Family Homelessness

We believe every family in our state can have a safe place to call home.

Here in Washington state, thousands of families with children worry about where they will sleep at night. It’s within our reach to reduce, and ultimately end, family homelessness.

Homelessness harms families in lasting ways.

Homeless children are at higher risk of mental and physical injury, foster care placement, and poor academic performance. Homeless parents are continually struggling to find and keep jobs, pursue education, and provide adequate care and attention for their families.

Families are the fastest growing segment of homeless people in the U.S.

Washington state is part of a national trend—on any given night, as many as 25,000 people in Washington are without a home, and nearly half are families with children. Despite hundreds of millions of dollars committed each year to this problem, the number of homeless families has not decreased. Today’s economy—from the uncertain real-estate market and mortgage crisis to stagnating incomes and increased cost of living—puts even more families at risk of homelessness.

We’re working to dramatically reduce the number of homeless families in Washington state.

We’re encouraging practices that make the most efficient use of existing resources; create incentives to attract new funding; and employ effective, proven strategies that have reduced family homelessness in other parts of the country.

Next: Our Approach

For nearly a decade, we’ve worked with an extensive public and private coalition to address the needs of homeless children and families in the Puget Sound region. Together, we're focusing on improved, longer-lasting solutions to end family homelessness.

We began this work in 2000 with the Sound Families Initiative.

The Sound Families Initiative transformed the lives of thousands of people, but family homelessness remains a pressing problem.

Evaluations show that more than two-thirds of the families served successfully left the Sound Families program for permanent housing. But one-quarter of the families were asked to leave the program early, and the overall number of homeless families in the Puget Sound region has not decreased. We are committed to finding better ways to prevent, and ultimately end, this community problem.

We're developing a new approach.

Using what we learned through Sound Families and lessons from communities across the country that are reducing homelessness among families with children, we’ve mapped a new investment strategy to help vulnerable families in Washington state. We are exploring five proven principles:

• Early intervention and prevention keeps families on the edge of homelessness in their homes and quickly connects them to the services they need.
• Coordinated access to services gives families a convenient and standard way to get the most helpful resources through local service providers.
• Rapid re-housing moves families into permanent housing—and out of shelters—as quickly as possible.
• Tailored programs provide individual families with the right services at the right time.
• Increased economic opportunity connects the recently homeless to education, training, and ultimately the long-term, family-wage jobs they need to maintain housing stability and achieve self-sufficiency.

Collecting and sharing data will allow our partners to be successful.

To achieve our goals, we must make dramatic improvements in collecting accurate family homelessness data. That data will lead to better decisions about allocating scarce community resources and, ultimately, result in improved outcomes for families. Accountability based on good data and hard evidence will also generate public will and sound policy choices.

We strongly believe that by working together, we can end family homelessness in Washington state.

Preventing and ending family homelessness will take the continued commitment of partners in government, nonprofits, and the private sector. It won’t be easy. But our communities will be stronger when we break the cycle of poverty and crisis that can lead to family homelessness across generations.