As housing markets across the nation are challenged with affordability, incorporating a shared housing culture to increase rapid exits from homelessness is now a priority. Expending all available federal housing assistance is also a priority. All housing homelessness systems are called now to be skillful and adaptive. The Shared Housing Institute, established in the fall of 2020, supports the expa
nsion of this rapid-solution housing option for people at risk of, or moving out of, homelessness. Communities that have engaged in shared housing expansions for people exiting homelessness include the cities of San Francisco, San Diego and Salt Lake City, and the State of Connecticut. All sites have begun to successfully apply effective system-based shared housing strategies after in-depth support from the Shared Housing Institute (SHI). The Institute partners are a network of Shared Housing leaders from across the country delivering capacity-building to system leaders, program directors and front-line providers for:
• establishing and sustaining leadership support for increasing shared housing options,
• deploying landlord engagement strategies for shared housing,
• reframing the way staff talk to clients and landlords about shared housing options,
• standardizing a roommate matching and housing stabilization approach,
• coordinating a system-wide conflict mediation training,
• building a monitoring and evaluation plan for shared housing placements. The founder of the Shared Housing Institute (SHI), Jamie Taylor PhD., worked with large cities and states for over two years to develop an extensive Shared Housing Training Toolkit. The SHI now delivers a comprehensive, experiential-based shared housing approach to counties and states across the country. Within this intensive system-wide capacity-building, hands-on tools and resources are shared and locally adapted to be immediately used for landlord outreach, shared housing client messaging, roommate match guidance, roommate agreements, conflict mediation and How to Be a Good Roommate guidance. The SHI 2021 goal is to expand shared housing capacities in over 25 housing/homeless systems, supporting over 10,000 new shared housing placements across the US.
