Strategies for Preventing and Ending Homelessness

A report from the Urban Institute outlines strategies for ending and preventing homelessness.

According to the report, “The single most effective way to end homelessness nationwide would be to fund a comprehensive affordable housing plan that would include a universal voucher program. This would both help more people exit homelessness and prevent more people from entering into homelessness.”

The report recommends that Congress and the Biden administration take a series of actions including the expansion of voucher programs, incentivizing communities to end the criminalization of homelessness and fund programs to reduce unsheltered homelessness, and increasing access to healthcare and other services. The authors also recommend focusing on eviction prevention mechanisms that keep people from falling into homelessness in the first place.

The authors note that, with the right approach, the crisis is solvable. “Reducing homelessness is a math equation: help people exit homelessness faster than they are entering.”