Policy Recommendations: State and Local

Housing*

• Create state and local housing trust funds to complement the National Housing Trust Fund.
• Use National Housing Trust Fund, Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTCs), and HOME dollars to produce new units of affordable housing dedicated to homeless families and those most at-risk of homelessness.
• Focus on minimizing shelter stays and quickly moving families into housing.
• Place families directly into permanent housing rather than into motels. In addition to being a safer and more stable option, it is less expensive to pay a family’s rent than to pay for their stay in a substandard motel.
• Pay for stabilization services for families exiting the shelter system, helping them remain stably housed.
• Expand state efforts to provide short-term financial assistance to at-risk households including help with back rent and utility payments, security deposits, or first month’s rent to obtain new housing for people about to be displaced, and payments or loans to households facing foreclosure.
• Create or expand state efforts to prevent the eviction of families through landlord-tenant mediation and legal services.

Income

• Ensure that states use TANF dollars to provide housing assistance for homeless families along with child care and other work supports that keep parents employed.
• Waive TANF time limits if a family is homeless at the end of their five year limit or becomes homeless in the future and needs support to regain housing and stability.
• Permit all TANF recipients to pursue educational opportunities that offer the potential to increase their future income and decrease the likelihood that they will need public assistance.
• Ensure that families who are homeless are given priority in the distribution of child care vouchers through the Child Care and Development Fund.
• Adopt fully refundable state Earned Income Tax Credits, funded with TANF dollars, to help families become more financially secure.
• Enroll families into federal entitlement programs such as Medicaid, SNAP, and WIC rather than paying for costly emergency services (e.g., emergency room visits).

Family Preservation

• Require state child welfare agencies to invest in homelessness prevention – an upfront cost that will improve outcomes and save money over time.
• Prevent children’s placement into foster care due solely to homelessness or unstable housing by providing families with intensive wrap-around services (e.g., income supports, job training, health care, trauma-specific services, supports for parenting, and programs for children).

Health Care

• Increase the number of children who are insured by enrolling eligible children in Medicaid or SCHIP.
• Improve access to primary, dental, and mental health care by incentivizing collaborations between agencies that serve homeless families and the health care community.
• Provide policy leadership from the Governors’ offices and funding incentives to de-emphasize categorical or diagnosis-driven service delivery and to invest in holistic services and supports for homeless families and children.
• Provide all homeless family members with deemed eligibility and priority access to state-funded mental health services.
• Ensure that families involved with the child welfare system are given priority access to mental health and substance abuse services that are funded and/or provided by state agencies.
• Ensure that all providers serving homeless children and families have demonstrable competencies in trauma-informed and trauma-specific program models. This should become a responsibility of state mental health authorities.
• Encourage state mental health, substance abuse, and child welfare authorities to incentivize partnerships among clinical service providers and schools, health centers, and shelters in order to improve access.
• Recognize complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as an omnipresent issue among homeless children and families and one that requires a “universal precautions” approach to individual or systems level interventions.
• Encourage state commissioners of agencies serving homeless families to partner with entities such as the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. This strategy will assist providers in moving towards “trauma-informed” service delivery.

Hunger

• Increase participation in federal nutrition programs (National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, Summer Food Service Program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) by creating efficient organizational processes and conducting intensive outreach campaigns.
• Increase access to healthy foods in school and community settings (e.g., support increased fruits and vegetables in school and summer meals, community gardens, and healthy food choices at grocery stores).

Education

• Ensure that school personnel are aware of the ways that trauma impedes learning and develop policies and programs that mitigate this reality for homeless children. State Departments of Education should take leadership in these efforts.
• Strengthen efforts to identify and support students experiencing homelessness.
• Provide training and education to school districts to ensure compliance with the educational provisions of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.

Planning, Research and Data Collection

• Include representatives from key agencies serving homeless children, youth, and families on all state interagency councils on homelessness.
• Include appropriate strategies to end homelessness for children and families in all state and local ten-year plans to end homelessness.
• Require that all state programs collect data on the housing status of participants.
• Make family homelessness a priority of the state interagency councils on homelessness and other planning efforts related to homelessness and poverty.