Inside a Texas homeless village that inspires California replicas: Art, movies and a fishing pond

Haven for Hope is a large, 22-acre, 1,600-person shelter that serves 85% of the city’s homeless population. It’s an all-inclusive space that provides a place to stay, as well as access to services like medical and dental care, counseling services, mental health care, childcare, job and housing assistance.

Avivo Village provides shelter for those experiencing homelessness and assists them in securing their own permanent housing. Avivo Village is specifically for people experiencing unsheltered homelessness and offers a safer option than staying in encampments. As of December, Avivo Village helped 119 secure housing and every time a person moves out, the Village moves in someone else from an encampment.

In response to managing the homeless crisis, several Safe Rest Villages have emerged throughout the city. These are small, individual units on city-owned land, separate from nearby neighborhoods. There are currently seven active Safe Rest Villages in the city and they have created 350 transitional housing opportunities for the local homeless population.

Homelessness has many challenges that require different services to aid those who have no place to live—including daycare and laundry. Seattle has established Mary’s Place Family Center, a public space that collaborates with non-profits to provide a multitude of social services to the homeless. Large corporations have donated buildings to serve as Seattle’s Mary’s Place shelters to diminish costs.

San Francisco’s chronically homeless population remains staggeringly high. Salt Lake City has managed to eradicate much of their chronically homeless by geographically placing supportive housing distant from the city’s center and receiving financial assistance from the Mormon Church. The housing is attractive, modern, and offers a good ratio between counselors and homeless clients—all of which helps make the homeless want to stay off the streets.

The city of Tucson and Pima County are using a network of cooling centers, repurposed shipping containers and street outreach teams to protect unhoused residents and people living in substandard housing from deadly summer heat. The coordinated response, which includes trauma-informed staff training, heat-relief kit distribution, and an annual planning summit, is helping reduce heat-related deaths in the region.

The Veterans Community Project (VCP) offers a village of 49 tiny homes to unhoused veterans free of charge, with extremely low barriers to entry to ensure all veterans in need can receive support. The tiny homes are fully furnished and those who live in the village also have access to health services, education, employment referrals and a sense of community. The VCP also helps veterans become financially stable and seek out permanent housing. Since the VCP opened, 85% of veterans who have stayed in the village have successfully transitioned to permanent housing.

The Built For Zero program works to end homelessness by partnering with community organizations aimed at helping people experiencing homelessness — specifically veterans — access safe, affordable housing. The Detroit branch is one of the 105 cities nationwide participating in the program. Since joining in 2015, the city has reduced veteran homelessness by about 60%.

Inside Safe addresses the significant homelessness crisis in the city by traveling to encampments and offering people hotel rooms to stay in where they are connected with permanent housing and other necessary resources, like mental health care. Hotel rooms provide people with a safe space to heal and rest while working with a case worker to find housing. The initiative has so far moved 1,373 people into hotel rooms and 77 of them have moved into permanent housing.

The Nomad Alliance bus is a warming center on wheels that provides people experiencing homelessness a safe place to stay. The bus accepts anyone who needs help, so long as they help keep the bus clean, and can take in about 20 people at a time.