Announcing our new Housing 2025 goal!

St. Vincent de Paul has a new goal for its Housing 2025 initiative: For every one person permanently rehoused after experiencing homelessness, the nonprofit will prevent homelessness for twelve individuals through bill assistance to keep them in their homes.

Addressing alarming trends

The goal is a response to a Maricopa County homelessness trend where more people are entering homelessness than are exiting. According to a report from Maricopa Association of Governments, for every 10 people rehoused, approximately 19 people enter into homelessness (roughly a one to two ratio).

“St. Vincent de Paul’s 12:1 ratio, focused on homelessness prevention, challenges ourselves to do what we can to reverse the rising trend of homelessness that service agencies are seeing in the community. We realize that goal may be eyebrow-raising, but the need is eyebrow-raising. With our network throughout central and northern Arizona, we are ready for the challenge.” SVdP’s Chief Program Officer Jessica Berg says. 

To achieve this goal SVdP seeks to prevent homelessness for 15,840 individuals by the end of 2025, while also rehousing 1,320 individuals experiencing homelessness in that same timeframe.

The importance of prevention

SVdP sees preventing homelessness as action-oriented, cost-effective, and a trauma alleviating solution for the most vulnerable in the community. 

Arizona spends up to $47,200 per homeless person annually on shelter, treatment, food, and other support services according to a “Homeless Spending in Arizona” report by the Common Sense Institute. 

This is far more than the cost of preventing homelessness in the first place. SVdP’s Homelessness Prevention team estimates that a low-income household living paycheck-to-paycheck needs $2,000 to avoid homelessness during a crisis — significantly less expensive than the annual cost of services for an individual experiencing homelessness. 

“Preventing homelessness helps break cycles before they begin,” Berg says. “What starts as a temporary crisis, like an unexpected car repair or medical emergency, can quickly create a budget shortfall for rent and put someone at risk of eviction. Stepping in to cover those shortfalls before evictions occur ensures that temporary crises don’t turn into downward spirals with long-term negative trajectories for people and the community as a whole.”

When SVdP intervenes before someone becomes homeless, it not only preserves someone’s home, dignity and safety, but it also prevents the dangerous outcomes, public health issues and blight that can come with street living.

"Prevention is a win for the person in crisis and also a win for our community,” says Shannon Clancy, SVdP’s Rob and Melani Walton Endowed CEO. “No person should have to sleep on the street. Our neighborhoods and businesses and the people in them need to be healthy. We all want to live in a community where everyone has a healthy, safe place to live. This economic, social, public health, and moral crisis impacts all of us and we have a responsibility and an opportunity to address it together. Homelessness prevention is one proactive piece of the solution."

SVdP's approach to homelessness prevention

Through interventions such as landlord negotiation, home visits, coaching, legal services support, and financial assistance for rent and utilities, SVdP prevents families from falling into homelessness. It executes this work through a centralized Homelessness Prevention team and more than 80 neighborhood service centers operated out of Catholic Churches by Vincentian volunteers.

While tackling its homelessness prevention goal, SVdP will continue its rehousing efforts for people experiencing homelessness at the same increased pace, which was the focus of the original Housing 2025 goal. In July 2024, the nonprofit surpassed its original goal to move 2,025 people experiencing homelessness into permanent housing by 2025. 

“The early success of Housing 2025 demonstrates what’s possible,” Clancy says. “We can reverse the homelessness ratio, but we can’t do it alone. Working together as a community, we can stop homelessness before it starts and build a future where no family or individual has to endure the trauma of losing their home.”