By Lina Chankar.
In San Diego, the most common way to assist the homeless has historically been through transitional housing programs. These offer months or even years of services to help and provide temporary shelter for people as they work toward finding permanent housing.
The federal government, though, is moving toward funding a different approach to housing the homeless. The model is called housing first and it prioritizes getting homeless people into permanent housing quickly rather than focusing on interventions first.
The policy change has left San Diego service providers like Father Joe’s scrambling to embrace the new model or risk losing funding.
On this week’s San Diego Explained, VOSD’s Lisa Halverstadt and NBC 7 San Diego’s Monica Dean shed light on the shift that’s under way and detail why it’s important.
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