We identified seven challenges to the successful implementation of tenancy support demonstration projects: resolving the housing supply and NIMBY, removing silos between health care and homeless services providers, enrolling and retaining the target populations in Medicaid, contracting with and paying tenancy support providers, recruiting and retaining key workers, ensuring Medicaid’s waiver durability, and reducing administrative crowd-out and waiver burden.

Thousands of people across the country suffer from homelessness. Instead of funding more shelters or dealing with the lack of subsidized housing, cities have chosen to rely on the criminal justice system to regulate homeless behavior. Homeless individuals are being punished with fines and potential jail time for sleeping, sitting, gathering, and camping in public. Not only does this practice contribute to the homelessness crisis in the United States, but it also creates an additional obstacle for homeless individuals. Additionally, relying on the criminal justice system is more costly than helping homeless individuals find a permanent shelter. The Ninth Circuit recently decided that ordinances prohibiting sleeping or camping in public when there is no other shelter option is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. On its face, this decision looks beneficial to those who were once punished for sleeping in public. However, in reality, the effects are not as beneficial as one may think. The Ninth Circuit did not repeal the ordinances altogether. By specifying that these ordinances were only unconstitutional when there are no other shelter options, the Ninth Circuit still condoned their enforcement. Extremely narrow rulings, like the one above, do not stop cities from relying on the criminal justice system when it comes to regulating homeless behavior. Continued enforcement of such ordinances, no matter what the restrictions, punishes people for conducting life-sustaining behaviors. This practice is unconstitutional, as it violates the rights granted under the Eighth Amendment.

While the past 40 years has ushered in a period of improved urban real estate development and values, it has also been a time of decreased housing affordability and increased homelessness. The Agenda for Building a Changing World Responsibly needs to include improved housing assistance and affordability policies. This article outlines an agenda for housing assistance and affordability policies at both the federal and local urban jurisdiction levels. Their implementation will collectively help build a changing world responsibly.

Housing instability impacts the welfare of individuals and families by disrupting public education, increasing food insecurity, and making the lives of low-income people more stressful, more perilous, and less fulfilling in general. Eviction law reform can play a part in reducing housing instability and subsequent harms that we see in the United States. 2Link to the text of the noteAlthough eviction law reform alone cannot solve the shortage of affordable housing in many U.S. housing markets, it may reduce the rate of eviction and thus allow more low-income households to stay in their homes. 3Link to the text of the noteSpurred on by academic scholarship regarding an eviction crisis, a very visible homelessness crisis in high-housing-cost areas, and perhaps most of all the COVID pandemic, a number of states and localities have enacted eviction legal reforms. 4Link to the text of the noteThis article reviews some of these reforms and argues that the most promising reform involves early intervention by counselors and mediators before an eviction action is even filed. Philadelphia provides a model of this approach for other jurisdictions.