Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg released the city’s ambitious homelessness action plan, Uniting for Solutions Beyond Shelter, and challenged the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to reduce homelessness by two-thirds during the next five years. Central to the new strategy is a shift in the city’s response to homelessness away from simply sheltering individuals and families to programs and interventions that solve homelessness. These include a focus on homelessness prevention, discharge planning, rapid re-housing, and supportive housing.

In order to meet the goals outlined in Uniting for Solutions Beyond Shelter, strong accountability and evaluation provisions have been built into the plan. These will allow stakeholders to track progress in real time, identify and replicate best practices, and ensure public resources are spent wisely to promote independence for those receiving services.

As part of these accountability mechanisms, a first phase implementation schedule for the action plan’s 60 initiatives was prepared. This schedule includes key outcomes, dates for completion, critical partners, and targets and timeframes for reducing the shelter and street census. Projected decreases are based on the impact of initiatives in advancing one or more of the following key indicators:

• Decrease in the number of individuals living on the streets and in other public spaces,
• Increase in the number of people leaving shelter to stable housing,
• Increase in the supply of affordable, service-enriched, and supportive housing,
• Decrease in the number of applications for shelter,
• Decrease in the length of stay in shelter, and
• Decrease in the total number of people in shelter.

The timeframes and targets included here are ambitious, and appropriately so. Beginning in January 2005, monthly implementation updates will be shared publicly on this site. The reports are intended to promote public discussion around progress and challenges associated with implementation.

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