Through the Washington Youth and Families Fund (WYFF), Building Changes supports community-driven homelessness prevention through funding, technical assistance, peer learning, training, and capacity building, informed by lived expertise and lessons learned from previous cohorts.
Over the last nine months we have developed new strategies for our two separate cohorts serving Youth and Young Adults (YYA) and Families. While the two cohorts take different approaches, both share values that unite them in purpose. Each effort is helping reshape how local systems prevent homelessness by supporting approaches that are community-informed, culturally responsive, and designed to better serve those who are overrepresented and underserved.
WYFF YYA Strategy: Building a Diversion-First System
Our WYFF YYA strategy builds on the success of the state’s Homelessness Prevention and Diversion Fund (HPDF), and its role in supporting localized efforts to end homelessness by a functional zero definition through a first-of-its kind centralized Diversion model that has scaled across both urban and rural communities. This program has historically operated under a high level of technical assistance support and relied upon external facilitators for training support.
We will be supporting WYFF YYA grantees at the local level and developing a Diversion First infrastructure that will sustain this work over time. With these structures in place, communities will be even more responsive now and in the long-term.
WYFF Families Strategy: Culturally-Attuned Healing-Centered Practices & Prevention
Healing and housing stability share a reciprocal relationship. We know that homelessness and economic insecurity are traumatic and reflect a breakdown of systems and connections. The revolving door of housing crises deplete a family’s ability to heal. Unaddressed trauma results from harm at many levels. The survival behaviors formed from the psychological and emotional stress can become maladaptive, making it harder to manage day-to-day challenges.
The effects of trauma often continue long after a family exits crisis. Building Changes has learned from current and former grantees that without healing-centered support, ongoing pressures like rising rent, food costs, childcare, and transportation can quickly destabilize families again.
Healing and housing are two sides of the same coin for stabilizing families and preventing homelessness. Our new WYFF Families cohort builds on Building Changes’ work to better understand the impact of trauma on families—particularly underrepresented communities and those interacting with systems like detention and immigration—and how housing-first approaches (but not housing only), paired with broader support, can help families heal and get back to their baseline.
We’re continuing this exploration with three new grantees that have integrated healing-centered practices: Multicultural Child & Family Hope Center in Pierce County, Refugee Women’s Alliance (ReWA) in King County, and Millennia Ministries in Snohomish County. Building Changes is excited to partner with these organizations to better understand how equitable approaches to housing stabilization, paired with people-centered healing services, can prevent homelessness and provide long-term stability.
These new partnerships build on lessons we’ve learned alongside community-based organizations about culturally-responsive, healing-centered practices:
- While clinical services like therapy are important, they are often inaccessible in rural communities and those without insurance coverage. Traditional systems may overlook broader needs for belonging, community connection, and cultural identity.
- Healing-centered approaches build on the inherent strengths and capacity of individuals and families. Like equitable housing interventions such as Diversion, they support people in drawing on their own assets, creativity, and community connections to find solutions that work for them, rather than forcing complex family needs into a box.
- Finally, while wellness may be personal, healing requires the entire community. This means creating more accessible crisis resolution and wraparound support while strengthening connections to trusted groups, shared spaces, and networks of care that families can rely on, if and when crises reoccur.
We are excited to see these new strategies take shape alongside our new cohorts in the weeks ahead! Stay updated by signing up for our newsletter and following Building Changes on LinkedIn or Facebook.
