Heading Home Phase 2 Pilot

Hamilton Families not only locates housing for families but also creates opportunities for families to stabilize and thrive. Family homelessness, for any amount of time, has long-term effects on individual and family stability. Our plan is to support families to move beyond homelessness toward long-term financial stability. To accomplish this, we ask for your investment of $250,000 to support our pilot program for long-term stability. The pilot program will be implemented within our innovative Heading Home initiative, which Hamilton Families successfully launched in 2016. Our data shows that most families in our program apply for needed extensions and that families moving to new communities need more in-depth support. In order to support the long-term stability of families, Hamilton Families is now piloting a three-year program, to include two years of rental subsidy with one year of completion support services for all participants starting in fiscal year 18-19. Our hypothesis is that the iterative development of a longer program with longer and deeper case management will improve long-term family outcomes.

By focusing on ending family homelessness, Hamilton Families not only locates housing for families but also creates opportunities for families to stabilize and thrive. The trauma caused by long term homelessness robs children of their full potential. Family homelessness, for any amount of time, has long term effects on individual and family stability. Data consistently shows the long term effects of trauma associated with homelessness on children’s physical health, mental health, academic success, development, and social and emotional wellbeing. By not addressing family homelessness, we enable the cycle of extreme poverty and homelessness to continue for generations to come. However, research also suggests that early intervention can minimize or even reverse the effects of trauma in children experiencing homelessness. Hamilton Families’ programs target a solutions-based methodology that support families in San Francisco and throughout the region to find stability. When successful, our programs will have helped hundreds of families reach their financial goals and maintain stable housing while supporting children academically and emotionally.

Vision

Ending Family Homelessness is Possible

Together we can end family homelessness. Our programs support families in crisis, allow for innovations in best practice and target the key policy challenges to truly solve the crisis of family homelessness in our community. Through effective intervention at scale and the expansion from a two to a three-year model, we aim to end homelessness for every family that we support – for good.

Hamilton Families

Model and Strategy

Impact

Leadership

Tomiquia Moss

Margi English