The Florida Senate

The Legislature finds that many communities plan to manage homelessness rather than plan to end it.

The Legislature also finds that for most of the past two decades, public and private solutions to homelessness have focused on providing individuals and families who are experiencing homelessness with emergency shelter, transitional housing, or a combination of both. While emergency shelter programs may provide critical access to services for individuals and families in crisis, they often fail to address their long-term needs.

The Legislature further finds that Housing First is an alternative approach to the current system of emergency shelter or transitional housing which tends to reduce the length of time of homelessness and has proven to be cost-effective.

It is therefore the intent of the Legislature to encourage homeless continuums of care to adopt the Housing First approach to ending homelessness for individuals and families.

The Housing First approach to homelessness differs from traditional approaches by providing housing assistance, case management, and support services responsive to individual or family needs after housing is obtained. By using this approach when appropriate, communities can significantly reduce the amount of time that individuals and families are homeless and prevent further episodes of homelessness. Housing First emphasizes that social services provided to enhance individual and family well-being can be more effective when people are in their own home, and:

The Housing First approach addresses the societal causes of homelessness and advocates for the immediate return of individuals and families into housing and communities. Housing First provides a critical link between the emergency and transitional housing system and community-based social service, educational, and health care organizations and consists of four components: