All In: The New Federal Stategic Plan

Earlier this month, the Biden-Harris administration released a federal plan for ending homelessness in America. All In: The Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness‘s goal is to reduce homelessness by 25% by 2025. FCEH and Florida’s CoCs are committed to working toward that strategic goal, which includes collaboration across sectors, systems, and jurisdictions and building on the success of Housing First, which has been instrumental in reducing homelessness across the State in the past 10 years. FCEH and the CoCs are also committed to including those with lived experience and increasing education and improving the systems of care by utilizing their knowledge.

The plan was developed by the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) with public input from more than 500 people with lived experience, as well as leaders, providers, advocates, housing developers, and other partners from 600 communities. The State’s Council On Homelessness was included in a listening session earlier this calendar year. We want to thank everyone that provided feedback regarding the plan.

The “Housing First” model of care treats housing as the immediate solution to homelessness, but not the only solution. Housing First is not housing only, many people need support to stay housed, and services are required to ensure long-term success. This model works because it treats people with dignity, personalizes their housing plan and service plan, and recognizes that—without housing—every other aspect of a person’s life suffers.

The plan sets a goal for the US Government to:

• Urgently address the basic needs of people in crisis;
• Expand the supply of and access to affordable housing and high-quality support;
• Build better systems to prevent people from losing their homes;
• Collaborate across sectors, systems, and jurisdictions;
• Rely on data and evidence of program performance
• Include people who have experienced homelessness in the policymaking process to dismantle systems that create disparities.

Today, USICH and the White House also announced a new initiative to help cities and states reduce unsheltered homelessness. The 19 federal agencies from USICH will work with select state and local governments to accelerate the implementation and effectiveness of strategies to get people off the streets and into homes.

“Housing should be treated as a human right,” said USICH Executive Director Jeff Olivet. “Many Americans ask, ‘Is it possible to end homelessness?’ The answer is, yes, the United States can end homelessness by fixing systems—not by blaming the people being failed by them. With All In, the Biden-Harris administration outlined a set of strategies and actions for doing just that. Now we must scale what works and develop new and creative solutions to build a future where no one experiences the tragedy and indignity of homelessness—and everyone has a safe, stable, accessible, and affordable home.”

USICH will host webinars in 2023—starting in January—to help partners and communities use All In to develop local and systems-levels plans to prevent and end homelessness, set state and local goals to reduce homelessness by 2025, hold the federal government accountable, and learn more about federal programs, strategies, and actions to prevent and end homelessness.  Keep your eyes open for these webinars.

We invite CoC member agencies to join FCEH’s bi-weekly peer-to-peer meetings to discuss the implementation of the plan, including any changes that are suggested by USICH and HUD in the future.