I was struck recently by the news that there appears to be one issue for which there is a growing consensus between the Obama administration and members of Congress: the need for improvements to the nation’s mental health system. This push comes in the wake of the Newtown tragedy, but is nevertheless long overdue. While the details are still to be worked out, reforms could potentially mean increased Medicaid dollars for mental health care and better access to mental health services at the community level, bringing these services closer to where people live. Far too often, inadequate access to community-based treatment and support results in homelessness, incarceration, or the needless institutionalization of people with mental illness in hospitals, nursing homes, or board and care facilities.

Three of the Melville Trust’s national grantees are on the forefront of efforts to ensure that people with serious mental illness or other disabilities have the opportunity to live in safe, decent housing where they can access the supports they need to live independently: the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH), the Technical Assistance Collaborative (TAC), and the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. While each comes to the issue of supportive housing in different ways, they all share a commitment to the basic principles of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1999 Olmstead decision, which affirmed the right of individuals with disabilities to live independently in the community. These principles are:

• Choice: ensuring that people have the right to choose where and with whom they live as well as whether to engage in support services;
• Access: expanding access to quality supportive housing options, and ensuring its availability;
• Opportunity: ensuring that people with disabilities live in housing that is integrated within mainstream society and offers privacy, autonomy, and the opportunity to interact with a variety of people.

While their overall goals are the same, each of the three organizations approaches supportive housing with a different skill set and area of emphasis. CSH brings expertise in the complexities of supportive housing that serves people most at risk of repeated or long-term homelessness. They provide critical technical and financial support to nonprofit housing developers, service providers, and government agencies. TAC brings expertise in state mental health systems reform and advocates for the use of Medicaid and Section 8 resources to create supportive housing set-aside units within privately-owned housing. Bazelon is a legal advocate, partnering with the U.S. Department of Justice and others to file actions supporting the civil rights of people with mental disabilities and negotiating legal settlements to expand scattered site supportive housing options.

These different approaches can provoke debate in the field over which interventions are most effective and fair for the most vulnerable populations. While CSH leans toward the development of new supportive housing, TAC advances unit set-asides and Bazelon promotes scattered site units. The fact is, all three types of housing are needed. Housing markets and housing quality vary from place to place, as does the availability and accessibility of quality services. An approach that works in one community may be next to impossible to implement in another. Additionally, people’s housing preferences vary. Many prefer an integrated community environment, while others may choose to live with people who share their experience.

What is important in any approach is a fundamental commitment to ensuring that people have a voice in where they live, and access to community-based services and housing that embrace choice, access and opportunity. By keeping their eyes on these principles, CSH, TAC and Bazelon are working collectively to significantly expand the range and diversity of supportive housing options, creating greater choice and flexibility for people with disabilities and for the communities where they live.

“In many respects our housing system is outdated, and not equipped to keep pace with today’s demands and the challenges of the imminent future,” declares the Bipartisan Housing Policy Commission report that was released on February 25. The Commission’s recommendations address the need for more sustainable approaches to homeownership, a reformed system of housing finance, a more comprehensive focus on meeting the housing needs of seniors that responds to their desire to age in place, and a more targeted approach to providing rental assistance that directs scarce resources to the lowest-income renters while insisting on a high level of performance by housing providers.

The Commission’s recommendations are music to the ears to those working to end homelessness. Their recommendations to increase capacity for the production of affordable units, and to target rental assistance for the most vulnerable, are particularly relevant.

Yes, it’s music to our ears…and it’s a familiar song. What does the Commission propose that might actually change the game this time?

• Because federal housing assistance programs currently meet the needs of only one in four of the renter households eligible to receive it, and scarce rental subsidies are often allocated by lottery or long wait lists rather than by level of need, the Commission recommends that over time, households with extremely low incomes (at or below 30%t of area median income) are assured access to housing assistance.
• Because the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program is the bedrock of production of affordable units, the Commission recommends increasing production by expanding LIHTC by 50% over current funding levels.
• Because of the successes of HPRP’s Rapid Re-Housing Demonstration, the Commission recommends federal funding to minimize harmful housing instability by providing short-term emergency assistance for low income renters who suffer temporary setbacks. This could be used for payment of security deposits, back rent and other housing-related costs to improve residential instability and prevent homelessness.
• Because some rental housing operators are far better than others at ensuring that affordable housing becomes a platform for increasing resident self-sufficiency and well-being, the Commission recommends that existing rental assistance programs be reformed to improve owner accountability and positive outcomes for participating households.

Moving this agenda forward will require compelling ideas, great leadership, vigorous advocacy, and highly competent implementation. Fully implemented, these recommendations will help meet the needs of an additional five million vulnerable renter households and contribute to the elimination of homelessness – through production, prevention, and rental assistance.

Among the Commission members are two professional colleagues whose leadership and expertise we especially wish to acknowledge: Barry Zigas, Director of Housing Policy, National Consumer Federation of America, and Nan Roman, President and CEO, National Alliance to End Homelessness (a Melville Trust grantee). We also want to acknowledge that the Commission report calls out innovative concepts developed by Trust grantees:

• A Renters Tax Credit – developed by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
• Expanding support for rental housing programs for low-income populations through financing fees mandated in the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 and through revenue generated from changes in homeownership tax subsidies – both recommendations of the National Low Income Housing Coalition

The Commission Report is not light reading, but it is essential for those committed to ending homelessness.

Which recommendations are most critical to your work in ending homelessness?  Which recommendations have the best chance of being implemented quickly?  We also invite your comments on Twitter @MelvilleTrust.

The Melville Charitable Trust began its work on homelessness in 1990 with two simple thoughts: first, the persistence of homelessness in the wealthiest democracy in the world was scandalous; and second, it was a solvable problem.

Two decades later, we have seen the difference that investments in proven, lasting, and cost-effective solutions have made and are more convinced than ever that the problem of homelessness can be solved. Moreover, these solutions go beyond providing emergency, palliative responses to improving people’s lives. Here are some of the things we’ve learned:

Decent, safe, accessible, and affordable housing is indispensable to solving the problem of homelessness. This may seem obvious, but permanent housing is often overlooked in favor of expanding emergency shelters, transitional living programs, or homeless service centers – services designed to respond to the needs of people in a housing crisis. While the term “housing crisis” implies a single precipitating event that results in housing loss, for most people a shelter is one stop in a much longer experience of housing instability. This may include stays with relatives or friends and frequent moves. Because housing loss is so intertwined with issues of income, health, safety, and social and family dynamics, the longer-term solution is not as simple as providing someone who is homeless with a place to sleep or an apartment referral.

Today there is increasing agreement that a stable housing situation is the first necessary element in addressing these other issues. By reframing homeless assistance as housing assistance, we organize our attention and resources around solutions and not the crisis. Under such an approach, shelters would continue to serve their essential function of providing safety and immediate comfort but would be seen as a temporary solution while work is done to get the individual or family into stable housing as quickly as possible and to help them stay housed.

Providing housing with support services is the smart, humane, and cost-effective solution to long-term homelessness. It is critical that individuals and families be connected to the supports they need and want in order to remain housed, stay healthy, and care for their children. This means matching services to individuals’ needs – no one size fits all – and targeting the most vulnerable for the highest-intensity and -cost support, enabling them to move from shelters, the streets, foster care, jail, or hospitals directly into permanent supportive housing (PSH). PSH is an evidence-based practice that effectively reduces recidivism through crisis systems and restores health and stability to people written off as being too difficult to serve. The Corporation for Supportive Housing’s Web site highlights findings about the effectiveness of the supportive housing model.

The public sector must lead the way through significant investments in housing and service programs that result in individual and family independence. Ongoing, sustained government funding is essential to long-term housing affordability and the provision of effective support services. Philanthropy can leverage these funds through its own investments in local capital projects and by supporting education and advocacy efforts that underscore the critical importance of government investment in housing stability and wellness.

Investing in Housing Solutions

Developing housing and services is a complicated and expensive process involving many players and interests. How can funders best invest in solutions? The answer depends on the community – all housing is fundamentally local- but here are some ways that funders have been effective:

Leveraging public and private funds. Philanthropy can provide the upfront risk funds needed to get housing projects started or to get people into housing quickly. They can provide program-related investments (PRIs) or grants to fill financing gaps on strategically important housing development projects, or join nonprofit loan pools that provide short-term loans to housing organizations to finance the early stages of a project (e.g., siting surveys, architectural and engineering designs, appraisals, and environmental assessments). Home Funders in Massachusetts is a great example of a collaborative in which private funders combine their resources to develop affordable housing for low-income families.

Many states and municipalities also have financial assistance pools attached to homelessness prevention or rapid-re-housing programs that provide small emergency loans or grants to families to address short-term problems such as lack of a security deposit, utility bills in arrears, or moving costs. The National Alliance to End Homelessness provides links to resources about prevention and rapid re-housing programs.

Convening groups and incentivizing partnerships. Funders have the power to convene disparate groups to discuss critical issues and brainstorm new ideas and approaches to affordable housing and homelessness services. Based on those discussions, funders may decide to fund partnerships between organizations willing to pilot new initiatives or work together in new ways. The Melville Charitable Trust supports and participates in the Opening Doors – Connecticut initiative, a broad-based coalition of state and community stakeholders working together to end homelessness in the Nutmeg state.

Setting targets. Philanthropy can support the development of community housing needs assessments, targets, and strategies for expanding housing options. Some of the greatest successes in addressing homelessness have occurred in communities that clearly identified and targeted a priority population for assistance (e.g., people living on the streets) and worked tenaciously to make sure every member of that population was housed. The 100,000 Homes campaign provides a model for this type of focused, sustained effort.

Funding advocacy. The Melville Charitable Trust has funded long-term investments in education and advocacy around many issues critical to housing stability, including rental subsidies and the availability of low-cost capital. We invest at both the state (Connecticut) and national levels through organizations such as the Partnership for Strong Communities, the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the National Low Income Housing Coalition, and the Corporation for Supportive Housing.

We believe our society has more than adequate economic capacity to invest in the housing and provide the services needed to eliminate homelessness. Philanthropy plays an important role in helping to foster the public and political will required to scale up what works. The Melville Charitable Trust is a founding member of Funders Together to End Homelessness – a national network of funders supporting strategic, innovative, and effective solutions to homelessness. We invite you to learn more and network with other like-minded funders engaged in this critical effort.

Through real estate investments and program development, the Melville Trust has taken a unique hands-on approach to community development in the Frog Hollow neighborhood of Hartford, Connecticut, a community that has long suffered from lack of opportunity and disinvestment. Our first purchase in 2003 was the Lyceum, a historic building that serves as a base for conferences, educational programs, and the exchange of ideas aimed at creating stronger communities. The Partnership for Strong Communities, a Connecticut-based nonprofit housing advocacy group founded by the Trust works from and manages the Lyceum. Subsequent Trust neighborhood investments have resulted in over 100 renovated units of affordable and mixed-income housing, the startup of nonprofit Billings Forge Community Works and the creation of the fine dining restaurant Firebox.

This October, we completed the revitalization of a neighboring property of the Lyceum on Lawrence Street, now the new headquarters for the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness. A grantee partner of the Trust, CCEH’s work amplifies the voice of those most affected by homelessness and mobilizes communities to shift resources from crisis response to permanent solutions. We couldn’t ask for tenants more aligned with our mission to prevent and end homelessness.

The house at 257 Lawrence Street was built in 1880 as a grand single family home in the Italianate style. It had fallen upon hard times when the Trust purchased it as part of its larger neighborhood revitalization strategy. The once stately house had been subdivided into several efficiency apartments that suffered from increasingly deteriorating and ultimately unsafe conditions. Our partners at Mutual Housing Association of Greater Hartford worked closely with the residents to find them better quality, affordable apartments in the area.

The Trust then had to consider what the best use of the building would be for the neighborhood. We asked James Vance and Associates, the architects who had renovated the Lyceum, to design both residential and office use scenarios. These were market-tested in consultation with the area Neighborhood Revitalization Zone (NRZ) Committee and other community partners. Ultimately we agreed that creating some diversity of use in the neighborhood would be a beneficial outcome. The Trust was then on the lookout for a nonprofit tenant that would ideally be able to connect with their neighbors, the Partnership for Strong Communities and Billings Forge Community Works. When CCEH mentioned they were looking for new space, it was perfect timing!

Chapel Construction of New Haven began the renovation last fall. Gutting a 140-year old home was certainly an adventure! Oh, the stories those walls could tell! We’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with great partners on this project and the end result is a beautiful addition to a historic streetscape that aims to bolster economic and community activity.

We extend a special thanks to Jim Vance of JVA; Louis Stone, Steve Steinberg and Pete Nickerson of Chapel Construction; Charles Hoag of Organizational Options; Warren Gonyea, Damaris Verdejo and the team at Winn Residential; Cary Wheaton of Billings Forge Community Works; Catherine MacKinnon of Mutual Housing Association of Greater Hartford; and Howard Rifkin and Mike Hanley of the Partnership for Strong Communities for their contributions to this project. We also want to make a very special acknowledgement to the memory of Bob Hohler, the late Executive Director of the Melville Charitable Trust, whose inspired vision for a revitalized Frog Hollow continues to be realized day by day.

A compelling memo sent in 1989 by board member John Gibb set the course of the Melville Trust’s mission and work:

“While I am sure there have been homeless down through time, it seems to me this area has grown for various reasons and seems much more critical today. . .I am hoping for solutions that would remove these individuals from their current hopeless position to a more satisfying and rewarding way of life.”

For over twenty years the Trust has focused exclusively on this vexing social issue, working with a complex and interrelated network of grantee partners and funder collaborators across disciplines to reduce and ultimately end homelessness. It is a privilege and honor to have been chosen as Executive Director of this remarkable foundation as it enters its next phase.

For any organization, the arrival of a new director is a good time to take a few steps back to evaluate and plan for the future. In the coming months, the Trust will be doing just that – examining how we can make an even deeper impact in ending homelessness, both at the national level and within Connecticut.

This type of active analysis and planning must also respond to a changing environment. My conversations and experiences during these first weeks on the job have only emphasized that these are transformative times for our field. New opportunities have arisen to meet the needs of vulnerable families and individuals. Federal initiatives such as the Affordable Care Act, the HEARTH Act, and the Frank Melville Supportive Housing Act are creating the need for collaboration and creative thinking. New state investments in housing in Connecticut will offer unique leverage opportunities. These changes bring high expectations for nonprofits to meet new outcomes and do work differently – within the context of a tough economic climate. Like the nonprofits we support, the Trust itself may be called upon to transform, changing some of the ways we deploy and prioritize our resources.

For all of us looking to do our work in new ways, it is important to continue to be guided by core beliefs. In his writings, my predecessor, friend, and mentor, Bob Hohler, set forth many of the Trust’s core values. Joe Breiteneicher, Bob’s colleague and long-time advisor to the Trust, always articulated an inspiring vision forward.  The principles developed by these two extraordinary men will continue to be central to our work:

• Be strategic and focus on what really matters. Keep our mission front and center. Spend our resources with an eye for strategic opportunity and meaningful progress. Proactively seek opportunities to make a difference, and be willing to explore, experiment, and take risks.
• Don’t assume – learn. Understand issues through the lens of those engaged in trying to make change. The practical experiences of practitioners and activists, as well as what we learn from research, should inform our critical thinking and strategy making.
• Invest in leaders. No matter how compelling a new idea or project is, it is essential to have a leader with vision, passion for social change, and an effective implementation plan and team. Leadership development and capacity building remain a key Trust strategy.
• Communicate clearly. Make the process for applying for support as transparent as possible, and communicate our activities and grantmaking simply, directly, and widely. We hope that our new blog and our Twitter account @MelvilleTrust will provide more engagement and discussion opportunities for grantseekers and the public.
• Be nimble. Use the range of tools at our disposal to increase our impact. This includes grant making, program-related investments, convenings and social media. We commit to lending our voice and ideas to stimulate thinking, push for change, and link our allies toward a common purpose.

As we both look back and plan for the future over the coming months, the Trust will continue to be, as Joe so aptly put it, “actively opportunistic.” We will continue to seek out gaps in key areas and policies where we can most effectively leverage our investments. After all, there is much work to be done that can’t wait. In the meantime, we welcome you to our new website and invite your input into our ongoing learning process. The Trust’s history demonstrates that working together to develop solutions to homelessness is the only way forward.