Building and Disseminating Knowledge

The Homelessness Research Institute, the research and education arm of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, works to end homelessness by building and disseminating knowledge that informs policy change. The goals of the Homelessness Research Institute are to build the intellectual capital around solutions to homelessness; to advance data and research so that policymakers, practitioners, and the caring public have the best information about trends in homelessness and emerging solutions; and to engage the media to ensure intelligent reporting on the issue.

Housing Vouchers Are Critical for Ending Family Homelessness
Housing vouchers are successful in helping families exit homelessness and can protect poor families from becoming homeless. This paper summarizes those research findings and draws out their implications for housing policymakers.

Vital Mission: Ending Homelessness Among Veterans
Homeless veterans can be found in every state across the country and live in rural, suburban, and urban communities. In 2006, approximately 195,827 veterans were homeless on a given night—an increase of 0.8 percent from 194,254 in 2005. More veterans experience homeless over the course of the year. We estimate that 336,627 were homeless in 2006. This report analyzes data from the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Census Bureau to examine homelessness and severe housing cost burden among veterans.

Data Snapshot: Doubled Up in the United States
There have been recent proposals to expand the US Department of Housing and Urban Development's definition of homeless to include households that are doubled up for economic reasons. To assess the impact of this proposal, a new data snapshot from the Homelessness Research Institute at the Alliance looks at how many people would be added to the homelessness population if the proposal were adopted. The data snapshot shows that expanding the definition would increase the current homeless population (744,313 on any given night) by 3.8 million. The amount that would have to be appropriated so that the amount of funding per homeless or doubled up person matched the actual amount of funding per homeless person in 2005 is $7.725 billion.

A Research Agenda for Ending Homelessness
This Research Agenda was developed in order to better inform government agencies, philanthropic organizations, and other funders about research questions that will help move policy and practice forward. The agenda aims to prioritize key questions by guiding funders and their research collaborators during the identification, conceptualization, and development of new research. The agenda does not represent an exhaustive list of unanswered questions. Instead, it focuses on priority research questions immediately relevant to policy and program development.

Homelessness Counts
How community approaches to homelessness are changing dramatically, what we should be doing to track progress, and how many people are homeless in your community. A movement to end homelessness is underway. How will we know if these efforts are successful? This report lays the groundwork for measuring efforts to end homelessness by establishing a baseline number of homeless people from which to monitor trends in homelessness. We use local point-in-time counts of homeless people to create an estimate of the number of homeless people nationwide.

A New Vision: What is in Community Plans to End Homelessness?
A New Vision: What is in Community Plans to End Homelessness? examines the content of Ten Year Plans to End Homelessness from across the country. This study reveals that 90 communities have completed plans that dramatically transform their homeless assistance systems. The study also shows that communities must set clear numeric goals, timetables, and identify funding and implementing bodies to ensure they move from planning to action. In each of the plans, communities outline a wide range of strategies, including: creating data systems; preventing homelessness — both emergency prevention and prevention at the systems level; outreach to homeless people to get them back into housing; shortening the time that people spend homeless by using rapid re-housing strategies; creating permanent housing options for homeless people; and, once homeless people become housed, linking them to services and to programs that will help them boost their income and increase their ability to afford housing in the future. The report then goes on to analyze the strength of the plans by calculating a score for each strategy based on the likelihood that it would be implemented.