The success of U.S. programs during the Pandemic recession in preventing homelessness is eye opening.

The biggest lesson is that instead of looking just at people who are homeless now, we need to act early to prevent the disaster coming down the tracks – precariously housed workers losing jobs and falling into destitution.

Homelessness is not a static problem with a fixed population, it is a flow of humanity tumbling down the economic ladder. We cannot house our way out of homelessness without radically shrinking the crowd of people cascading into homelessness

The homelessness that we prevent and do not see is just as important as helping the people who we have failed and see before us on the street. Early intervention protects public costs and human dignity.

Our report, Breaking the Fall, identifies the risk factors of unemployed workers who are most vulnerable to homelessness, and it analyzes the income and housing interventions that curtailed homelessness in the pandemic recession.