Austin, Cleveland and Los Angeles achieved incredible results and gained valuable insights as community teams worked to ambitiously address youth homelessness, housing 413 young people over just 100-Days.
Austin, Cleveland, and Los Angeles have each successfully completed a 100-Day Challenge on Youth Homelessness, achieving dramatic progress on addressing youth homelessness in just 100 Days. Each community exceeded their 100-Day goal, ending the experience of homelessness for a total of 428 young people. Austin, Cleveland and Los Angeles have also discovered new insights on how communities can prevent and end youth homelessness.
- Austin housed 62 homeless youth 18-24 years old, exceeding their goal of 50.
- Cleveland housed 110 homeless youth 18-24 years old, exceeding their goal of 100.
- Los Angeles stably housed 256 16-25 year old young adults experiencing housing instability or homelessness, exceeding their goal of 237.
Key to achieving these results in each community were the innovative 100-Day experiments that brought different systems together — homeless services, child welfare and schools – collaborating in new ways.
These 100-Day Challenges officially conclude on January 9th, 2017 in Austin, where the community teams will convene with federal partners and supporters to reflect on the experience and determine how to sustain the success.
The 100-Day Challenges on Youth Homelessness are part of the national movement to end youth homelessness, represented by A Way Home America (AWHA). The Rapid Results Institute (RRI) facilitated the 100-Day Challenges and provided coaching to the communities, with the support of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Casey Family Programs, Melville Charitable Trust and Raikes Foundation. RRI’s past challenges across a variety of issue areas have demonstrated two things: a limited timeframe provides a critical sense of urgency and “permission” from system leaders provides space for front-line staff to innovate. This combination fuels an effective approach to collectively combat complex social problems, like youth homelessness.
Organizations and communities interested in following the lessons learned by the three communities on their Youth Homelessness 100-Day Challenge should sign up to receive news from AWHA at www.awayhomeamerica.org. AWHA will share future opportunities to launch additional 100-Day Challenges in 2017. On Tuesday, January 10th at 1:30 CT, the three communities will join a google hangout, with support from the Funders Together to End Homeless, to share results and reflections on the approach. Contact Jennifer Onley at jennifer@funderstogether.org for guidance on how to join the national broadcast.
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