Pay for Success – Permanent Supportive Housing Demonstration

Anchorage received a major boost to efforts to alleviate chronic homelessness and reduce community costs through a $1.3 million grant from the U.S. Departments of Housing and Urban Development and Justice for a Pay for Success Permanent Supportive Housing Demonstration.

This is a unique opportunity for Alaska to test the effectiveness of using a Pay for Success financing model to fund Permanent Supportive Housing, using a Housing First approach, for people experiencing homelessness with frequent contact with the homeless services, criminal justice, and health care systems.  United Way of Anchorage received the grant and will manage implementation of the demonstration project.

Pay for Success is an innovative financing model that leverages philanthropic and private dollars to provide assistance up front, with the government paying after they generate results. Pay for Success provides flexibility for state and local governments to implement evidence-based solutions, to test promising innovations, and to scale programs that work based on measurable results.

Permanent Supportive Housing is a proven solution to chronic homelessness, combining housing with wrap-around social services, that has increased housing stability and demonstrated improvements in health, while also lowering public costs by stopping the revolving door between crisis services.

Click here to view the official press release.