Homelessness Prevention

Homelessness prevention is a set of strategies to help low-income households resolve a housing crisis that would otherwise lead to homelessness. A prevention program may stabilize a household in their current housing or help them to move into new housing without first entering shelter or experiencing homelessness. Strategies may include financial assistance, legal assistance, housing stabilization services, and other interventions used singularly or in combination. The more coordinated and well-targeted the prevention program is the more likely it is to reduce the number of people who experience homelessness.


Problem or Challenge:


Ending homelessness requires effective and well-targeted strategies to stop families and individuals from becoming homeless. Most people can successfully avoid homelessness if they get the right help at the right time. A small amount of assistance is often enough to prevent an episode of homelessness and the cost of prevention is usually much less than the cost of shelter and other services people need when they experience homelessness. Prevention diminishes the trauma and dislocation caused by homelessness. When effective, homelessness prevention programs reduce the demand for homeless shelters.


Solution:


As part of a community’s homelessness assistance system, prevention programs serve vulnerable individuals and families who are at imminent risk of becoming homeless (i.e., entering shelter or transitional housing or living in cars or on the street). The goal is to help the household resolve their crisis, secure short-term financial or rental assistance as needed, and access ongoing sources of support in the community in order to remain housed. If the individual or family is unable to stay in their existing housing, the prevention program helps the household to find a safe, reasonably affordable and adequate, alternative housing arrangement.

Homelessness prevention programs are usually designed to use available resources to offer time-limited assistance to a large number of families and individuals. The assistance may not be enough to cover all needs, but can often act as a means to leverage other income and supports and permit the recipients to remain housed. In some cases a homelessness prevention program is structured to provide deeper assistance to a defined population, such as persons being discharged from prisons, hospitals, or foster care, to prevent them from experiencing homelessness.

Time-limited homelessness prevention programs are not the only way to prevent homelessness. Some long-term interventions have demonstrated effectiveness in reducing the likelihood that families and individuals with significant needs will enter or return to homelessness. Rental housing assistance is the most direct and effective tool to prevent homelessness; it has been shown to be highly effective in helping people with extremely low incomes retain housing. For households with long histories of homelessness and the greatest barriers to stability, permanent supportive housing has proven effective in preventing returns to homelessness.

 

Source: 

http://usich.gov/usich_resources/solutions/explore/homelessness_prevention

POPULATIONS AT RISK OF HOMELESSNESS

Many poor people are at risk of homelessness. Ultimately, this is because it is hard for them to afford housing. Unemployment, housing cost burden, and living doubled up are indications of this struggle to afford housing. Longitudinal trends and changes from 2012 to 2013 indicate populations at risk of homelessness may not be experiencing the benefits of the economic recovery.

• The number of unemployed people fell 8.4 percent and the unemployment rate continued its multi-year decline, falling to 7.4 percent. Nearly all states saw decreases in the number of people unemployed, with only 6 states seeing modest increases in the number of unemployed people. 
• Despite improvements in employment, the number of people in poverty (4.8 million) and the poverty rate (15.8 percent) remained relatively steady. 26 states saw an increase in the number of people in poverty; 25 saw a decrease. 
• The number of people in poor households living doubled up with family and friends grew to 7.7 million people, an increase of 3.7 percent from 2012 to 2013, with 39 states seeing increases. Since 2007, the number of people living doubled up has increased 67 percent. 
• The number of poor renter households experiencing severe housing cost burden, those households in poverty paying more than 50 percent of their income toward housing, total 6.4 million in 2013, decreasing by 2.8 percent nationally from 2013 with 37 states seeing a decrease. Since 2007, the number of poor households with severe housing cost burden has increased 25 percent. 

HOMELESS ASSISTANCE SYSTEM

Communities across the country respond to homelessness with a variety of programs: emergency shelters, transitional housing, rapid re-housing, and permanent supportive housing. The HEARTH Act, passed in 2009, placed a greater emphasis on permanent supportive housing and rapid re-housing as permanent housing solutions to homelessness. The shift away from transitional housing as a response to homelessness began to be seen in 2013 and continued in 2014. 

• Rapid re-housing capacity grew dramatically—nearly doubling from 19,847 beds in 2013 to 37,783 beds in 2014, a 90 percent increase. 40 states increased rapid re-housing inventory. 
• The number of permanent supportive housing beds continued to grow from 2013 to 2014 by 15,984 beds (5.6 percent) to a total of 300,282 beds. 35 states saw increases and 15 states saw decreases. 
• Nationwide, emergency shelter utilization remained at the same highs seen between 2007 and 2013, with 102 percent of emergency shelter beds full at the time of the point-in-time count. Transitionalhousing utilization was lower, at 84 percent.

 Source: 

http://endhomelessness.org/library/entry/the-state-of-homelessness-in-america-2015

How we can help the homeless people to smile?

One of the example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uNOnDJKGS8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZdG5aFi3js

Who Experiences Homelessness?

Persons living in poverty are most at risk of becoming homeless, and demographic groups who are more likely to experience poverty are also more likely to experience homelessness. Yet because of methodological and financial constraints, most studies are limited to counting persons who are in shelters or on the street. While the Census Bureau has taken a series of innovations to better incorporate the homeless population, these procedures continue to undercount this group by failing to visit many locations with homeless populations. Additionally, different governmental agencies often present different estimates/counts, making the figures on homelessness inconclusive.

Housing and Urban Development’s Point-in-Time Survey, January 2013:

• HUD found 610,042 individuals to be homeless on a single night in January 2013. Most homeless persons (85%) are individuals while 15% of homeless persons are in family households. 
• 33% of all homeless people were youths under the age of 24. 
• 57,849 veterans, overwhelmingly 92% male, were homeless on a single night in January 2013. 60% were residing in shelters or transitional housing programs, while 40% were without shelter. 
• 48% of homeless individuals (without families) were found to be living without shelter. 
• Families experiencing homelessness made up 50% of those who were sheltered. 
• Five states, California (22%), New York (13%), Florida (8%), Texas (5%), and Massachusetts (3%), accounted for more than half of the homeless population in the United States in 2013.

Source:
http://nationalhomeless.org/about-homelessness/

Homelessness People

An individual may be considered to be homeless if that person is “doubled up,” a term that refers to a situation where individuals are unable to maintain their housing situation and are forced to stay with a series of friends and/or extended family members. In addition, previously homeless individuals who are to be released from a prison or a hospital may be considered homeless if they do not have a stable housing situation to which they can return. A recognition of the instability of an individual’s living arrangements is critical to the definition of homelessness.

Group´s opinion

The situation of the children and young that are throwaway or run away from home is a serious problem that we can see every day on the streets and is common see kids from 12-17 years and is for commons problems.

Those problems could be solve if we take the decision of be an open mind person and try to have a good relation with our family or maybe with the person that protect you, so why still have a close mind and only focus with problems? The decision of be a better person start with the decision that we take.

Example of Throwaways

A quick glance at Cindy (name and other identifying information have been changed) and one would guess she was in her late 20s, maybe her early 30s. Looking closely, there was no sparkle in her eyes and her demeanor was sad with little affect; she just looked tired and worn out, her hair stringy as it fell to her shoulders from underneath a dirty and worn wool cap. But Cindy was not in her mid-to-late 20s or early 30s; she was 16 years old. She had been thrown out of her home by her mother two years earlier. It was a cold January night when she was first told to leave. She went to a friend’s house and stayed for a couple of days before her friend’s parents told her she needed to “go home and make things right,” which Cindy tried to do. After a few weeks, Cindy’s mother told her to leave home and never come back again. Cindy spent the next few nights sleeping in the backyard of her friend’s house; her friend’s parents did not even know she was there. Cindy then left her hometown and headed for a large city, where she first moved from public building to public building, using the bathrooms for her “personal bath” and “just to have a place to hang.” Cindy tried to get into a homeless shelter but was turned away because she had no caretaker with her. She contacted a program for homeless youth, but they could not do anything for her because she was under age 18 and did not have “parental consent” to be there. Food was difficult to come by; she tried to eat at various church programs but again was turned away because she was an unaccompanied minor. She had no one to turn to until she met “D-man,” who took her in, fed her, and gave her clothes. Soon, she was “tricking” for him, and now, at 16 years of age, Cindy was HIV-positive.

The traditional American dream of owning a home, obtaining a college education, and working at a good, paying job is only that, a dream, for scores of homeless youth in America today. There is a growing street population of young people who have been thrown out of their homes by

their caretakers or their families, and who face life-threatening situations each day. For these youth, the furthest thing in their lives is reaching the so-called “American Dream;” and their most immediate need is survival, simply living out the day in front of them. They have few options that lead

to a decent and safe living environment. Their age, lack of work experience, and absence of a high school diploma make it most difficult to find a job. As a result, they turn to other means for survival; runaways and throwaways are most vulnerable to falling prey to the sex trade, selling drugs, or being lured into human trafficking, and some steal or panhandle. Street youth end up spending their nights in bus stations or finding a room in an abandoned building or an empty stairwell to sleep. Sometimes they are taken in by a stranger, as Cindy was. Attempting to identify a specific number of homeless youth is difficult at best, but what is even more perplexing is our continued inability to effectively protect our children. We are left with a basic question framed by the fundamental tenets of justice: what is a community’s responsibility to its youth who, for whatever reason, end up living on the streets or in unsafe, abusive environments?

Source

http://digitalcommons.library.tmc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1025&context=childrenatrisk

Experiences of runaway

Runaways experiences

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAzjuOqKEzw

Runaways definition

Runaway Youth. 

The U.S. Department of Education defines a “runaway” as a youth who leaves home and stays away overnight without caretaker permission. The Department of Education further notes that a runaway chooses not to come home when expected. Greene et al., in a report published by the federal Department of Health and Human Services, add that a runaway is a youth who leaves home on his/her “volition without the consent of their caregiver.”

A consensus seems to have emerged in the literature among the various federal programs and national/local non-profit social service agencies to rely on data provided by the Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). The OJJDP has

published two separate reports entitled National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children more commonly referred to as NISMART. The first NISMART report was published in 1988 and NISMART II was released in 2002. In the spring of 2010 the OJJDP issued a call for proposals for an updated report, to be entitled NISMART III.

A runaway, according to NISMART II7, meets one of the following criteria:

• A child leaves home without permission and stays away overnight;

• A child 14 years old or younger (or older and mentally incompetent) who is away from home chooses not to come home when expected to and stays away overnight; or,

• A child 15 years old or older who is away from home chooses not to come home and stays away two nights.

Source:

http://digitalcommons.library.tmc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1025&context=childrenatrisk

Throwaways video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rRnZJ6wht0

Throwaway¨s definition

Throwaway Youth. 
Throwaway youth, also referred to as thrownaway youth, are defined as youth whose caretaker has “…induced them to leave against their will and made no effort to find them once they left home.” Wagner defines throwaways as “…minors who are forced by the parents or legal guardians to leave their homes.” In a similar vein, the Child Welfare League of America defines a throwaway as an individual who has “been told or forced to leave home or deserted by parents or guardians.”
Again referring to the 2002 NISMART report, a throwaway is a
youth who meets either of the following two criteria:
• A child is asked or told to leave home by a parent or other
household adult, no adequate alternative care is arranged for the
child by a household adult, and the child is out of the household
overnight.
• A child who is away from home is prevented from returning home
by a parent or other household adult, no adequate alternative care
is arranged for the child by a household adult, and the child is out of
the household overnight

Source
http://digitalcommons.library.tmc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1025&context=childrenatrisk