We don’t hope communities can end homelessness — we know they can. Every day, we see people come together around a shared vision of the kind of community they want to be. They are embracing a goal, and they are solving homelessness together.
In 2024, against the backdrop of a divisive election and the U.S. Supreme Court decision permitting the criminalization of homelessness, another story played out. More than 180 U.S. communities have adopted Community Solutions’ Built for Zero model for making homelessness rare and brief and have committed to the collective, data-driven work required to reach this goal. Across the country, mayors, business leaders, and state agency leaders from both political parties reached out in record numbers. Despite homelessness increasing to over 770,000 in the annual point-in-time estimated count and record-breaking housing shortages affecting most of the country, many Built for Zero communities continued to achieve reductions in homelessness. In the face of national trends, progress in large cities was particularly noteworthy.
The MacArthur Foundation’s 100&Change award enabled Community Solutions to dream big, investing $100 million towards the audacious goal of reaching a tipping point on homelessness within five years, with a proven roadmap and conditions primed to make homelessness rare and brief throughout the United States.
As we reflect on Year Three, the midpoint of our project, we saw steady progress toward our “proof point” goals, which demonstrate population-level reductions in homelessness and measurable system changes. We are also building on important learnings from the past year and taking new steps to translate the growing body of evidence that homelessness is solvable into a tipping point and an enduring paradigm shift in response to homelessness.
Throughout 2024, Community Solutions drew on the insights of our evaluation partner, ORS Impact, and findings from an extensive communications research project to evolve our work with communities and introduce new lanes of work toward our tipping point aim.
How We Work
The Built for Zero model guides communities in changing the way they work. Communities measure success by reducing homelessness at the population level and building resilient infrastructure, data, and partnerships to make homelessness rare and brief. They are using person-specific, real-time data to understand how many people experience homelessness each month and see inflow and outflow patterns that can be improved. Policy changes, stronger governance structures, flexible funding, and streamlined access to housing accelerate progress.
A meaningful strategic shift in 2024 was the evolution of Built for Zero’s theory of change, as it expanded its focus beyond functional zero — the ultimate measure of homelessness becoming rare and brief for a single group — also to recognize major milestones on the path to functional zero.
Built for Zero Communities
The Built for Zero network expanded to more than 180 communities.* Another 35 communities received light-touch assistance. The network includes:
*Including communities that are part of statewide coaching efforts
Accomplishments and Challenges
This impact report explores key insights from 2024 and reinforces our commitment to iterative, responsive shifts that strengthen our approach each year. With the support of the MacArthur Foundation’s five-year challenge, we continue to evolve our work and embrace lessons learned to demonstrate that we can make homelessness rare and brief for everyone.
Strategic Shifts in Our Approach
As we celebrated various milestones, we leaned into areas for improvement. Along with the insights provided by our evaluation partner, ORS Impact, 2024 was guided by the findings of an extensive communications research project conducted in partnership with Genii Earth to better understand the challenge of making the solvability of homelessness believable. Through a series of interviews with 75 thought leaders working across a wide range of domains, focus groups with Community Solutions staff, community leaders, and individuals with lived experience of homelessness, and facilitated workshops with journalists, government officials, and others, it became clear that a shift in our strategy was needed.
We recognized that addressing the cultural challenge of making homelessness rare and brief will require a new story of the issue, new allies, new messages, and a close collaboration with large cities to showcase visible reductions in unsheltered homelessness.
Consequently, throughout 2024, Community Solutions deepened our work with large cities and widened our coaching focus to the positive resolution of unsheltered homelessness. This pivot has contributed to several of these cities — including Minneapolis, San Diego, and the Metro Denver area — steadily reducing homelessness despite strong headwinds.
Leaning Into Infrastructure & Impact
Additional states embraced the Built for Zero model to guide their response to homelessness. In 2024, Kansas and Maryland adopted the Built for Zero method and invested at the state level to align state and local efforts. Illinois expanded the number of communities that implemented Built for Zero quality data standards. At year’s end, Washington adopted the Built for Zero model to guide their work to end youth homelessness, beginning in 2025.
In large cities across the U.S., Built for Zero provided a framework for building allies and coordinating support to reduce homelessness among the unsheltered and veterans. More and more, large city mayors have stepped in as key partners in building strong support systems, setting bold, measurable goals, and drawing on the Built for Zero model to drive accountability and outcomes.
And while big cities dominated the news, remarkable results emerged in smaller communities like Abilene, Texas, where they achieved functional zero for veterans, chronic, families, and, in 2024, youth. Abilene’s focus in 2025 will be on reaching functional zero for all single adults while maintaining functional zero for all other groups. This would make Abilene the first community in the country to achieve functional zero for all homelessness.
Harnessing the Power of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data & Technology
Community Solutions broadened our focus on technology and areas where AI might transform housing systems and accelerate progress toward our tipping point aim. We convened an international group of practitioners, technologists, and ethicists at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center to scope potential use cases for accelerating reductions in homelessness. Three of which will be tested in 2025.
Because data capacity continues to vary significantly, and many communities struggle to maintain consistent data quality and transform data insights into system improvements, Community Solutions convened the three largest vendors of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)-mandated Homeless Management Information Systems (HMIS). With them, we are exploring ways to create the reports and tools that communities need and make these features available as part of the basic packages that these vendors provide.
Because appropriate data standards drive visibility, accountability, and learning and enable the collaboration required to make homelessness rare and brief, we continue to advance modernized data standards as our federal policy priority. We found notable bipartisan interest in 2024, and we are hopeful that progress will continue with the new Administration.
A final word
We are enormously grateful to our funding partners who enable us to support local teams throughout the country and to demonstrate together that homelessness is solvable.
Read more from our 2024 Impact and Learning Report
