New Initiative to Tackle ‘Unsheltered Homelessness’

The White House’s “ALL INside” program hopes to help reduce homelessness 25% by 2025, with an initial focus on Calif. and five U.S. cities.

WASHINGTON – The Biden-Harris administration announced the launch of ALL INside, a first-of-its-kind initiative to address unsheltered homelessness across the country.

It calls ALL INside a key part of All In: The Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness, which set a goal to reduce homelessness 25% by 2025.

Through the ALL INside initiative, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) and its 19 federal member agencies will start off by partnering with state and local governments in six places: Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Phoenix Metro, Seattle, and the State of California. To accelerate ongoing efforts by local leaders, the White House will offer tailored support to participating communities. They’ll:

• Embed a federal official in each community to accelerate locally-driven strategies and enact system-level changes to reduce unsheltered homelessness
• Deploy teams across the federal government to identify opportunities for regulatory relief and flexibilities, navigate federal funding streams and facilitate a peer learning network across communities

In addition, the Administration will launch new efforts to address major barriers to housing, health care, and other support for people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. They include:

• The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will provide technical assistance to help communities leverage federal programs like Medicaid to provide housing-related supportive services and behavioral health care.
• The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Social Security Administration (SSA) and HHS will collaborate to address barriers that people may encounter when obtaining various forms of government-issued identification and other critical documents.
• The SSA will work with communities and the federal ALL INside team to use data-sharing and regulatory flexibilities that can help smooth access to support services like housing vouchers or Medicaid.
• The U.S. Department of Labor will connect communities with local workforce boards and Job Corps sites to tap into local and state government employment opportunities for unsheltered youth.
• The Federal Emergency Management Agency will provide technical assistance to communities.
• HUD will help communities troubleshoot barriers to connecting people with rental assistance or housing programs.

Additional USICH member agencies, including AmeriCorps, Department of Agriculture, Department of Justice, Department of Energy, Department of Transportation, the General Services Administration, and the Department of the Treasury have also made commitments to support the ALL INside communities.

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