Last week, the Terner Center for Housing Innovation released a report — Permanent Supportive Housing as a Solution to Homelessness: The Critical role of Long-Term Operating Subsidies — that shows the importance of sustained operating funding to the success of Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) for the homeless. Diving into the operations of 26 PSH properties, the report finds that stable, affordable housing with services enables formerly homeless residents to stay housed. However, it also finds that the costs of operating PSH properties often exceeded initial projections due to higher staffing and maintenance costs.
Additional findings included:
- Properties in urban areas and that serve higher numbers of homeless residents in a single building were more costly to operate.
- Those properties that were underfunded had worse outcomes for residents, resulting in an increased risk of residents re-entering homelessness.
- Insufficient staffing at properties—both onsite and offsite—resulted in resident’s needs going unmet.
The report concludes with a series of recommendations that include more Project Based Vouchers, and greater flexibility in State program funding limits. See the full report here.
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