And the Stimulus Money Goes To...

In version 2.0 of the Obama's economic stimulus package, $1.5 billion dollars were directed towards restoring and strengthening the safety net to curb the rise in homelessness since the start of the recession. This is an unprecedented amount of money that has the potential to change help a lot of people while changing the way we address homelessness in America.

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced the amount of funding each state will be receiving through this Homelessness Prevention Fund. Here are more specifics from the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH):

Homelessness Prevention Fund money will provide for a variety of assistance, including: rapid re-housing for families and others who have recently become or are becoming homeless, short-term or medium-term rental assistance, and supplemental services like credit counseling and help with utility payments.

For more information on how communities can best utilize the funding in the economic recovery package, visit the Alliance's Prevention and Re-Housing Resources guide.

Until yesterday's announcement, communities could only speculate the exact amount of homeless prevention dollars they would receive from the stimulus package. But now that the numbers are out, the real challenge begins: How to best spend the money.

So how does a city/state/region come together to curb a crisis while making use of the resources to makeover the system? This, my friends, is not an easy task. There's a lot at stake, including the lives of folks about to fall through the cracks.

Luckily, a wealth of resources are available to help cities develop a plan to combat rising homelessness while nudging homeless services towards a prevention/rapid-rehousing model (as opposed to a shelter-focused system). The NAEH has compiled a list of preliminary questions for administrators responsible for developing the plan for spending this money:

• What are the outcomes and how will they be tracked?
• How will the community identify the homeless or at risk people who will be served?
• Who can administer short or medium term rental assistance and other financial assistance?
• Who will provide housing location and stabilization services, including outreach to landlords?
• How will information be tracked in HMIS or another data system?

To me, this $1.5 billion dollar allocation holds a lot of potential. It can save a lot of people who are teetering on the edge, about to fall into our social service safety net. It can keep people in their homes and prevent the trauma of being uprooted and shuffled through the shelter system.

At the same time, it also has the ability to reform the way we address homelessness. To move us away from a system that waits for a person or family to be evicted before springing into action. To allow the funding flexibility to spend money where it's needed most: on prevention.

Is this too much to ask of $1.5 billion?