Fourteen U.S. communities have met this standard for ending veteran or chronic homelessness — and many more are on their way.

What is functional zero?

Functional zero is a dynamic milestone that indicates a community has solved homelessness for a population. Reaching and sustaining this milestone is in service of building a future where homelessness is rare overall, and brief when it occurs.

Before a community can start working toward functional zero, they must first gather quality data on who is experiencing homelessness there. A by-name list is a comprehensive list of every person in a community experiencing homelessness, updated in real time. Once this data is gathered (and regularly maintained), communities are able to use it to to better match housing solutions with individuals, prioritize community resources, and track the state of homelessness in the community at large.

VETERAN

A community has ended veteran homelessness when the number of veterans experiencing homelessness is less than the number of veterans a community has proven it can house in a month, with a minimum threshold of 3.

> What’s the difference between functional zero and the USICH Federal Criteria and Benchmarks for ending veteran homelessness?

Homelessness is a dynamic problem — people are entering and exiting the system constantly. That’s why you need real-time data to track it. We call this real-time tracking the by-name list.

CHRONIC

A community has ended chronic homelessness when the number of people experiencing chronic homelessness is zero, or if not zero, than either 3 or .1% of the total number of individuals reported in the most recent point-in-time count, whichever is greater.