5.4 The Role of Permanent Supportive Housing in Ending Family Homelessness Speaker: Jacquelyn Anderson To remain stable, some families with disabling physical and behavioral health challenges need the services linked to housing provided by permanent supportive housing (PSH). With limited PSH capacity and increased family homelessness, communities have to be strategic in deciding PSH placements and designing appropriate service plans. This workshop will look at successful PSH programs for families and suggest targeting strategies under the overall goal of ending family homelessness.

1. Role of Supportive
Housing in Ending
Family Homelessness:
Summary of What We Know
from the Research
February 10, 2012

2. Family Supportive Housing:
What Is the Intervention?
 Affordable housing with deep
subsidies
 Care management
 Evidence-based service models
 Intended to be targeted to high-
need families

3. Characteristics of High-Need
Families in Supportive Housing
 Significant housing instability
 Mental health and substance abuse
issues
 Significant health problems
 Involvement with multiple systems

4. Overlap Between Child Welfare
Involvement and Homelessness
 24-26% foster care placements
among homeless children (34x
general US children)
 18% newly homeless children
Child Welfare Homelessness/ enter child welfare services in
Involvement Housing Crises 5 years
 48.7% of foster care children in
CA county had parents
experiencing housing crises

5. Common Characteristics and
Profile of Shared Population
“Chronic Neglect” Families Episodically Homeless Families
Small subset that fail to meet basic Small subset that experience
needs of children over time repeated episodes of homelessness
Extreme and persistent poverty Extreme and persistent poverty
Involved in multiple public services Involved in multiple public services
Caregiver history of foster care as Parental history of foster care as
child child
Caregiver has history of trauma, Parent has history of trauma,
childhood abuse, and interpersonal childhood abuse, and interpersonal
violence violence
Caregiver has complex behavioral Caregiver has complex behavioral
health problems (MH, SA) health problems (MH, SA)
Large families with many children Large families with many children

6. Keeping Families Together Pilot
 Targeted 29 families in NYC who were
homeless and child welfare involved
 Extensive substance use
 Complex trauma histories
 Significant child welfare histories
 Significant homeless histories

7. Supportive Housing: A Highly Promising
Solution
 Housing retention rates of
95% (Bassuk et. al., 2006)
 Improved connection to
primary and behavioral
health services (NCFH, 2009)
 Child reunification rates of 67
- 73% (NCFH, 2009)
 60% reduction in open child
welfare cases (Swann-Jackson
et. al., 2010)
 Improved child school
attendance (Swann-Jackson et.
al., 2010)

8. What We Still Need to Learn
 How to best target the highest need
families
 What configuration of services and
service models work best for which
populations
 How to best integrate/coordinate the
multiple systems that serve these high-
need families