Transformation Efforts
Crisis Housing Transformation Efforts
As we imagine a new way to offer immediate crisis housing options, we must push for true transformation. Most of these ideas have never been attempted or have not been fully implemented by the homelessness response system.
Transformation Efforts Needed for Crisis Housing Rooted in Justice
Direct cash transfer to young people experiencing homelessness, coupled with optional housing navigation assistance, with no conditions, to meet their emergency housing needs as they choose. There is currently a pilot project offering direct cash assistance through the University of Chicago’s Chapin Hall in partnership with Point Source Youth.
Immediate access to an emergency housing voucher for any youth that needs emergency housing without eligibility restrictions or prioritization factors, and at a value that can be utilized on the private market for hotel/motel, temporary apartments, or with friends/family. This would also include a change to laws and regulations that allow for youth under the age of 18 to consent to their own crisis housing without parental permission.
A robust and coordinated youth and family prevention system that pulls in resources from a transformed housing, child welfare, legal, and economic justice system to ensure that any youth and their family (birth and chosen) has a single point of access to the economic resources and supportive services needed to reunify or remain together in order to avoid the need for crisis housing. The system must respond to the needs of LGBTQ youth and their families to navigate family rejection and conflict and it must be able to serve youth and their families as they present in order to end family separation in families experiencing homelessness with older teenagers. The system must also move across borders of cities and counties to ensure the entire regions in which people live and move have equal access to the prevention resources needed.