The A Home For All initiative goes beyond individual programs to create a community where homelessness is rare, brief, and nonrecurring and every person has access to permanent, affordable housing and the resources to sustain it.
Overview
Developed from extensive research, data analysis and strategic collaboration among 250+ organizations and stakeholders, A Home For All is an initiative designed to address all aspects of homelessness and housing instability to ensure every individual and family has a stable roof over their head. Mecklenburg County leaders selected United Way of Greater Charlotte to lead implementation and the organization convenes Implementation Teams and a Technical Committee to drive progress for the initiative.
A Deep Dive: The Implementation Plan
For a more comprehensive look at A Home For All’s history, early stakeholders, priority initiatives and relevant case studies from other U.S. cities, we have made the full Implementation Plan available for your review. This is a data-driven analysis of the challenges we face as a community and the strategic approach that we are taking to address them.
History
In April 2021, to address concerning local trends in affordable housing and homelessness, a group comprised of individuals from Mecklenburg County, City of Charlotte, the Continuum of Care, Charlotte Center City Partners, Bank of America, and Atrium came together to develop and design the foundation for a comprehensive community-driven process.
In January 2022, that group released the A Home For All Strategic Framework, a bold, ambitious plan that was the first of its kind to simultaneously address homelessness and housing. The Framework was developed with extensive community involvement and included nonprofits from across multiple systems and individuals with lived expertise.
Moving The Work Forward
Mecklenburg County leaders selected United Way of Greater Charlotte to lead implementation due to its unique position and connection to key civic, nonprofit and community stakeholders. Each service provider is doing incredibly important work. United Way’s role is to act as the convener, bringing service providers together to design interventions that strengthen the system in which those service providers operate.
This Strategic Framework included 99 initiatives. At the end of July 2023, the full plan was released which included nine initial initiatives that would advance in the coming years. The Unsheltered Pillar of the A Home For All Implementation Plan was introduced in January 2024 after a request to develop a holistic response to the growing concern about our neighbors who are unsheltered in our community.
Initiative Priorities
Out of 99 proposed initiatives, focus has been prioritized on these four key pillars: People, Prevention, Production, and Unsheltered. The table below is an overview of each pillar and the 12 strategic initiatives they encompass.
Initiatives
Unsheltered Pillar
The Unsheltered pillar involves scaling street outreach which will engage individuals and connect them to resources, standing up a street psychiatry program, expanding emergency shelter and housing to create a low-barrier, non-congregate emergency shelter with onsite mental health services, and expanding permanent supportive housing.
People Pillar
The People Pillar focuses on broadening the shift to a system-wide person-directed care model requiring new tools and functions that will work together to make systems more accessible for residents experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity.
Prevention Pillar: Critical Home Repair
The City of Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, and multiple nonprofits have successful home repair programs. To meet the growing demand of low-income homeowners, there would need to be a significant expansion in program funding. This initiative seeks to understand systemic issues that impede efforts to meet the full demand and move from a good to a great critical home repair eco-system.
Prevention Pillar: Legal Advocacy
Legal Aid of North Carolina’s Charlotte Housing Unit has received additional funding from Mecklenburg County to hire additional staff to support the efforts of A Home For All. The Charlotte Housing Unit provides free advice and representation to low-income tenants facing eviction in Mecklenburg County.
Prevention Pillar: Upstream Rental Assistance
COVID-19 demonstrated the importance of providing rental assistance to low-income families to avoid eviction and homelessness. This initiative will take lessons learned to pilot an upstream rental assistance program for broader use to support a larger share of households facing evictions or housing instability. The pilot is expected to launch in early 2025.
Property Provider Recruitment and Retention
This initiative aims to make more affordable housing units available through the recruitment and retention of new and existing property providers. The pilot offers property providers a set of incentives to accept tenants with subsidies or other housing barriers along with giving property providers the ability to engage with dedicated staff who specialize in outreach. Housing Collaborative is the official partner and will focus efforts on increasing affordable housing opportunities for the Charlotte community by launching a large-scale campaign to recruit more property providers through a combination of recruitment and retention incentives.
Prevention Pillar: The Strike Fund
This initiative focuses on exploring the creation of a Strike Fund to preserve multi-family Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing (NOAH). The aim of this fund would be to provide one or more types of financing to developers to preserve rental housing that might otherwise be lost or converted into market-rate housing. This initiative will be moving forward in the coming months.
Production Pillar: Housing Trust Fund
A Home For All supports the recent passing of the $100 million Housing Bond Measure, doubling the Housing Trust Fund for the City of Charlotte. Exploration of a county-wide Housing Trust Fund remains a priority initiative for A Home For All and will move forward in future years.
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Street Outreach Form
Access the Mecklenburg County Street Outreach Referral Form with the link below. Use this form if you see a person or group you believe to be unsheltered and the Street Outreach teams will do their best to have a Street Outreach worker engage with them.
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Email-A Home For All
Receive A Home For All updates in United Way's monthly newsletter, United Voices, and special announcements.
For questions about A Home For All, please email ahomeforall@unitedwaygreaterclt.org.