The Nonprofit Group Disrupting the Homeless Services Sector

The Denver Basic Income Project has provided more than $9.4 million in no-strings-attached payments to over 800 people experiencing homelessness. The nonprofit gives participants monthly stipends that they can spend however they see fit. As a result, more participants are finding housing, building financial stability, and finding stable employment.

The Denver Basic Income Project provided people experiencing homelessness with no-strings-attached monthly stipends that they could spend however they’d like. At the end of the pilot, twice as many participants were in stable housing, more of them were working full time, and the nights that participants spent in shelters decreased by half.

Washington's Office of Homeless Youth administers funding and creates policy solutions to help youth experiencing homelessness across the state. The agency organizes services like shelter, sober-living housing, and financial assistance tailored to their personal experiences.

In Minnesota, Hennepin County is using a housing-first approach, working with individuals on their specific needs, and focusing on the most vulnerable populations first to reduce the number of people experiencing homelessness in the county.

Portland Street Response sends mental health staff, medics, community health workers, and peer support specialists into crisis situations with the goal of reducing intervention by police. The program has reduced calls to police for non-criminal cases by 3.5 percent and has resulted in only one arrest, compared to 371 arrests made by police for similar calls.

The CAHOOTS program's national popularity as a model for diverting crisis calls from the police to unarmed teams of a medic and counselor belies its inability to fully serve its own community because of under-funding. Program director Ebony Morgan talks about the flip side of the program's cost savings for the city: unfairly low pay for its workers, long response times, and an inability to expand. The program's success with the community is built on trust that people in crisis will be helped rather than viewed as a threat. Morgan says the program itself needs to be valued more by city budget managers.

Six San Francisco neighborhoods are now served by the city's Street Crisis Response Teams, which answer 911 calls for non-violent mental or behavioral health crises without police involvement. In its first two months in one neighborhood, the Tenderloin, the team handled 199 calls without any violent incidents or any need for police intervention. That led to the expansion to five more neighborhoods. The program is modeled on Eugene, Oregon's CAHOOTS project's street medics and counselors, but with an additional "peer specialist," someone with lived experience to counsel unhoused people on the streets.

The City of Seattle partnered with Zillow to create a searchable database of affordable vacant rental units. Case managers are using the tool to get homeless residents into housing.

Two medical school initiatives in Detroit allow students to gain a sense of empathy while treating at-risk populations in a city known for harsh environments for homeless individuals. The programs, run through Michigan State University and Wayne State University, build trust between the medical community and people who live on the streets. This type of meaningful connection is often lacking in emergency rooms or doctors' offices.

Far too many Americans are homeless, and with congress dragging their feet in implementing funds, it is up to individual places to set up programs to help provide housing. Counties in New Jersey have enacted legislation to fund housing and other services, but in other areas the fight is still on to pass legislation.