Building Collaborative Relationships to Address Family Homelessness

WCSAP has compiled a collection of information and resources to help sexual assault advocates provide effective housing advocacy and support. This information will be most useful to newer advocates or advocates that have had limited experience providing housing support.

This presentation debunks some myths about the DV provider system, encourages collaboration between the homeless/housing system and DV systems, and suggests a path forward on the issue of data-sharing.

Homeless services providers frequently find themselves serving DV survivors in their rapid re-housing housing programs. This presentation looks at the three Core Components of Rapid Re-Housing and suggests adaptations based on the unique needs of survivors in order to boost effectiveness of these interventions.

Survivors are at heightened risk for homelessness and housing insecurity, due to factors including discrimination, loss of employment, economic abuse leading to poor credit history, and survivor’s need to be in a home that is secure from their abuser. This guide recommends best practices for local leaders to promote fair housing for DV survivors in their communities. Survivors are at heightened risk for homelessness and housing insecurity, due to factors including discrimination, loss of employment, economic abuse leading to poor credit history, and survivor’s need to be in a home that is secure from their abuser. This guide recommends best practices for local leaders to promote fair housing for DV survivors in their communities.This guide is written for municipal, county, and state leaders who influence the policies of their communities with respect to housing, emergency shelter, policing, and social services. Advocates can also use this guide to strengthen how their community addresses the housing needs of survivors.

Despite similarities in the population served, the DV and homeless service systems are generally not integrated, operate in silos, and are not connected to mainstream services in most communities. While there are well-established links in the literature on DV and homelessness, integration of the two systems in policy and practice is still emerging. This toolkit was created to address the gap between DV and homeless service systems. By laying the groundwork to understand the intersection between DV and homelessness, this toolkit offers practical strategies that providers can follow to improve service integration.

 The presentation includes: the intersection of homelessness and domestic violence and the need for creative advocacy; how to craft a housing advocacy plan for your community; where federal and state housing policy “sits” at the local level and how to influence its implementation; and strategies for choosing partners in your plan to advocate for meaningful solutions.

People of color are dramatically more likely than White people to experience homelessness in the United States. In September 2016, the Center for Social Innovation launched SPARC (Supporting Partnerships for Anti-Racist Communities) to understand and respond to racial inequities in homelessness. This report presents phase one finding from an ambitious mixed-methods (quantitative and qualitative) study documenting high rates of homeless among people of color and beginning to map their pathways into and barriers to exit from homelessness.

For over 50 years, survivors’ voices and realities have shaped responses to domestic and sexual violence. From emergency shelter to sheltering solutions beyond imminent threats of harm, housing has always been a critical part of conversations connected to survivor safety and well-being.

Despite advocacy from survivors and the gender-based violence movement, domestic violence continues to be one of the key contributing factors to homelessness. Additionally, the reality remains that the voices and understanding the specific needs of survivors most impacted--such as Black immigrant, LGBTQ+, and survivors with disabilities--continues to exist as an afterthought in conversations regarding actions and solutions geared towards addressing survivor homelessness and housing insecurity.

This webinar discusses best practices to engaging and retaining private landlords, including in tight rental markets. Attendees will learn to identify common fair housing violations, approaches to supporting families and working with landlords.

The 2013 reauthorization of VAWA gives legal aid providers, domestic violence and sexual assault victim advocates, and housing providers subject to the law the opportunity to advance a collaborative approach to VAWA implementation. Through additional policies, the collaborative approach can build upon VAWA's statutory framework and enhance survivor safety. Such an approach will ultimately improve the safety and security for survivors, improve housing provider practices as they relate to survivors of violence, improve communications between advocates and housing providers, and overall improve safety at properties.

This presentation explores innovative approaches that victim services organizations can use to engage and build relationships with their local Public Housing Authorities (PHAs).

This presentation discusses strategies for engaging Landlords through a rental assistance program, demonstrates how to encourage participants to establish working relationships with their landlords, and provides a basic overview of how domestic violence may impact the Tenant/Landlord relationship.

The National Resource Center on Domestic Violence (NRCDV) partnered with Jewish Women International (JWI) to convene listening sessions and interviews with respected faith leaders from many traditions on July 21st, 22nd, 29th and September 2nd, 2020. As part of NRCDV’s larger goal to increase understanding and collaboration between faith-based organizations and efforts to enhance survivors’ access to safe housing options, these listening sessions and interviews aimed to enhance our awareness of the role faith leaders and communities play or could play at the intersection of faith, spirituality, religion and gender-based violence response and prevention, with a particular emphasis upon increasing safe housing options for survivors.

This promising practice resource focuses on the way Head Start and Early Head Start grantees are effectively using partnerships to serve homeless children and how other service providers can build relationships with their local Head Start and Early Head Start programs. Evidence from partnerships around the country has shown that these reciprocal relationships help foster an environment of healthy development for young children experiencing homelessness and help move families out of homelessness.

This presentation discusses Home Free's addition of employment access services to its Housing First program, provides suggestions for programs wanting to move in this direction and emphasizes the importance of partnerships to better ensure that survivors receive assistance with this important service.

This report discusses the Washington Families Fund efforts to work with education systems to provide stable housing for families, so children can learn and thrive in school.

In May of 2009, the National Center and NCAVP partnered to produce two related questionnaires surveying community-based organizations and victim assistance providers, including criminal and civil justice agencies, regarding their work with LGBTQii victims and survivors of violence. This survey is the first of its kind and sheds light on the important barriers faced by mainstream and LGBTQ service providers to adequately address the needs of LGBTQ victims of violence. This report makes recommendations and ultimately proposes collaboration between mainstream victim assistance agencies and LGBTQ-specific anti-violence programs to increase the efficacy and equity of services provided to LGBTQ victims of crime, particularly hate violence and intimate partner violence.