Homelessness is rising. In 2024, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Point-in-Time count revealed a harsh reality—771,480 people experiencing homelessness throughout the country, an 18 percent surge from the previous year and the highest number recorded since the count began in 2005. Family homelessness has also surged—rising 39% in the past year, highlighting growing challenges in affordability and economic stability.
It’s clear there is an immediate need and common support to house those already experiencing homelessness, but there is also growing recognition that more needs to be done to prevent homelessness before it starts. This is more than a housing crisis—it’s a human crisis. Losing a home leads to instability, trauma, and long-term harm, especially for children. Prevention spares families from the devastating consequences of homelessness before they ever reach that point.
“For many years, we have been focused on moving people from homelessness into housing—and we’ve learned a lot about how to do that very effectively and keep people housed. The challenge is that even as we do that, more people are coming into homelessness. So we need to move on both fronts simultaneously, housing and prevention.” Says Kathryn Kaminski, Acting Director of the Santa Clara County Office of Supportive Housing.
Kaminski and the Santa Clara County Office of Supportive Housing were key partners in LEO’s study of Destination: Home’s Homelessness Prevention System. The study (Philips and Sullivan, 2023) found that those who received financial assistance through the program were three times less likely to experience homelessness within a year than those who did not receive assistance. The research team further calculated that for every $1 spent on financial assistance in the homelessness prevention program, there were $2.47 of benefits.
Turning Evidence into Action
At LEO, finding what works—like prevention—is part one of our goals. Making sure that evidence gets used is how we create impact. Since study completion, the research results have been put to use through scaling the program in Santa Clara County, informing a toolkit for building an evidence-based homeless prevention system, and motivating growth in targeted prevention across the country.
Homelessness Prevention Growth in Santa Clara County
Destination: Home was founded as a public-private partnership, with a vision to bring stakeholders together in service of a common goal—ending homelessness. When Destination: Home launched the homelessness prevention system in 2017, the program operated on an annual $1.6 million dollar budget, sourced mainly with private dollars (32% public dollars). Destination: Home coordinated services in partnership with a network of nonprofit providers with a total capacity to serve 215 households per year.
Fast forward to 2024 following the study’s completion, the program has grown to an annual budget of nearly $30 million (82% public dollars) with a capacity to serve 1,700 households per year. And in line with the original vision, Destination: Home transitioned oversight of the program to the County’s Office of Supportive Housing. The County adopted the model wholesale citing LEO’s research as proof of model effectiveness and continues to work with the same network of nonprofit providers.
“The County is integrating Homelessness Prevention as a core strategy for ending homelessness in the region, positioning the system to be lasting and more integrated with other safety net services,” says Hilary Armstrong, Deputy Director of the Office of Supportive Housing. “The LEO research findings have been pivotal in allowing the County to adopt the program.”
“The County is integrating Homelessness Prevention as a core strategy for ending homelessness in the region, positioning the system to be lasting and more integrated with other safety net services,” says Hilary Armstrong, Deputy Director of the Office of Supportive Housing. “The LEO research findings have been pivotal in allowing the County to adopt the program.”
A Playbook for Impact
Now that the results were in, LEO and Destination: Home turned their attention to a bigger question: how can we help other communities use what we’ve learned to prevent homelessness? The work didn’t stop with publishing the Santa Clara RCT results—it sparked a new effort to bring this information to more places in need of a solution., With a shared commitment to reducing and preventing homelessness nationwide, LEO and Destination: Home teamed up with Results for America to create a toolkit that helps other communities build their own homelessness prevention systems. This step-by-step guide walks city and county leaders through launching, operating, and managing an evidence-based prevention model tailored to their local needs.
The toolkit is designed to make it easier for communities to replicate Santa Clara County’s proven approach. Available through the Results for America Economic Mobility Catalog, it lays out the key decisions involved in building a prevention system and provides real-world examples of how Santa Clara navigated each step. Inside, users will find practical guidance, checklists, resources, and open-access materials—everything needed to get a homelessness prevention system off the ground and making an impact.
Homelessness Prevention Growth across the US
The creation of the homelessness prevention toolkit will fuel LEO-supported replication sites across the country, helping communities adopt and refine a proven approach to preventing homelessness. LEO is working with Destination: Home to partner with as many as 10 communities to adopt the proven model of homelessness prevention and embed rigorous research. This expansion means more than just new research—it means potentially thousands more people at risk of homelessness will get the help they need to stay housed.
It’s a powerful multiplier: each new site represents a chance to reach hundreds of additional families with an approach we know works. Each new partner will use the toolkit to design a prevention system tailored to their community’s needs—focusing on those at imminent risk of homelessness—and conduct a randomized controlled trial to explore new research questions.
Through these partnerships, LEO will work to uncover:
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How homelessness prevention affects broader life outcomes beyond housing
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How different targeting strategies impact efficiency and effectiveness
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Whether the Santa Clara model maintains its success when faithfully implemented in new locations
By expanding evidence-based homelessness prevention programs and answering key research questions along the way, LEO aims to inform national policy with tested, unbiased, and scalable housing solutions.