Know the local system
Maintain an accurate picture of shelters, outreach, transportation, sanitation, health, and housing resources.
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Community playbook
Roles for city, state, and federal government
A practical, nonpartisan framework for public agencies to improve coordination, remove avoidable barriers, and strengthen the capacity of local communities and service providers.
Use what you can actually sustain.
Choose the parts of this guide that fit your role, resources, risk level, and community.
Quick start
Four principles to keep in mind
Reduce friction
Look for unnecessary administrative barriers that keep qualified providers or residents from using programs.
Coordinate around gaps
Providers, businesses, residents, and people with lived experience often see different parts of the same problem.
Measure outcomes
Track whether interventions reduce repeated crises, improve housing stability, and connect people to useful services.
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City and county government: coordinate the place
Local government is closest to the day-to-day interaction between public space, businesses, service providers, residents, police, fire/EMS, sanitation, transportation, and people experiencing homelessness.
- ✓Maintain a current public inventory of emergency shelter, outreach, day services, public transportation, sanitation, extreme-weather options, and other local resources.
- ✓Create regular coordination meetings focused on concrete service gaps rather than only individual incidents or encampments.
- ✓Give service providers a clear contact for recurring barriers involving transportation, permits, public space, sanitation, emergency response, and referrals.
- ✓Use data from providers and lived experience to distinguish between a shortage of services and a failure to connect people with services that already exist.
- ✓When enforcement is necessary for specific conduct or property rules, pair it with clear information about available alternatives where practical.
02
State government: connect systems across communities
People routinely cross city and county lines for shelter, health care, jobs, treatment, benefits, or family support.
- ✓Improve coordination among housing, behavioral health, health care, workforce, transportation, disability, veteran, child/family, and reentry systems.
- ✓Make statewide program information and eligibility rules understandable enough that local providers can explain them accurately.
- ✓Where possible, reduce duplicated reporting and administrative burdens that consume staff time at smaller providers.
- ✓Support statewide data and resource-discovery systems while allowing local organizations to update the information people actually use.
- ✓Evaluate whether transportation gaps between communities prevent people from using services for which they otherwise qualify.
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Federal government: fund, research, and set broad frameworks
Federal agencies can support states and communities without assuming every locality has the same housing market, transportation network, or service system.
- ✓Provide transparent program rules, research, funding opportunities, and national data that communities can adapt to local conditions.
- ✓Simplify or align reporting requirements where doing so reduces administrative cost without sacrificing accountability.
- ✓Evaluate programs using meaningful outcomes such as housing stability, health, safety, employment, and repeat system use rather than only counting contacts or expenditures.
- ✓Publish usable evidence about what interventions worked, for which populations, and under what conditions so local communities can make informed choices.
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Use community capacity rather than replacing it
Public programs and private/community efforts are not mutually exclusive.
- ✓Contract with or support capable local organizations when they already have trusted relationships and relevant expertise.
- ✓Create mechanisms for smaller nonprofits, churches, businesses, and community groups to participate without requiring them to become large bureaucracies.
- ✓Protect accountability for public funds while keeping procurement, grants, and partnership processes understandable.
- ✓Treat government as one part of a network that also includes families, employers, landlords, service providers, volunteers, and other institutions.