United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) along with the Secretary’s U.S. Departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Labor (DOL), Health and Human Services (HHS), and Veterans Affairs (VA) have unveiled a new plan to prevent and end homelessness. Domestic Policy Council Director Melody Barnes accepted the plan on behalf of President Barack Obama. The full report, titled Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness.
Highlights include:
- Increasing leadership, collaboration, and civic engagement, by a focus on providing and promoting collaborative leadership at all levels of government and across all sectors and strengthening the capacity of public and private organizations by increasing knowledge about collaboration and successful interventions to prevent and end homelessness.
- Increase access to stable and affordable housing, by providing affordable housing and permanent supportive housing.
- Increase economic security, expand meaningful and sustainable employment and improve access to mainstream programs and services to reduce financial vulnerability to homelessness.
- Improve health and stability, by linking health care with homeless assistance programs and housing, advancing stability for youth aging out of systems such as foster care and juvenile justice, and improving discharge planning for people who have frequent contact with hospitals and criminal justice systems.
- Retool the homeless response system, by transforming homeless services to crisis response systems that prevent homelessness and rapidly return people who experience homelessness to stable housing.
