Applications are now open for pro bono Technical Assistance (TA) as part of the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab’s (GPL) new Homelessness Prevention and Rehousing Accelerator — an initiative through the Homelessness and Housing practice designed to support jurisdictions implementing reforms to reduce homelessness in their communities.

Through the work at the GPL, jurisdictions from across the country have voiced that homeless response systems that were intended to address temporary housing emergencies have become stretched too thin. Jurisdictions urgently need to reduce the rising numbers of unhoused individuals, but they are also struggling to build sustainable systems that prevent individuals from becoming homeless and expand opportunities for individuals to become housed. The Homelessness Prevention and Rehousing Accelerator seeks to provide added capacity to the innovative leaders advancing this work in the following topic areas:

1. Reduce the likelihood of individuals exiting a system into homelessness by bringing other agencies (e.g., criminal justice, child welfare) together with the homeless response system to develop shared goals, improve discharge and aftercare processes, and align on prioritized access to housing resources
2. Support individuals in retaining their housing in communities with high rates of eviction, rent-burden, and homelessness entry by leveraging trusted local organizations and coordinating services to improve connections to best-fit housing resources
3. Mitigate the harm of reductions in pandemic-related federal rental assistance by designing new, local rental assistance programs or redesigning pre-existing programs
4. Reduce the amount of time it takes for individuals to move into subsidized housing by making the referral and eligibility verification process more effective, efficient, and client-centered
5. Address structural rehousing barriers for specific homeless populations (e.g., justice involved, young adults, medical needs) by aligning on priorities, improving processes, and developing new programs

Interested jurisdictions should submit an initial application by November 18, 2022. The application should take no more than 30 minutes to complete.

Informational Session

There will be an optional informational session for interested applicants on November 2, 2022, at 2:00 PM EDT to review topics in the Prevention and Rehousing Accelerator, the application process, and what GPL TA looks like.