Our Work

Encampments

Direct to Housing Encampment Response is helping cities across the country resolve encampments, house people living outside, and decrease unsheltered homelessness.

Direct to Housing

Encampment Response

Cities are looking for relief and remedy from the crisis of unsheltered homelessness.

Direct to Housing Encampment Response allows communities to manage for public health and safety, while compassionately ending homelessness for the vast majority of people living outside. Created in Houston, TX during Covid-19 as an alternative to non-congregate shelter expansion, this is method a cost effective way for communities to reactivate public spaces and decrease unsheltered homelessness.

Core Information

Clients: Dallas, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Atlanta, Denver, Cleveland, Hartford
Dates: 2022 - Present

Strategy 1:

Direct to Housing

We streamline the path to housing with services for people living outside, rather than using costly and complicated temporary measures. When we have real offers of housing with services, more people say yes.

Strategy 2:

Bringing Services on Site

To expedite the rehousing process, we bring as many services onsite as possible. Street-based medical teams and addiction specialists, outreach workers, housing navigators and case managers all descend on an encampment and work daily to support clients, process housing paperwork and secure the documents needed to complete a move-in.

Strategy 3:

Closure Maintenance

We create new partnerships with city departments, management districts and property owners to ensure that no one continues to sleep outside at closed sites. Landscaping, barriers, re-activation, and patrols can be used in communities to enforce restrictions on camping, while the homelessness response system continues housing people site by site.

Strategy 4:

Public Private Partnership

Public resources for responding to homelessness are vital but come with many strings attached, which can slow down rehousing. Pairing public funds with private dollars that can be used on one-time expenses like application fees or move-in kits accelerates our impact.

Strategy 5:

Intensive Focus One Encampment at a Time

Using techniques from disaster response, the model creates a structure that strategically prioritizes locations, and project manages diverse teams focused on a single location and group of people for an extended period of time. This surge of focus and resources allows communities to house up to 50 or more people and close an encampment within 4-6 weeks.

Encampment Response Outcomes