While homelessness rose in most U.S. regions, Hennepin County invested heavily in programs to end chronic homelessness and get people into temporary and supportive housing faster.
Writing in Bloomberg CityLab, Sarah Holder explains how Hennepin County, Minnesota, home to Minneapolis, reduced its unhoused population by 80 percent between 2017 and 2022. The county is “something of a national outlier:” in 2023, homelessness nationwide grew by 12 percent.
As Holder explains, the county’s success came “via a combination of funding, deep community engagement and a housing-first approach that’s matched with real housing resources, local officials say.” The county used the Built for Zero framework created by the nonprofit Community Solutions to develop its policy strategy, which includes starting with a focus on the most vulnerable, chronically homeless residents. “For Hennepin County, the hope is that this single-minded focus on housing the 12% of the total homeless population who have been homeless for the longest will ultimately translate into broader progress on a problem confounding so many US cities.”
The article details Hennepin County’s approach, which includes a ‘Rapid Re-Housing’ model, zoning reform, and significant investment in affordable housing and rental assistance programs, as well as building out its temporary shelter system to protect unhoused people during Minnesota’s harsh winters.
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