Core Characteristics & Nuances of Rapid Rehousing
Core Characteristics and Nuances of Rapid Rehousing
Rapid re-housing has three core components:
- Housing Identification
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- The RRH provider helps the household identify and secure housing that works for them. This could include:
- Helping clients find a housing unit. If possible, the household gets a say in where they live. Generally, housing is on the private market.
- Communicating with landlords. The RRH provider can help work around barriers like landlord concerns about tenant qualifications or tenant eviction history.
- Helping clients understand and sign a lease.
- Clients should sign a standard lease agreement.
- Clients should sign a standard lease agreement.
- Helping clients find a housing unit. If possible, the household gets a say in where they live. Generally, housing is on the private market.
- The household should be able to afford the unit after rental assistance ends
- In high-cost markets, households might be rent burdened after their RRH subsidy ends.
- The RRH provider helps the household identify and secure housing that works for them. This could include:
- Rent and Move-in Assistance
- Rent assistance is time-limited (usually less than 6 months, though it may go as long as two years).
- Rent assistance can pay for a deposit, moving costs, and some/all of the household’s rent. RRH rent assistance sometimes serves as a “bridge” until the household secures long term rent assistance (like Section 8).
- Clients receive the minimum rent assistance required to keep their housing.
- Rent assistance is time-limited (usually less than 6 months, though it may go as long as two years).
- Case Management
- RRH case management is focused on resolving the household’s immediate crisis (homelessness) and helping the household achieve long-term housing stability.
- Because RRH case management is so focused on housing, case managers typically do not address all the service needs they might identify in a household. Instead, they focus specifically on barriers to housing stability.
- If desired, the case manager connects the household to community-based resources that the household can keep using after RRH assistance ends.
- Because RRH case management is so focused on housing, case managers typically do not address all the service needs they might identify in a household. Instead, they focus specifically on barriers to housing stability.
- Unless a monthly check-in with a case manager is required by law/funding requirements, all case management services are voluntary. The client sets their own goals and chooses which services to use.
- RRH case management is focused on resolving the household’s immediate crisis (homelessness) and helping the household achieve long-term housing stability.