Giving Compass' Take:

• Earlier this month, the National Alliance to End Homelessness hosted a conference in San Diego to understand more about the problems that homeless individual face. The author discusses three main takeaways. 

• Participants came to a consensus that the "Housing First" approach works for homeless individuals. How can more donors invest in this model? 

• Check out the Homelessness Magazine for donors on Giving Compass. 


A few years ago, the Alliance began to direct more time and resources to thinking about “everyone else” experiencing homelessness: people who were not chronically homeless, or were not experiencing homelessness as part of a family, or as a veteran, youth, or young adult.

Not coincidentally, this represents the largest group of people experiencing homelessness, especially unsheltered homelessness.

We knew we needed to know more about this population. And we knew we needed to collaborate with national, state, and local partners to develop a strategy to end their homelessness. But we also suspected that we didn’t need to reinvent the wheel: there has been incredible progress for individuals within specific subgroups, like veterans, people experiencing chronic homelessness, and young adults.

The difference is that those groups have dedicated federal (and often state and local) resources and plans. And the rest of the population of individual adults (i.e., “everyone else”) doesn’t.

This was the big question at the Alliance’s inaugural Solutions for Individual Homeless Adults conference, last month in San Diego. Upon reflection, there were three big issues that rose to the fore:

  1. Housing First Works Everyone at the conference — the HUD Secretary, the USICH Director, advocates with lived experience, shelter directors, case managers, and systems leaders — reinforced that a Housing First approach is essential.
  2. We Must Confront Racial Disparities Speaking of unequal power dynamics, much of the conference content focused on addressing racial disparities among people experiencing homelessness.
  3. Share Your Unsheltered Strategies The rise of unsheltered homelessness (and especially large encampments) has reached crisis proportions, resulting in public health crises and even federal consent decrees.

Read the full article about takeaways from the Individual Homeless Adults conference by Mindy Mitchell at National Alliance to End Homelessness.