process for assessing people’s housing and service needs and connecting them to available resources. Coordinated entry, which received little attention when HEARTH was passed, marks a major shift in how communities address homelessness.

Read the full article about how the HEARTH Act changed homelessness assistance by Josh Leopold at Urban Institute.