The Heading Home Partnership to End Family Homelessness offers a promising approach to ending homelessness.  Leveraging significant public and private resources, this innovative collaboration provides local homeless families with opportunities to achieve self-sufficiency and long-term success.  Heading Home has secured the funding to serve 40 families in Greater Boston in 2009-2010, the first year of implementation.

To launch this near-unprecedented endeavor, Heading Home has partnered with the Executive Office of Massachusetts Community Colleges, COMPASS for kids, the Cambridge Housing Authority, the City of Boston’s Department of Neighborhood Development and the Boston Housing Authority, the University of Pennsylvania and the MIDAS Collaborative. The Boston Foundation, Highland Street Foundation, and select individuals have provided significant private funding to sustain the Heading Home Partnership to End Family Homelessness.

The Pressing Need

Families, most of them with young children, remain the fastest growing segment of the homeless population. Tragically, many parents in these families are working but have great difficulty affording high rents in Greater Boston. Homes for Families, a statewide advocacy organization, has estimated that a single parent earning minimum wage would have to work 114 hours a week to afford fair market rent for a two bedroom apartment in Boston. Even those making twice the minimum wage have great difficulty making ends meet when all essential expenses are considered, including rent, food, medical care, utilities, child care, and transportation.

The state-funded emergency system is designed to stabilize the immediate crisis of homelessness, and move families into housing within 6-12 months. As they exit the system, families are typically either still receiving public support or are headed by a parent working in a very low wage job with few or no benefits.  In addition, families face the “cliff effect,” which means they lose eligibility for public benefits when their employment income rises to a certain level, but long before they are able to afford to live without assistance. Astonishingly, research indicates that parents are losing all of their benefits at a wage of approximately $15 an hour, yet they would need to earn at least $28 per hour to come out of public assistance. The benefits that a parent who accepts employment (or is promoted) loses are critical to the family’s ability to sustain employment and housing, such as child care vouchers and food stamps. As a result, the cliff effect often offers a perverse incentive to remain on public benefits and to avoid the risk of pursuing employment.  Given that parents are taking care of young children, choosing to remain on public benefits in this situation is a rational choice, even for parents who value work highly.

Leveraging both public and private resources, the Heading Home Partnership to End Family Homelessness sets out to reverse the cliff effect, building upon the Commonwealth’s emergency-oriented response to homelessness by providing an intensely supported pathway to housing, higher education, and increased earnings through employment for homeless families.

The Heading Home Partnership consists of three phases covering a two-year period

• In the first stage, newly homeless families are placed in Heading Home scattered-site apartments with case management services using State (DHCD) funds. This first stage represents “usual care” in the current system. Childcare, transportation and other basic needs are addressed at this stage. Parents are also oriented to the opportunities and expectations of the program at this stage and referred to COMPASS for kids’ COMPASS for homeless families program, which provides direct services for homeless parents and children living in under-resourced shelters.

• In the second stage, parents in participant families are enrolled into supported job training in the Community College System. Parents are prepared for jobs that pay significantly higher, and offer competitive benefit packages, including Certified Nursing Assistants, Phlebotomy, and Customer Service. A mentoring program operated by COMPASS for kids is integrated into the curriculum so parents receive personalized attention. This program component goes beyond the technical training provided by the community college staff and addresses a range of life skills including financial literacy, professional behavior, and time management. At the same time, participants will receive some college credit (not all tracks) and exposure to higher education. All 40 of the program’s original participants who had enrolled in Roxbury Community College are set to graduate from this job and life skills certification program in April 2010, showing a 100% success rate through the second stage.

• Third, as parents reach certain milestones, e.g., obtaining a job and keeping it for six months, they will be provided with tangible rewards to reverse the incentives of the cliff effect. Tangible rewards include rental subsidies for permanent housing and asset development resources. Rather than losing resources as they progress towards goals, as occurs in the existing system, participants will have the opportunity to maintain or increase their income. As an example, when parents obtain a job, they will be awarded a full rental subsidy; when they have been employed for 6 months, they begin to pay a third of their income for rent.  However, this increase in expense is offset by the opportunity to begin building assets. The family may invest $25 a month in an interest earning account that will be matched dollar for dollar by the program. Additional deposits will be made for reaching important milestones. For example, keeping a job for a year will trigger a $500 bonus payment to the account. Each family may earn up to $3,000 annually in accumulated milestone awards. This is similar to a 401K, however, they will not be able access funds until they are “vested.” Becoming vested will be marked by reaching a particular threshold, such as being employed for 2 years, or reaching a certain level of earned income. Once vested, funds may be used for a number of restricted purposes, including purchasing a home, starting a small business, or investing in their own or their children’s higher education. Funds may also be used for other material items that may help a family better their situation, including computers and automobiles.

While the program is described in a linear manner for the sake of simplicity, it has not been implemented in a “one size fits all” manner; there is a fair amount of flexibility built in to meet the unique needs of each family, coordinated by Heading Home’s experienced and compassionate Case Management staff.  The asset development component of the Heading Home Partnership also offers significant flexibility to families.

We have also raised private funds for child care through the Heading Home Partnership to End Family Homelessness, as the threat of losing eligibility for child care vouchers often discourages parents from entering school or accepting employment or promotions. In this program, loss of a public subsidy will be planned for, and child care will be paid for as a reward for working and continuing education.

Expected Results

The Heading Home Partnership to End Family Homelessness will provide an unprecedented, integrated and comprehensive array of opportunities and services to homeless families which we expect to result in:

- Decreased length of stay in shelter and temporary situations
- Increased educational attainment
- Accelerated income through employment
- Increased savings through asset development

Be a Part of the Solution
Please contact Heading Home’s Chief Development Officer, Wendy Jacobs, at 617-864-8140 x101 or wjacobs@headinghomeinc.org if you would like to invest in The Heading Home Partnership to End Family Homelessness.