Ed Gibbens had been living on the road in Los Angeles for more than 20 years, and would have described himself as a “mean and ugly drunk“, according to Linda Kaufman from Community Solutions.

Community Solutions is an organisation, based in the US, that has the goal of ending homelessness, first in the US, then worldwide. Starting in 2010 they kicked off the 100,000 homes campaign, uniting a broad alliance of hundreds of organisations behind a shared goal: To bring 100,000 people back into housing by July 2014. And they succeeded: More than 105,000 chronically homeless people from 186 communities across the US got a new home in under four years. (Read more in the New York Times)

People like Ed who had been living on the streets for decades. Only after they had given Ed the keys to his new home and along with it a stable environment, did they start to support him to stop drinking and get his life back on track. And he did.

What stands behind this success? Community Solutions founder Rosanne Haggerty sums it up like this:

When we started out with our ambitious goal of 100,000 homes some people said it couldn’t be done. We’ve helped prove that community-led solutions work, and that often what is needed is a mass mobilisation effort with ambitious goals, collaboration, and transparent reporting.

As more and more people grow frustrated with the shocking problem of homelessness here in Ireland, we hope and believe there is great leadership out there for making the Community Solutions approach a success here in Ireland as well.

A European campaign is about to be piloted across six cities. There are not yet any Irish cities involved but there is an opportunity to join the ambitious effort in Spring 2016 to end street homelessness by 2020. Roseanne and her team are committed to supporting any Irish cities that have committed leadership in place. Maybe it’s you or you know someone who can take lead this challenge?

First, let’s take a closer look at what Community Solutions is doing differently that makes us believe that this is a solution we were all looking for?

1. Collaboration of communities and organisations is key

Everything starts with empowering communities to use tools and knowledge to make bigger and more effective steps forward in solving the problem of homelessness themselves. Community Solutions think, the way to achieve those goals is to help communities become better, more adaptive problem solvers so they can tackle complex challenges as they emerge.

As teams learn to work differently and rethink their existing resources, they find that they can help far more people escape homelessness and poverty than they once knew. With this belief Community Solutions mobilized 186 communities to collaborate on delivering the goals of the campaign. As people need to work closely together in their communities so do organisations need to team up and join their forces to collect all the data needed, find the houses and give people the support along the way and once they got housed. ( This kind of collaboration is missing in Ireland so far. http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/charities-for-homeless-are-not-value-for-money-report-34349696.html)

2. Follow the Housing First principle

Community Solutions brings those people into housing first who are at the highest point of vulnerability. That can be people who are drinking every day or drug dependant. The belief behind it is that stable housing is the best starting point for getting back into a stable life. And this assumption has been proven right by research in the US: 85% of people who are offered a home, are able to say “I want to change”. Only after that other services and regular visits are put into place to support people to recover their lives.

3. The magic ingrediant: The ‘vulnerability index’

The Community Solutions approach is 100% data driven. Teams hit the streets at 4 a.m. every day to identify all of their homeless neighbours and build a file on each person’s housing needs. All this data is collected in one central database.

Still, in the Community Solution database homeless people aren’t anonymous data but every homeless person is listed with a name. The list is constantly being updated, and with the vulnerabilitiy index, people are pushed to the top of the list who are most vulnerable to make sure the Housing First principle can be applied in the best way. That also means that a lot of tax money is saved. A formal estimate based on a wealth of available research suggests that the 100,000 Homes campaign alone has been saving US taxpayers $1.3 billion per year.

Read more about this approach

4. The mix of big data, technology and transparent reporting

There is a lot of data that needs to be collected and made evaluable in order to make this approach work. Working with Community Solutions you will collect data to…
• know everyone experiencing homelessness by name
• understand the history and needs of these people in order to refer them to appropriate housing and services as quickly as possible
• create a systematic way to consistently update and track important information on each person experiencing homelessness
• improve planning and optimize the allocation of resources based on a clearer breakdown of local homeless populations

This is done with a Common Assessment Tool (short CAT), a standard set of questions used by all agencies and organizations in a community that allows the local team to quickly assess people based on their unique circumstances and needs. Additionally, it helps outreach workers and service providers find the best housing match to fit these needs.

Read more about the CAT

5. Clear and ambitious goals

The 100,000 Homes Campaign in the U.S supported 186 individual cities and communities to work together to end homelessness in a coordinated national effort. Together they worked towards the goal of housing 100,000 people but every community had to break down this collective goal and set an ambitious, measurable and time-bound goal every month and report back on meeting that goal. When the Campaign began, just 12 participating communities were measurably on track to end chronic homelessness. 4 years later, that number had grown to 60.

How you can get involved now

We would like to bring the Community Solutions process to end homelessness to Ireland. We hope to find leaders and volunteers who can drive a collaborative campaign to end homelessness in Ireland by 2020: Zero 2020.

There are 3 ways in which you can get involved at this stage:

1. Become the Community Solutions Leader in your community: We need people who are deeply committed to achiving this goal and can give at least 20 hours/week to lead the local chapter of this initiative and help kicking off the Zero 2020 campaign in Cork, Limerick, Galway or Dublin. You can just apply here to register your interest in this role.
2. Join the Irish Community: Show your support by following Community Solutions and the local chapters in Galway, Limerick, Cork and Dublin. We’ll keep you in the loop of everything that’s happening. Your help will be needed, once a leader is taking on the challenge and the Zero 2020 campaign kicks off.
3. Spread the word: Let everyone know about this new initiative here in Ireland and help us grow the Community Solutions community. The more people who follow the project and register an interest in volunteering with this new initiative early, the quicker we can get started on our shared mission in ending homelessness.