The National Alliance to End Homelessness is a nonprofit, non-partisan, organization committed to preventing and ending homelessness in the United States.

The Alliance works to prevent and end homelessness in the following ways: Improving Policy The National Alliance to End Homelessness is a leading voice on federal homelessness policy. From advocating for improved federal policy to analyzing enacted and proposed legislation, the Alliance actively engages in the legislative process. The Alliance works collaboratively with public, private, and nonprofit partners to develop, analyze, and advocate for policy solutions to homelessness. Building Capacity The Alliance provides capacity-building assistance through its Center for Capacity Building to help communities turn policy solutions and proven best practices into viable, on-the-ground programs. The Alliance provides communities across the country with best practices, how-to kits, and technical assistance trainings to help them implement solutions developed through policy, research, and practice. Educating Opinion Leaders The Homelessness Research Institute (HRI) – the research and education arm of the National Alliance to End Homelessness – builds the intellectual capital around solutions to homelessness. HRI advances data and research so that policymakers, practitioners, and the public have the best information about trends in homelessness and emerging solutions.

The Alliance works with a network of 10,000 partners across the country to identify the most cost-effective and efficient solutions. Each year the Alliance hosts two conferences bringing together 3,200 individuals experiencing homelessness, service providers, policymakers, researchers and leaders in business and philanthropy. These conferences allow individuals to learn from each other and share new ideas, creating more effective programs across the country. The Alliance also convenes working groups that meet throughout the year. These groups include the leading national scholars in the field of homelessness, practitioners from across the country, and local and state and federal decision makers who work to accelerate the adoption of solutions that are cost effective, data driven, and that will ultimately accomplish the goal of ending homelessness.

Our mission is to end homelessness. Ultimately we measure our effectiveness by monitoring the overall change in homelessness across the country. We also measure progress by the number of communities we help adopt best practices and federal resources available for these programs.

Even in these tough economic times, communities are reporting a decrease in homelessness. Since 2009 the largest declines have been among individuals who are experiencing long-term homeless (chronic homelessness), 24%, and Veterans, 50%. The number of individuals experiencing chronic homelessness on a given day has declined 23,672 from 2009 to 2019. The size of the Veteran homeless population decreased from 73,367 in 2009 to 37,085 in 2019. One solution the Alliance has identified as helping to make progress in ending homelessness is rapid re-housing. Rapid re-housing is broadly defined as moving homeless people very quickly back to housing with short term rental assistance and linkages to services in the community. Results from communities that implement rapid re-housing show that it is more effective and less expensive than either shelter or transitional housing. As a result, adopting rapid re-housing not only improves outcomes for individuals and families, but also allows communities to end homelessness for more people. With guidance from the Alliance and its partners, the federal policy infrastructure has been shifting in recent years to better support and promote rapid re-housing. With this shift, communities across the country are more readily implementing this effective intervention.