Housing Opportunity and Services Together (HOST) Network Launch:
Financing Services in Public and Mixed-income Housing

The Urban Institute invites you to our upcoming webinar on the Housing Opportunity and Services Together (HOST) Network on Thursday, February 8, from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. EST

HOST focuses on designing and testing effective two-generation strategies to promote the well-being and stability of families who live in subsidized housing. The HOST research team uses various evaluation methods—formative, outcome, participatory, and research demonstration—to produce insights and approaches of value to policymakers, agency executives, resident leaders, developers, and human services providers.

The webinar will launch the HOST Network, highlight resources available on the new HOST Initiative website, where we share lessons from our research and offer guidance and technical assistance on housing as a platform for services. In addition, Rhae Parkes of EJP Consulting, will present on financing services in public and mixed-income housing based on a new brief, which is featured on the HOST website.  

Featured Speakers

• Sue Popkin, Institute Fellow, Director, HOST Initiative, Urban Institute
• Tia Newman, Policy Analyst, Urban Institute; President, Benning Terrace Resident Council 
• Rhae Parkes, Partner, EJP Consulting 

About HOST

The HOST Initiative aims to share insights and guidance about using housing as a platform for services to support and empower families living on the brink. All families want to be self-sufficient and give their children opportunities for a better future. But families in deep, persistent, and intergenerational poverty and who live in underresourced neighborhoods face tremendous barriers to achieving that goal. Even with stable housing, many families face violence, trauma, and mental health issues; food insecurity; substance abuse; discrimination; and other barriers to stability and independence.

The HOST demonstration project provided support services that acknowledge and address those barriers and help families find stable footing. From 2010 to 2015, HOST demonstration sites in four cities explored using public and subsidized housing as a platform for intensive, two-generation interventions.

We hope lessons from the demonstration will inform and improve other efforts to effect large-scale change in low-income neighborhoods. We launched HOST Network to share those lessons and offer guidance and technical assistance for designing, funding, and collaborating on similar models.

• Designing housing as a platform for services. How to design housing with supportive services and access to opportunities so that all families have a chance to thrive
• Financing. How to find and secure funding for bringing robust social services to housing authorities
• Collaborating. How to elevate residents as stakeholders in researching and designing supportive programming and services, how housing authorities and associations can share ideas and best practices, and how to partner with the Urban Institute for technical assistance

HOST Network is a shared learning community of public housing authorities, social service providers, and public housing residents interested in building on lessons from the HOST demonstration.

PHOTO: Wanda Coleman, who wears a mask for severe asthma, clutches her aching knee while watching television with her granddaughter, Jasmine Hodge, in her public housing apartment in New York on Aug. 26, 2014. Photo by Rachelle Blidner/AP

For inquiries regarding this event, please contact [email protected]. Support for this webinar is provided by the Kresge Foundation. For more information on the Urban Institute’s funding principles, go to http://www.urban.org/about/funding-and-annual-reports.​