Abstract
While the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has successfully reduced chronic homelessness among individual and homelessness among veterans (NAEH, 2012), family homelessness continues to increase and has reached crisis proportions. With family shelters filled to capacity (2,107 families) for many years, the number of homeless families placed in motels has ballooned (1,641 in June 2011). Shelters and motels are extremely costly for the state, and disruptive to families. Furthermore, because of the decline in long-term housing assistance (i.e. Section 8 or MVRP), families are waiting in shelter for an affordable housing solution that does not exist. To address the rise in family homelessness, the Commonwealth launched a pilot short-term rental assistance program in 2009, using a combination of funds from Massachusetts’ Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) and the federal Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP). This pilot program provided up to two years of housing assistance as well stabilization services designed to help families to connect with community resources to build and to establish self sufficiency.
Families in this program pay 25-35% of their income towards rent, and they pay utilities. The program pays the remaining rent. In addition, stabilization staff visits or calls the families once a month. The Commonwealth designed this program to respond to different levels of needs presented by each family given limited resources.