Challenge

Just like in many communities across the country, homelessness is an urgent issue in our city. The causes of homelessness are complex, especially for individuals who find themselves chronically homeless. Holistically removing barriers that have caused homelessness takes the entire community working together to solve this complex issue.

Process

Lena partnered with The United Way of Bartholomew County and the City of Columbus to create a shared understanding with a goal of making homelessness rare, brief, and nonrecurring. The teams worked to ensure that organizations across the community collaborate and take coordinated action to effectively tackle this issue, as no organization can address the issue alone. In order to gain broad community consensus on the facts and narratives that describe the current state of homelessness in Columbus, we facilitated multiple community conversations and stakeholder conversations and immersed ourselves in the lives and contexts of those experiencing homelessness.

Impact

The growing momentum from this work led by United Way has garnered broad support from government and public and private sector partners as well as substantial funding to further the goals. City Council approved funding and accompanying agreements for nearly $2 million-worth of homelessness and affordable housing initiatives, with $500,000 of federal American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds going to implement United Way’s initiative. The learnings from the community engagement and research directly informed the strategies and tactics, which have led to over 141 families getting assistance, 43 moving from a tent to shelter, and preventing 37 individuals or families from becoming homeless.