How did Houston cut street homelessness by over 60%?

 

While many cities and counties don't even cooperate when it comes to homelessness and cities spend upwards of hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars a year with minimal accountability, Houston took the opposite approach by forcing all parties involved to participate in a single, centralized system based on big data.

 

And the approach is regional.  Led by the Coalition for the Homeless, the Way Home program touches every entity in the Houston homelessness ecosystem – the city, Harris County, two collar counties and over 100 non-profits.

 

The idea is that every service provider and every person serviced has their experience entered into a central database available to everyone in the system.  Any time someone is in need of help, gets help or stumbles into trouble, the interaction is logged as a reference point for when that person next touches the system.

 

Not only does the system foster more tailored responses, it's much easier to assess outcomes from different service providers because every interaction and every dollar spent is tracked. 

 

Hear from Ric Campo, chairman and CEO of Camden Property Trust, who chaired Houston's Homeless Task Force:

In addition to strong leadership, Houston's success is also due to a confluence of factors not so easily found in other cities, especially on the coasts.  The city already had a substantial affordable housing stock and plenty of available land on which to build.   

 

New construction is much cheaper than in most other places, in part due to a streamlined building process, and civic leadership was all in on finding a workable solution that required everyone to participate or be cut out.

 

149 units of permanent supportive housing are found in Rosemary Place below, with downtown Houston in the background.

 

For 2026, Houston is targeting the elimination of street homelessness through a $70M effort.  The plan prioritizes rapid rehousing ($45 million) and permanent supportive housing ($11 million), with the remainder for mental health services, outreach, and a navigation center. 

 

The goal is to get people off the streets and into supportive housing within 30 days of being identified as in need.

 

A onetime Houston homeless encampment whose residents were relocated to a new navigation center is below:

 

Houston's 160-unit Perry Street SRO near downtown is below. The units are fully furnished and include shared living and dining areas, a library, life skills training center, laundry facilities, 24-hour community kitchen and landscaped outdoor gathering spaces.

 

How to tackle homelessness is one of the topics we're planning for a future episode. We've already filmed in LA's Skid Row and have good interviews from Houston (our other focal point) and Seattle.

 

 

On the production front, we just finished drone shooting around San Francisco to round out visuals for our story about why it's taken almost 30 years to build a school in the city's new Mission Bay neighborhood of 10,000 residents.

 

Please help us complete the first four 60-minute episodes of the Saving the City series: 

 

. Why Cities Matter

. Housing

. Parks

. Family Friendly

 

We're also seeking a lead funder so we can start on our next six episodes, covering topics such as transportation, homelessness, urban universities and climate change.

 

 

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And check out our work and let us know what you think.  We're always eager to learn about new stories and be referred to people we should know about.

 

After watching Saving the City, you will never look at cities the same way again.

 

 

“To save a life is a real and beautiful thing. To make a home for the homeless, yes, it is a thing that must be good; whatever the world may say, it cannot be wrong.”

Vincent Van Gogh

Orlando was the citrus capital of the US from 1875 until the Great Freeze of 1895 forced growers to move south.