Building the Frontline: How Shared Housing and Foster Care Strengthen the Homelessness Safety Net
Building the Frontline: How Shared Housing and Foster Care Strengthen the Homelessness Safety Net
Homelessness is often treated as a single-point failure—someone loses housing and falls into crisis. In reality, homelessness is most often the result of gaps in the system, where people who need support don’t have access to stable, appropriate housing before they reach the street, the emergency room, or jail.
One of the most overlooked parts of the homelessness response system is the frontline: the housing and care options that prevent crisis in the first place.
Why the Frontline Matters
Emergency shelters, outreach teams, and crisis response programs are essential. But they are not designed to carry the full weight of unmet behavioral health, disability, and care needs. When communities lack intermediate housing and support options, people are pushed further downstream—into homelessness, repeated hospitalizations, or institutional settings that are costly and disruptive.
This is where shared housing models, adult foster care, and community-based residential supports play a critical role.
Building Community-Based Care
Organizations like Unity Homes are currently in development, working to establish adult mental health foster homes in rural communities. Once operational, these homes will provide 24-hour residential support for individuals living with serious and persistent mental illness—offering stability, supervision, and care in a community-based setting.
When these models come online, they help:
Prevent homelessness before it begins
Reduce reliance on emergency rooms and hospitals
Relieve pressure on crisis response systems
Keep people connected to their communities
Provide appropriate alternatives to institutional care
Planned expansion into additional behavioral health and IDD foster homes further strengthens this continuum over time.
Shared Housing as a Stabilizing Tool
Shared housing models—whether foster care, congregate living, or intentional shared homes—allow communities to stretch limited housing resources while increasing support. When designed intentionally, shared housing:
Creates affordability without sacrificing stability
Builds natural support networks
Reduces isolation
Provides accountability and structure
For many people at risk of homelessness, shared housing can be the difference between remaining housed and entering crisis.
A Systems Perspective on Homelessness
From a systems standpoint, homelessness prevention isn’t just about adding shelter beds or housing units—it’s about building layers of support that catch people earlier.
Adult foster care, shared housing, and community-based residential models operate upstream, where interventions are more humane, less costly, and more effective.
At Homeless Solutions Consultants, we work with communities and organizations to identify where these gaps exist and how to build practical solutions that fit local context. This includes supporting early-stage initiatives as they move from vision to viable operation and ensuring new housing and care models align with broader homelessness response systems.
Building What’s Missing
Homelessness is not solved by a single program. It is addressed by systems that work together—from prevention and care to housing and long-term stability.
Community-based foster care and shared housing are foundational infrastructure. Strengthening the frontline means fewer people falling through the cracks—and fewer lives disrupted by crises that could have been prevented.
Building these options isn’t just compassionate. It’s smart systems design.
By,
Matthew Vorderstrasse, M.A., PHM