It seems like a lot of money -- $2.5 million – but it’s actually priceless when you consider the money was used to get 250 homeless people off the streets in Phoenix into their own apartment as part of Rapid Rehousing, a program that helps with rent and supportive services for a short time.

“Those 250 people were frequent users of our downtown resources for individuals experiencing homelessness,” said Amy Schwabenlender, Valley of the Sun United Way’s Vice President of Community Impact.“They were people who slept in conditions that were not humane. They slept maybe in a warehouse building, they slept maybe on the asphalt of a parking lot crammed in with up to 500 other people in those spaces.”And if those spaces were filled, they went to neighborhoods and tried to find comfort in an alley, going anywhere they thought was a safe place to spend the night.

Investing $2.5 million in this project for single adults is unique in the United States. “The Phoenix area is the first – we’ve been called the pioneer by other organizations – in creating this type of rapid rehousing for single adults,” said Amy. “Housing individuals is the humane right thing to do and it makes sense from a cost perspective because the longer people are experiencing homelessness, living on the streets, the more likely they are to become chronically homeless.”*

Supporting homelessness costs the taxpayer more money, as well. “So people experiencing homelessness use more public systems, not just emergency shelters that United Way funds with donor contributions and other people fund through non-profit donations as well as government funding, they also take up time and resources of law enforcement,” said Amy. “So police are asked to remove people from their neighborhoods. Or police are arresting people for minor offenses. I would rather have the police focused on bigger issues than minor offenses like trespassing or public urination that people are doing because they have nowhere else to go.”

Another thing that makes Rapid-Rehousing a different and effective program is public and private partners working together. This is important because no one organization can do it alone. Amy said, “It really took the City of Phoenix, Maricopa County, Arizona Department of Housing and Valley of the Sun United Way working together to pull the resources into one pot of money and to then agree on how that money will be spent.”**

The goal is to prevent these individuals from returning to homelessness. “It’s like a car that needs a jump. You get it running and it will be fine,” as one Rapid Rehousing resident described it.

If you would like to help end homelessness, you can give at vsuw.org
or volunteer at United Way’s Project Connect.