Ending Unsheltered Homelessness

Summary

By supporting this Commitment to Action, you will play a role in expanding a transformative interim housing and social services model that has proven successful in California across the United States, ultimately improving livelihoods by providing food security, mental and physical health care, and job preparedness for nearly 18,000 individuals over the next decade.

Approach

DignityMoves is urgently working to reduce and prevent homelessness, specifically targeting unsheltered homelessness, by accelerating the use of an emerging strategy known as Interim Supportive Housing (ISH) , which combines private housing for formerly unsheltered individuals with case management that supports those with complex needs breaking the cycle of homelessness.
In just three years, DignityMoves has created 415 ISH units (503 beds) across seven communities in six California cities, including San Francisco, Alameda, and Santa Barbara. DignityMoves is committed to expanding its proven model across California and nationally. Dignity Moves will establish ISH in eight new communities, including San Jose, San Bernardino, and Thousand Oaks within the next year, ultimately providing interim housing and wraparound services to 1,020 individuals over the course of the commitment and establishing the capacity to so for nearly 18,000 individuals over the next decade. Through advocacy for the broader adoption of ISH as an innovative and cost-effective solution, DignityMoves seeks to revitalize a stagnant policy area and restore optimism through meaningful research, communication, and narrative change.
In partnership with Gensler, an architectural firm specializing in trauma-informed design, and Swinerton Builder, a nationwide contractor with over 100 years of experience in affordable housing, DignityMoves will ensure its sites are of the highest quality and physically sustainable. These communities feature private rooms for all residents, as well as communal meeting spaces, showers, and kitchen facilities. Constructed in just 4 to 6 months, DignityMoves sets the standard for efficiently providing safe, quality housing.
Once established, the communities will be managed by top-tier service providers who deliver food, security, and comprehensive wraparound services, including mental and physical healthcare, job preparedness, and social services navigation. Of the 530 individuals that DignityMoves has served to date, nearly 50% have moved into permanent housing, 66% have received medical services, 48% have received mental health services, and 80% have become document-ready for the next steps of moving into market-rate housing, permanent supportive housing, or reuniting with family members.

Action Plan

From September 2024 to August 2025, DignityMoves is committed to rapidly expanding ISH sites, broadening its impact across multiple municipalities, and spearheading narrative-change efforts to address the U.S. homelessness crisis.
Starting in Q4 2024, DignityMoves will establish strategic partnerships with city governments and private landowners to secure resources for two new housing sites. These will serve 198 individuals in the first year.
In Q1 2025, DignityMoves will sustain its momentum by opening two additional sites, bringing the total to four by the end of March 2025. Concurrently, the organization will work to secure commitments from two more municipalities, expanding the project pipeline to five sites. During this period, research efforts will culminate in a white paper on homelessness, enriching the toolkit of housing solutions, including ISH. The two new sites will serve 477 individuals in the next year.
By Q2 2025, DignityMoves will break ground on two more sites, bringing the total to six. The organization will also add three more municipalities to its pipeline, bringing the total to eight. Concurrently, DignityMoves will continue its research and share findings through another publication. These sites will serve 135 individuals in the first year.
In Q3 2025, DignityMoves will open two additional sites, completing the development of all eight planned locations. The organization will also identify two more municipalities, engaging a total of ten municipalities during the grant term. The year will conclude with the publication of a final white paper. These sites will serve 201 individuals in the next year.

Background

According to the 2023 HUD Annual Homeless Report (http://bit.ly/3UvzbF3) , roughly 653,100 people – or about 20 of every 10,000 – are experiencing homelessness in the U.S. Of those, four in ten experience unsheltered homelessness. In 2023, the number of homeless was the highest ever since HUD began its Point-In-Time count and represented a 12% increase over the year before. About a third of those experiencing homelessness reported having experienced chronic homelessness – also the highest number of individuals since data was first reported – and two-thirds of those were counted in unsheltered locations. As evidenced by such metrics, there is a profound housing crisis in the U.S., one which is only worsening.

In part due to existing funding structures and the methods used to count the unhoused, many municipalities currently prioritize their homelessness resources towards permanent housing programs. Permanent housing is critically important – this crisis cannot be solved without it – but the costs are substantial, and the pace of construction can be glacial. In San Francisco, for example, Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) can take over six years to build at a cost of between $600,000 and $700,00 per unit (https://bit.ly/44u5mJO) . Development is not keeping pace with the need, and for every one individual sheltered, four fall into homelessness (https://bit.ly/3y5eyYR) .

Chronic homelessness drives higher costs to the community at large as the health conditions of those individuals become more acute over time. The rising toll and trauma of homelessness are shown by the high costs for a small group of people who frequently use healthcare and justice services. To adequately address the crisis on our streets, more efficient, innovative, scalable solutions must be implemented.

Progress Update

Partnership Opportunities

With support from CGI, DignityMoves will lay the groundwork to assess how best to expand its reach nationally and expedite critical movement-building work, raising awareness about the impact of ISH by continuing to demonstrate efficacy through expanded reach, advocating for new metrics that better encapsulate the state of the housing crisis and designing advocacy and educational tools that can inspire new optimism and agency in addressing unsheltered homelessness in the U.S. This can be done by raising philanthropy and leveraging public funding dollars to hire staff and create programs, cultivating new partners, and promoting our innovative model in the media., To bring bigger change faster, DignityMoves will continue to develop and share an open-source playbook to empower others to replicate its model while we scale our own operations.