The Future is Collective Case Studies of Collective Social Innovation 2025

Community Solutions Creating a future in which homelessness is solvable, not inevitable Background In the US, a record number of people experienced homelessness in 2023, with more than 650,000 people sleeping without permanent shelter on a single night. Current trends show that more people are struggling to find and afford permanent housing, with nearly 1 million people in 2023 experiencing homelessness for the first time.3 Despite the fact that local response systems continue to add temporary shelter beds and importantly, invest in housing, the rate of homelessness is rising faster than these systems can keep up. Community Solutions is a non-profit organization building a movement to create a lasting end to homelessness. The organization works with communities to go beyond managing homelessness to solving the problem, ensuring that when people do experience homelessness, it is rare, brief and nonrecurring. The organization also works with communities to ensure that this achievement is sustained over time, even when local conditions change. Community Solutions’ work was pioneered by Rosanne Haggerty in the 1990s in New York City. Over time, she and her team recognized that one of the key challenges to ending homelessness is the distributed and fragmented system of homelessness response. Community Solutions’ Built for Zero methodology evolved with the participation of community teams across the country who have joined with Community Solutions to develop a solution. Built for Zero involves uniting all stakeholders addressing homelessness in a community to operate as a single team and pursue collective success: making homelessness rare and brief for all. Technically, this milestone is called “functional zero” and indicates that over time, a community has demonstrated that they can rehouse anyone who becomes homeless within 30 days and established a system to stay ahead of housing crises and homelessness. Since 2011, 44 communities have measurably reduced homelessness and 15 communities have made homelessness rare and brief for veterans and/or individuals experiencing chronic homelessness. Headquartered: New York, USYear founded Regions represented Entity typeGroups assembled Organizations involved Constituents represented142 communities in the US; 103 international communities in five countries Non-profit organization2011 US, Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, UKApproximately 3,800 organizations (communities assemble 5-30 organizations each) Communities each represent hundreds of clients, staff, board members, funders and volunteers02 Number of employees Budget range90 $21-25full time millionCOLLECTIVE ACTION CASE STUDY 3. Soucy, D., M. Janes and A. Hall. (2024). State of Homelessness: 2024 Edition. National Alliance to End Homelessness. https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state- of-homelessness/. Jeff Song Photography The Future is Collective: Case Studies of Collective Social Innovation 15