Fighting homelessness is not just about finding safe places for people living on the streets

right now.

It's also about reaching out to people before they've lost housing.

What are the creative solutions three steps before the full blown emergency?

That is Sean Reed with Friendship Place, a nonprofit that helps unhoused people in

Washington, D.C.

He told NPR last year that a little bit of help at the right time can keep someone from

slipping into homelessness in the first place, things like paying a parking ticket, getting

a driver's license reinstated or a car repaired.

And if you can do an $800 car repair that keeps them in work that is then able to pay the

$2,000 a month rent, you've addressed the issue earlier on at a lower cost.

This idea is a cornerstone of the Biden administration's approach to homelessness.

Jeff Olivett heads the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness which helped craft that plan.

He says prevention should be done in a systematic way, focused especially on those most vulnerable

people who are leaving prison, addiction or mental health treatment, foster care.

At those critical moments of transition, we have an opportunity.

We know where people are, we could bridge that inpatient or incarceration or foster care

experience straight into housing.

It does not have to result in shelter or living in a tent.

But there are lots of people struggling to hold on to housing who don't fit into any

of those categories, people for whom a few hundred dollars or a few thousand could be

the difference between a bedroom and a car or a tent.

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