President, Social Marketing Services, Inc.
Affiliate Instructor, University of Washington
Strategic Advisor, C+C
Social Issue: Homelessness
Social Marketing Strategy: A Product to Help
Where Sighted: How Houston Has Virtually Ended Homelessness Among Veterans, Rebecca Gale January 30, 2019
Behavior: Receive Assistance to Moving to Permanent Housing
As noted before, I am currently writing a new book on Reducing Homelessness: A Social Marketing Approach. My weekly Blog will often feature a social marketing effort I noticed that week to end homelessness. This week’s “finding” was about an effort in Houston, Texas, with the following case example that will be included in the new book.
The City of Houston has been held up as a model of success in supporting the action step for Veterans to move on to permanent housing, attributed in part to the City’s Police Department creating a goal to convince as many as possible to connect with social services and seek permanent housing.
Seen as a core component for success was a team working together to try innovative approaches to improve the homeless condition. The team included the City’s police unit, a group of social and policy workers, and the Houston Coalition for the Homeless. Strategies included streamlining steps to permanent housing, and working through the Houston Housing Authority to conduct special events where homeless Veterans looking for permanent housing could connect with potential landlords, and staff would provide assistance in processing paperwork, performing background checks, and identifying resources for housing assistance.
In 2015, three cabinet secretaries came to Houston to celebrate the fourth-largest city in the country having reached an unprecedented achievement of finding homes for 3,650 Veterans in just three years, and announced that the City of Houston had effectively ended homelessness among Veterans.
Performance.Gov., “End Veterans Homelessness” (2015), accessed at https://obamaadministration.archives.performance.gov/content/end-veterans-homelessness.html
Photo source here.
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