Housing Initiatives

100 Homes: 

The 100 Homes Campaign was a community effort that included non-profit partners in a collaboration with County staff to house our most vulnerable homeless persons. The 100 Homes Campaign was part of the state’s 1,000 Homes Campaign and the national 100,000 Homes Campaign. It launched in October 2011 with teams of volunteers and County and non-profit staff combing the streets of Arlington in the early morning hours to identify those who were at greatest risk. County and non-profit case managers and housing specialists then worked with individuals to get them housed and stabilized.

We reached the goal of housing 100 homeless Arlingtonians by creatively using existing housing resources and leveraging new resources dedicated specifically to the people identified through the 100 Homes. We housed people through the following programs:

• Arlington County Permanent Supportive Housing — 63 housed
• Housing Grant or Housing Choice Voucher — 12 housed
• Veterans (Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing Voucher) — 11 housed
• Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing — 13 housed
• Mary Marshall Assisted Living Residence — 1 housed

For the 100 people housed, 93 are still in housing. Many of those housed had lived on the streets for years (27 years in one case) and had significant barriers to accessing and maintaining housing.

Zero: 2016

In January 2015 Arlington, along with 74 other communities nationwide, formally committed to ending veteran homelessness by the end of the year. Twelve months later it’s “mission accomplished,” as Arlington moved 20 homeless military veterans from the streets and shelters into permanent, stable housing and achieved functional zero for veteran homelessness in 2015. The initiative is a rigorous follow-on to the 100 Homes Campaign, which helped Arlington house 100 chronically homeless residents in under three years.

Arlington’s effort will be supported by Community Solutions, a national nonprofit based in New York City. The organization will work with Arlington to meet the federal goals set by President Obama to end veteran homelessness by December 2015 and chronic homelessness by December 2016.