Created in 1988, Beyond Shelter's "Housing First" Program for Homeless Families is an innovative, cost-effective approach to ending and preventing family homelessness. The program helps homeless parents and children move as quickly as possible into affordable rental housing, and then provides families with six months to one full year of individualized case management support to enable them to attain improved social and economic well-being. Homeless families are referred to Beyond Shelter's program by more than 70 agencies - primarily shelter providers - for assistance in accessing resources to pay for housing and finding landlords willing to rent directly to them.

Since its inception, the "housing first" methodology, also known as Rapid ReHousing, has helped over four thousand homeless families - predominantly single mothers with children - to rebuild their lives in permanent rental housing located throughout Los Angeles County. Over the years, the "housing first" approach has become widely recognized as a model for ending family homelessness. It has now been adopted by the Federal Government as the leading strategy to combat family homelessness nationally.

Beyond Shelter's Housing Resources Department assists homeless families enrolled in the "Housing First" Program to access and move into permanent, affordable housing. Housing Resources Specialists seek out property owners and managers willing to rent to families who might not otherwise qualify for leases. Staff assist with lease negotiations, educate tenants regarding their rights and responsibilities and maintain relationships with landlords so that crisis intervention can occur immediately and a recurrence of homelessness can be averted. Both the City and County of Los Angeles allocate a small number of Section 8 rental assistance vouchers to Beyond Shelter each year for families in need of an ongoing housing subsidy. However, most families in the program obtain and afford permanent housing through a combination of public assistance benefits and part-time or full-time employment.

Beyond Shelter operates HPRP Programs - Homelessness Prevention and Rapid ReHousing - in the cities of Long Beach, Downey, Lynwood, and Baldwin Park. The HPRP Programs provide time-limited financial assistance and case management services to homeless and near homeless families and individuals whose housing stability has been impacted by the economic recession. The purpose of these programs is to keep households who have experienced job loss, significant income reductions, and/or other economic crises from losing their housing, or to re-house them as quickly as possible if they are literally homeless. Beyond Shelter provides rapid rehousing services in Long Beach, and prevention and rapid rehousing services in Downey, Lynwood, and Baldwin Park. Staff assist with eviction prevention, housing search/relocation, lease negotiation, employment services coordination, and case management services focused on housing retention, including money management. As one of the federal government's economic stimulus programs, Beyond Shelter's HPRP Programs are short-term and will cease operations once all funds have been expended, but no later than Fall 2012.

In an era of welfare reform, Beyond Shelter's Employment Services Department seeks to help families become self-sufficient and off of government assistance. In addition to job placement support, an array of services is available to help clients reach their goals, including access to job listings, computers for their job search, and tutorials in typing and basic skills. Under Beyond Shelter's "team approach," a case manager and employment counselor work collaboratively on a client's behalf. This methodology was part of a 30-month Welfare-to-Work Demonstration Project by the U.S. Department of Labor from 1999-2001.

Service-enriched housing represents the incorporation of "services coordination" into affordable rental housing for the low-income population at-large, not necessarily targeted to those who are at-risk or with special needs. Beyond Shelter's service-enriched apartment complexes located in Central and South Los Angeles have provided the agency with a "laboratory" to test and refine this methodology. The properties include access to social services provided by an services coordinator, who oversees the provision of crisis intervention and case management services. Additionally, each service-enriched site has community rooms for classes and meetings. Resident management committees actively participate in many areas of operation and in the coordination of activities.

Beyond Shelter is leading a major Neighborhood Revitalization Project in South Los Angeles, which developed after the Civil Unrest in 1992, in response to critical housing and social services shortages in the area. In 1993 Beyond Shelter initiated the project with the development of Umoja Apartments (House of Unity), a 30-unit service-enriched housing complex which opened in 1996.

In 2001, Beyond Shelter opened Broadway Village I, a one-stop, multi-service center which includes the Beyond Shelter Neighborhood Services Center and a Child Development Center. A 16-unit service-enriched housing complex opened in July 2004.

In 2006, Beyond Shelter opened Broadway Village II, a 50-unit service-enriched housing complex. This project includes the Karsten Neighborhood Resource Center which opened in 2009, providing social services programs to residents in the community.

Central Village, an 85-unit mixed-use development over retail space, opened in 2009. This is a public/private partnership, built over 50,000 square feet of commercial space, including the first supermarket in the community in over five years.

The Beyond Shelter Housing Development Corp. is the development affiliate of Beyond Shelter, developing, managing and operating affordable housing and neighborhood resource centers in low-income neighborhoods, with a focus on service-enriched housing. BSHDC has developed several service-enriched and mixed-use housing projects primarily in Central and South Los Angeles, with additional projects in early stages of development. Each housing site offers a variety of programs for adults and children, including parenting and adult education seminars, as well as tutoring, enrichment and after-school activities.