International Alliance
To End Homelessness
October 31, 2011
SUMMARY
In March 2011 a group of homelessness researchers, policymakers, and practitioners from
Australia, Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States came
together in Washington, DC to form an International Alliance to End Homelessness (IAEH). The
goal of the new organization is to facilitate systematic and productive sharing of information
about what works to end homelessness.
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Need
A drastic reduction in the number of people experiencing homelessness is now a key policy
priority across much of the developed world. National, state, and provincial levels of
governments, individual cities and communities, and nongovernmental organizations across
many countries have mobilized themselves around a common motivation to end homelessness.
In a host of places, concrete plans are being created to achieve this goal and financial, agency,
and organizational resources are being re-aligned to implement these plans.
To this end 26 leaders in the areas of research, policy, and practice gathered from Australia,
Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America (March
2011) to consider ways that working together would help individual nations reach these
national and local goals. It is clear that this is an area in which an international exchange of
conceptual frameworks, sound research and evidence, as well as practical and policy
interventions will be of benefit.
Approach
Believing that “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts,” the group formed an
International Alliance to End Homelessness (IAEH) with the following mission:
The mission of the International Alliance to End Homelessness is to support national efforts to
end homelessness through an international collaboration on research, policy and practice.
IEAH will involve policymakers, practitioners, and researchers, recognizing that these fields are
all necessary, and mutually inform the activities needed to end homelessness. It strives to
embody the following values.
 That the different contexts and perspectives provided by international exchange give a new
framework in which to examine work and that the different perspectives of colleagues from
other nations may give insight into that work.
 That despite the differences in scale and context, the problem of homelessness and its
solutions are strikingly similar in all nations involved.
 That there is a science to the work of ending homelessness and that sharing practices,
policies, and research to improve the work of ending homelessness means critical
examination and exchange – not just description.
Contact: Kate Seif tel: +1 202.942.8281 e: cseif@naeh.org
© 2011 IAEH
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That the approaches of different nations can be blended to the advantage of people who are
homeless.
That knowing more makes us more effective and efficient – which is critically important in
challenging times.
That research, policy, and practice must stop being separate and become integrated.
That an international partnership must be flexible and nimble, not bureaucratic and overly
structured.
That partnership enhances dissemination of important ideas.
That the collective voice is stronger than separate voices and the ability of a partnership to
broker interventions and relationships is much stronger than the ability of any one entity to
do so.
In short, greater knowledge and strength can be gained by working together collaboratively
than working individually.
Activities
The purpose of the International Alliance to End Homelessness is to prevent and end
homelessness in the participating nations. Overall, the organization will articulate a shared
vision of what it looks like to end homelessness and promote sharing, learning, and exchanging
evidence on what works.
The major activities of the IAEH will be in the areas of research, practice, and policy. At the
March 2011 convening, participants framed out the following activities for the organization.
Research
IAEH will create an international research agenda. Practitioners and policymakers will
prioritize a list of practice and policy questions that must be answered by research, and these
questions will constitute the research agenda.
IAEH will also seek to improve comparability of homelessness data across nations. The lack of
a common definition of homelessness, and more importantly common collection methods,
inhibits the ability to compare the rates of homelessness among countries, and therefore to
examine the various impacts of welfare and other interventions on homelessness. The best way
to get at the problem is through regularly conducted national surveys. In this regard, IAEH will
have two objectives: assessing the number of people who have been literally homeless in the
past five years and measuring the number of people who are doubled up involuntarily or on an
emergency basis.
IAEH proposes to concentrate on the following areas with respect to research.
 Prevention is a key intervention but proper targeting of prevention efforts is essential. It
will be important to clarify the terminology related to prevention and to review how
countries conceptualize it. In a framework of three types of prevention – primary
(providing housing, jobs, etc.), secondary (identifying households at-risk and providing
crisis assistance), and tertiary (intervening when someone is entering homelessness) – the
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likely focus of IAEH-related research will be secondary prevention. In addition to targeting,
issues to be explored include the impact of other public policies (right to shelter, mainstream
service access, etc.) on prevention, and costs associated with prevention.
Youth is an area in which there are a host of unanswered policy and practice questions and
a wide range of mainstream players. IAEH sees the need to assemble the expertise on youth
homelessness from participating nations and develop a base of knowledge about what is
known, and what remains to be answered.
Housing and support for adults is difficult because of cross-silo challenges. Housing
models and service models are well established, but how to combine the two – or use
services to stabilize housing and housing to improve service efficacy – is a new area of
practice in many places. IAEH will examine methods of assessing (and reassessing as
tenant needs change) housing and support needs; financing methods; issues around choice
and empowerment of the tenants; impact of complementary support options such as peer
support; outcome measurement and how to feed this back into program design; and what
program models suit what tenants.
The criminal justice system and criminalization of homelessness are important in the
homelessness context, and have been studied from the legal, but not the sociological,
perspective. People become homeless when they emerge from incarceration, and homeless
people interact frequently with the criminal justice system for status – not criminal –
reasons. IAEH will concentrate primarily on the former and on mechanisms to ensure that
people who are incarcerated exit to housing.
Of great import is to ensure that research is explicitly linked to practice and policy. Research
will be focused on answering outstanding practice and policy questions. The findings of
research will be assessed for their practice and policy implications, and there will be a
systematic way of sharing the information. IAEH proposes to accomplish this, initially, by
holding an International Homelessness Research Symposium modeled on the highly
productive National Symposia on Homelessness Research (1998 and 2007) sponsored by the US
government. The International Symposium will commission synthesis papers on key topics.
The papers will survey all existing research from participating nations and identify policy and
practice implications of the findings. The papers will then be presented at a symposium, where
they will be discussed by panels of expert policymakers and practitioners. The final papers and
proceedings will be published. This process will reveal new areas of knowledge and
agreement, and their policy and practice implications; share them widely; and also create a
resource in the literature. The symposium is anticipated for early 2012 in the US, with a followup international symposium in Australia later that year.
Policy
IAEH will create a database of relevant national, state/provincial, and local policy that is
designed to bring to scale certain key practices. Policy to be included in this database will be
peer-reviewed as to its importance, efficacy, and impact.
IAEH proposes to concentrate on the following policy areas.
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Targeting and prioritization include balancing the sometimes conflicting priorities of
helping those in greatest need versus helping those whose problems are quickly resolved,
and the relative outcomes of policies in both of these areas. The group will examine systems
in which the national government establishes the broad outlines with respect to targeting to
high-need people, but final implementation decisions are made locally. It will explore
effective targeting systems; explicitly identify top line drivers of resource allocation across
jurisdictions; identify tools, mechanisms, and best practices that lead to the most effective
outcomes on the system and individual bases; and look to other fields for ideas (mental
health, etc.).
Planning, strategies, and systems change will be approached through the lens of what
structures help end homelessness. In particular the IAEH will examine actionable strategic
plans (such as Ten Year Plans) that are able to go to scale because they have the support of
funders and backers. Key elements of such plans will be identified based on whether or not
they can demonstrate their impact and the strengths and limitations of different approaches
will be assessed. The role of leadership will be described, and as well the importance of
bottom-up contributions. The roles of government, nonprofits, business, philanthropy, and
consumers will be defined. It is understood that messaging, communications, and advocacy
also play a key role, and that there must be a strong role for indigenous and homeless
voices. Again, IAEH will look outside its field for successful models, particularly with
respect to scale.
Migration encompasses a variety of issues including asylum seekers, illegal immigrants,
internal migration (or intra-EU migration), and repatriation. Native or aboriginal issues are
also included here. Migration is a difficult issue, and it is felt that the most significant
contribution that IAEH could make would be to describe some examples of successful
efforts. An important question for policy exploration is to what degree the homelessness
system has any responsibility for migration. IAEH will explore creation of an ethical model
for dealing with migration via the homeless system and examine protective and
vulnerability factors for migrants.
Accessing mainstream systems as opposed to resources provided through the
homelessness systems is a key issue in many nations. Ways to improve mainstream systems
so that they do not cause homelessness, avoiding the creation of a parallel welfare system,
and the benefits of moving consumers to the mainstream system are important issues.
IAEH will find the best ideas to incentivize mainstream system to prevent and end
homelessness, based on evidence. It will examine the most effective “discharge” policies
from institutions such as prison/jail, hospitals, etc.
Outcomes and measurement are tremendously important in the policy environment, where
outputs and the creation of large “coping” systems may replace solutions. IAEH maintains
that the primary outcome of a homelessness system should be that people have and sustain
appropriate housing, but will also develop outcomes around social inclusion. Collection,
use and management of data are key issues here, and it is recognized that cost-benefit is
important, although there are many lessons about how to use this in a productive and
honest way. IAEH will work to help practitioners understand the importance of collecting
and using data, and methods for doing so. It will catalogue high functioning data linkage
systems that can reveal the interaction of public systems of care. It will also provide peer
review of data collection and utilization practices and lay out proper roles and
responsibilities.
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Practice
International sharing and collaboration on practice strategies to end homelessness have been
occurring on an informal basis for over a decade. IAEH will address two important issues here:
what are best practices (determined through research and peer review) and how best practices
can be taken to scale. Following are the areas of concentration on practice.
 Access to affordable housing is a key issue in every nation, as homelessness is defined as
the absence of housing. While there are many policy issues that govern availability of
affordable housing, there are also strategies that can improve homeless people’s access,
including different rent assistance structures, assistance with housing search and so on.
These will be examined.
 Youth is a priority population in some nations, and poorly addressed in others. Therefore,
it is an area ripe for international sharing. Tools to effectively assess needs; models such as
the foyer model; definitional issues; models for connecting youth to adults, including
various kinship care models; and LGBTQ approaches will be assessed.
 Services are critical, notwithstanding the centrality of housing. People with higher service
needs often experience more frequent or prolonged periods of homelessness. Various
models around matching services to needs (assessment and screening), addressing high
needs populations, and targeting will be assessed.
 Housing First is an emerging strategy in most nations, but it is not clearly defined or
understood. For whom does it work, what are the different models, and how it can be
brought to scale will be explored. Standards and examples of good practice will be
developed.
 Maximizing income from employment, education, workforce training, and benefits is the
only way out of homelessness for many people. Innovative practices, public involvement,
business engagement, job creation, and social enterprise will be examined. Employment of
those exiting criminal justice systems will be a focus.
 Program quality and standards are important in implementation, and also important in
assessing replicable models. IAEH will agree on core dimensions and principles as to what
constitutes quality; provide online training and technical assistance for best practices in this
area, including ways to transfer information to remote and rural areas; and set basic ethical
standards.
 Prevention will be essential if homelessness is to be ended. There are various types of
prevention (see Research) and targeting properly is a key element. IAEH will define
prevention; identify predictive factors of homelessness; share information on what works
and for whom; and develop a core set of recommendations on specific interventions, backed
by practice knowledge and evidence.
Structure
At present IAEH is a loose confederation of agencies, organizations, and individuals from
Australia, Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States that is
sharing best practices in policy and practice and coordinating research. Via a Steering
Committee, it is currently seeking funding to establish a more formal structure and hire staff to
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create a Secretariat and pursue the activities listed above. It will have the following basic
structure:
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Conferences at which best practices can be shared. For the next two years the group
proposes to take advantage of the opportunities presented by existing national
conferences (such as the National Alliance to End Homelessness’s semi-annual
conferences in the US), but eventually it plans an international conference to be held
every two to three years.
Dictionary of Common Concepts and Terms so that information can productively be
shared across borders.
Members/partners who subscribe to the IAEH mission and goals. These will be national
governments, state/provincial governments, and local governments and their agencies
and staffs; private funders; private businesses and corporations; nonprofit organizations;
academic institutions and their staffs; and consumers.
Research Group to coordinate and fulfill the research agenda. A core research group is
already functioning via the European Observatory on Homelessness, a member of the
European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless
(FEANTSA).
Secretariat to coordinate activities. A small staff is anticipated, possibly to be housed
initially at FEANTSA.
Social Media presence to engage people across nations in an on-going discussion about
best practices.
Sponsors who are funders and supporters of IAEH. These are anticipated to be largely
national governments and international agencies and foundations.
Technical Experts Network made up of approved TA providers on IAEH-supported
strategies that are available to assist other nations, provinces/states/localities, or NGOs.
Transnational Peer Review System to assess best practices in policy and practice.
Website for sharing core information including data, best practices, calendar of events,
virtual space for communications and interaction, webinars, messaging information, etc.
Summary
The International Alliance to End Homelessness is an alliance of public, private, and nonprofit
entities that work together to create and share information about the best ways to end
homelessness. Currently a loose confederation of partners, it is formalizing into a staffed
organization that can promote research and evidence-based models of policy and practice in a
more systematic way. Most immediately it intends to focus on the following priority issues.
 Prevention of homelessness
 Homeless youth
 Housing combined with services
 Reentry from incarceration
 Employment
 Migration and native populations
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