Homelessness is more than a housing crisis—it’s a human crisis. From 2023 to 2024, homelessness increased by 18%, as the nation added over 100,000 more individuals to the homelessness point in time count.
In 2017, LEO began a partnership with Destination: Home, a non-profit organization based in Santa Clara County with a different approach to ending homelessness: stopping it before it starts. The idea was simple: what if, instead of allowing someone to be evicted because they could not pay their rent or utilities this month, those costs were taken care of by Destination: Home, allowing people and families to remain housed and off the streets? Alongside this financial aid would be supportive services like case management and legal help to support clients in their time of need.
LEO partnered with Destination: Home to test the effectiveness of their Homelessness Prevention System. Because of an excess of demand for prevention funds, from July 2019 to December 2020 clients applying for homelessness prevention were randomly selected to either receive financial help or be referred to non-financial services.
The results were striking. Those who received homelessness prevention funds were 3.6 percentage points less likely to use homelessness services within six months of application. Within 12 months, those who did not receive funds were three times more likely to have interacted with the homelessness system in Santa Clara County. Not only were those who received prevention more likely to remain stably housed, but researchers at LEO found that for every $1 spent on homelessness prevention funds in Santa Clara County, $2.47 of societal benefit resulted.
So, if you had a program that not only reduced the risk of homelessness by 67% and was cost effective while doing so, what would you do? Obviously, you would tell people. You would try to spread your message to other communities. And you would hope that other communities would hear that message and start programs of their own. LEO’s interim managing director, Rachel Fulcher Dawson said it best: “We have a moral obligation to take evidence to impact. When we find strong evidence that something is effective, it’s not enough to publish a result. We have to make sure that evidence gets used by replicating and scaling what works, so communities across the country can benefit.”
And so, the Right at Home initiative was born.
“We have proven that targeted homelessness prevention works locally, and now it’s time to prove that this can work all across the country. We should never let people, in the worst moments of their lives, suffer even more.”
Destination: Home, in collaboration with LEO as the national evidence partner, Homebase as the technical assistance partner, and a variety of funding partners, including The Audacious Project, have collaborated to create the Right at Home initiative, an effort to introduce Destination: Home’s proven prevention model in 10 communities across the nation. In doing so, we hope to prevent thousands of families from losing their homes, while building upon the evidence unearthed in Santa Clara County. As Jennifer Loving, the CEO of Destination: Home said, “We have proven that targeted homelessness prevention works locally, and now it’s time to prove that this can work all across the country. We should never let people, in the worst moments of their lives, suffer even more.”
Each community chosen to be a part of Right at Home will implement Destination: Home’s model, made up of 10 essential components which make up the foundation of a targeted homelessness prevention model. These components include flexible cash assistance, rapid delivery of assistance, no set upper bound on the amount of funds received, and no wrong entrance into the system, among others.
Sites for the initiative include: Atlanta, GA; Austin-Travis County, TX; the Asheville Region, NC; the Minnesota Tribal Collaborative; the County of San Mateo, CA; Miami-Dade County, FL; Denver-Adams County, CO; Alaska; and two more communities to be announced soon.
Together, these communities will serve over 10,000 people across the nation, offering assistance for rent payment, utility bills, and other essentials to ensure individuals and families remain housed. As David Phillips, one of the lead researchers on the original Destination: Home study as well as on the current Right at Home studies, said, “We already have strong evidence that targeted prevention can keep people housed. Right at Home is a chance to take those results to impact at a national scale. By working alongside communities, we can learn what it takes to deliver strong outcomes in different places—and share what works so leaders can strengthen and sustain prevention over time.”
The Right at Home communities are beginning research design with a goal of all 10 programs being launched by January 2027.
The Right at Home initiative demonstrates the full potential of research, and a culmination of LEO’s mission and values. Evidence created through rigorous research in Santa Clara County is supporting the creation of new, effective programs in partnership with other communities on a national scale, offering dignity and hope to thousands in crisis.