United States Interagency 
 Council on Homelessness          
August 24, 2017
Strengthening the Role of Emergency Shelter Within Effective Crisis Response Systems             
 
Emergency shelter can and must play essential roles within effective, housing-focused crisis response systems.  
 
Our latest brief discusses how shelter can promote dignity and respect for every person, divert people from the homelessness service system when possible, foster low-barrier access to emergency services, and serve as a platform for housing access.   
 
 
Putting 'Housing is Health Care' Into Action to Help End Chronic Homelessness         
 
To improve outcomes for patients, health care systems in a growing number of communities are coming to the table to help address housing needs.
Joshua Bamberger,  Associate Clinical Professor for Family and Community Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and his colleagues profiled nine models worth sharing in a recent report, Innovative Models in Health and Housing.
 
Pathways to Housing PA: Successfully Connecting People Affected by Opioid Use to Housing       
 
 
Pathways to Housing PA, based in Philadelphia, uses Housing First approaches to support individuals' self-directed recovery and community integration, with an emphasis on doing whatever it takes for a person to get and stay housed and be well.
 
How Winston-Salem/Forsyth County, NC, Ended Veteran Homelessness 
 
Partners in Forsyth County benefited from strong collaboration and unyielding leadership from the Mayor of Winston-Salem in order to effectively end Veteran homelessness in October 2015.  
 
Learn more about their efforts from Andrea Kurtz, Senior Director of Housing Strategies at the United Way of Forsyth County.  
 
And congratulations to Lowell, MA, for being the latest community to end Veteran homelessness
Your Feedback Needed to Strengthen the Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness 
 
As we did in 2012 and 2015, we're currently gathering stakeholder input to revise and strengthen the federal strategic plan.