The foundation’s homeless program benchmarking and best practices study identified 10 potential best practices for homeless shelters and programs. In our view, the only objective measure of long term effectiveness of homeless programs is the success rate of its graduates in the years subsequent to departure from the program. Only a limited number of the homeless programs studied maintained contact with graduates of their programs for a period of at least six months to one year. Accordingly, we are only able to observe practices that we believe are potential best practices.

To further assist homeless programs improve their effectiveness and to further develop the potential best practices, our foundation has initiated five pilot implementation projects. They include a home ownership program, a scholarship program, a job training program, an enhanced aftercare program and a tracking database project.