Ideas at work

Find initiatives and collaborations working on housing-related issues and learn about effective strategies for action.

initiatives and collaborations

Affordable Housing: Making it a Reality
Regional mayors' task force identifies ways to meet need for more affordable housing.

Changing the face of housing
Seeks to correct the significant under-representation of communities of color in affordable housing processes and decisions in Minnesota.

The Emerging Markets Homeownership Initiative
Public-private partnership to increase home ownership in communities of color.

Heading Home Hennepin
Ten year plan to end homelessness in Minneapolis and Hennepin County.

Heading Home Minnesota
A statewide initiative to end the cycle of homelessness.

Minnesota's Plan to End Long-Term Homelessness
The state's vision to end homelessness by 2010.

The Student Guide to Ending Homelessness
A guide from the Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless, authored by students, for students who want to end homelessness.

Research-based strategies

Listed below are proven, effective strategies linked to reports that provide data and information about how the strategies were implemented.

Builder supports: incentives and removal of regulatory barriers (4)
- Best practices review
  Metropolitan Council, February 2007, 8 pp.
  Reviews technical resources that will be useful to local communities for planning.
- Increasing the availability of affordable homes: An analysis of high-impact state and local solutions
  Center for Housing Policy, January 2007, 115 pp.
  Identifies promising strategies for expanding affordable housing in states and local communities.
- Rethinking local affordable housing strategies: Lessons from 70 years of policy and practice
  Brookings Institution, December 2003
  Aims to help state and local leaders meet the modern realities of the affordable housing challenge by looking back at the lessons of the past 70 years of housing policies.
Counseling to lower risk of foreclosures (5)
- Increasing the availability of affordable homes: An analysis of high-impact state and local solutions
  Center for Housing Policy, January 2007, 115 pp.
  Identifies promising strategies for expanding affordable housing in states and local communities.
- Ideas that work: Building communities through homeownership
  U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, August 2006, 90 pp.
  Offers practical advice on how to establish homeownership programs. It draws on the experiences and successes of HUD's Office of University Partnerships (OUP) grantees nationwide who have developed and implemented a variety of programs and initiatives that promote homeownership.
- The cost-effectiveness of community-based foreclosure prevention
  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, December 2005, 39 pp.
  Examine the cost-effectiveness of community-based foreclosure prevention interventions using two proxy measures: time to resolution and the rate of recidivism.
- Strategies for preventing homelessness
  Office of Policy Development and Research, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, May 2005, 210 pp.
  Identifies and documents effective community-wide homeless-prevention strategies implemented in six communities with the hope that other communities will carry out similar efforts.
Housing linked to jobs and transit (1)
- Realizing the potential: Expanding housing opportunities near transit
  Reconnecting America Center for Transit-Oriented Development, April 2007, 194 pp.
  Includes detailed case studies of efforts to promote mixed-income transit-oriented development in Boston, Charlotte, Denver, Minneapolis and Portland.
Low-cost housing with support services (8)
- Strategies for improving homeless people's access to mainstream benefits and services
  Office of Policy Development and Research, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, March 2010, 287 pp.
  This study examines how communities have compensated for reductions in HUD funding for homeless-related resources and services from welfare, health, mental health, and other mainstream systems. It finds that communities that evolved smoothing, expanding, and changing mechanisms to reduce access barriers were most successful, although federal program regulations limit what local communities can do.
- The applicability of Housing First models to homeless persons with serious mental illness
  U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, July 2007, 209 pp.
  This report presents the findings from an exploratory study of the Housing First approach of providing permanent supportive housing to single, homeless adults with mental illness and co-occurring substance-related disorders.
- A synthesis of findings from the study of affordable housing plus services for low- and modest-income older adults
  U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, August 2006, 22 pp.
  Examines the literature on integrating affordable housing and health and supportive services for older adults and developed an inventory of promising Affordable Housing Plus Services strategies and programs.
- Promising strategies to end family homelessness
  National Alliance to End Homelessness, June 2006, 30 pp.
  Highlights the strategies promising communities are using to accomplish the goal of ending family homelessness, including Hennepin County's program to help people rapidly exit from shelter .
- Strategies for preventing homelessness
  Office of Policy Development and Research, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, May 2005, 210 pp.
  Identifies and documents effective community-wide homeless-prevention strategies implemented in six communities with the hope that other communities will carry out similar efforts.
- Strategies for reducing chronic street homelessness
  Office of Policy Development and Research, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, January 2004, 384 pp.
  Identifies and documents successful community-wide approaches to reducing homelessness and achieving stable housing for the difficult-to-serve people who routinely live on the streets.
- Rethinking local affordable housing strategies: Lessons from 70 years of policy and practice
  Brookings Institution, December 2003
  Aims to help state and local leaders meet the modern realities of the affordable housing challenge by looking back at the lessons of the past 70 years of housing policies.
- The impact of supportive housing on services use for homeless mentally ill individuals
  Corporation of Supportive Housing, May 2001, 17 pp.
  Measures the extent of homeless mentally ill individuals’ dependence on an array of publicly funded emergency service systems, and ascertains the degree to which this dependence is reduced by placement into service-enriched housing.
Mixed housing planning and revitalization (4)
- A decade of hope VI: Research findings and policy challenges
  The Urban Institiute, Brookings Institution, May 2004, 72 pp.
  Reviews the existing research literature on both the achievements and the challenges of the HOPE VI program, one of the most ambitious urban redevelopment efforts in the nation's history.
- Rethinking local affordable housing strategies: Lessons from 70 years of policy and practice
  Brookings Institution, December 2003
  Aims to help state and local leaders meet the modern realities of the affordable housing challenge by looking back at the lessons of the past 70 years of housing policies.
- Tools and strategies for improving community relations in the Housing Choice Voucher Program
  U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, September 2001, 81 pp.
  Identifies factors that lead to community dissatisfaction with the Housing Choice Voucher Program (formerly Section 8) and to assess the effectiveness of strategies employed by Public Housing Agencies to eliminate or alleviate community concerns.
Rapid exit from shelter to reduce homelessness (3)
- Promising strategies to end family homelessness
  National Alliance to End Homelessness, June 2006, 30 pp.
  Highlights the strategies promising communities are using to accomplish the goal of ending family homelessness, including Hennepin County's program to help people rapidly exit from shelter .
- Strategies for preventing homelessness
  Office of Policy Development and Research, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, May 2005, 210 pp.
  Identifies and documents effective community-wide homeless-prevention strategies implemented in six communities with the hope that other communities will carry out similar efforts.
- Strategies for reducing chronic street homelessness
  Office of Policy Development and Research, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, January 2004, 384 pp.
  Identifies and documents successful community-wide approaches to reducing homelessness and achieving stable housing for the difficult-to-serve people who routinely live on the streets.