Ending homelessness isn’t just possible — it’s already happening!
Cities and counties just like yours are changing how local housing systems work to ensure an end to homelessness that lasts and leaves no one behind.
Built for Zero is movement of more than 80 communities working to measurably end homelessness, starting with veteran and chronic homelessness.
What is Functional Zero?
A community has ended veteran homelessness when the number of veterans experiencing homelessness is
less than the number of veterans a community has proven it can house in a routine month. It has ended chronic homelessness when the number of people experiencing chronic homelessness is zero, or if not zero, then either 3 or .1% of the total number of individuals reported in the most recent point-in-time count, whichever is greater.
Stories of Success
Charlotte/Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, reduces veteran homelessness by 30%
Mary Ann Priester has been working to end homelessness for the past 18 years, ever since interning at a homeless day center in college. Today she is a Homelessness Management Information System (HMIS) Administrator in Mecklenburg County and she has stayed in the work for one simple reason. “Everyone should have safe, decent, affordable housing,” […]
Harnessing data to end veteran homelessness in Jacksonville, Florida
A veteran and his family arrived in Jacksonville, Florida in search of work. But it was early March, 2020, and within weeks the pandemic was shutting down the country and putting millions out of work. Without the prospect of work, without savings, and with the virus spreading, the family found themselves homeless by late March. […]
Lynchburg, Virginia: Functional Zero Case Study
In February of 2020, the Central Virginia Continuum of Care became the 12th community in the United States to end veteran homelessness as a part of Built for Zero, a movement of more than 80 cities and counties in the U.S. committed to measurably ending homelessness, one population at a time.
“People think ending homelessness is not achievable, because the system wasn’t designed to end it: it was designed to manage it. But if you redesign it with zero in mind, it can be ended.”
Brenda O’Connell and her community of Lake County, Illinois, ended veteran homelessness with the help of Built for Zero.
