In 2015, led by Rosanne Haggerty, the nonprofit Community Solutions—a recent winner of the McArthur Foundation’s 100&Change competition—launched Built For Zero, a network of cities and counties committed to ending homelessness, beginning with chronic and veteran homelessness. Since then, it has grown to include more than 80 US communities. So far, 14 of the communities partnering with Community Solutions have effectively ended veteran or chronic homelessness, and more than half have seen statistically significant reductions.
Like the other initiatives discussed here, Community Solutions does not impose a one-size-fits-all model on the communities it works with. Instead, it works with leaders from a range of organizations in participating cities, counties, or regions to form a single, community-wide team whose goal is to achieve a “functional zero” homelessness rate —a state where homelessness is rare overall and, when it occurs, quickly resolved.
