Silicon Valley homeless prevention program goes national

“We’ve used the model successfully locally here, but I think it’s a model we can advocate and push for at a larger scale,” Ray Bramson, chief operating officer at Destination: Home and a San José Spotlight columnist, told San José Spotlight.

In 2017, the nonprofit saw more people in Santa Clara County falling into homelessness. It started a homelessness prevention program to provide rental assistance, case management and supportive services to hundreds of families on the brink of eviction, and received help from private funders to make the work possible.

In 2024, Santa Clara County adopted the program into its own homelessness strategy and scaled it countywide. Since 2017, the program has helped nearly 44,000 people in the county avoid the trauma of living on the streets.

A randomized control trial found 90% of people who received this assistance remained housed two years later, according to data collected by the University of Notre Dame’s Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities.

Now, Destination: Home is launching the Right at Home initiative to make a case that federal funding should be set aside not only for when people become homeless, but before it even starts. It’s raised $77 million so far, and will train organizations in the 10 participating cities to adopt its homelessness prevention model.

At least $5 million will be given to each community to serve 1,500 households over the span of five years, and data will be collected by the Lab for Economic Opportunities. The initiative received funding from Cisco, Sobrato Philanthropies, the Valhalla Foundation and The Audacious Project.

“It’s an incredible opportunity,” David Phillips, director of research with the Lab for Economic Opportunities, told San José Spotlight. “We know there are a very large number of families where affordability is an issue. When folks become evicted, there are a lot of negative effects. The big piece of the goal is to get ahead of the problem.”

Santa Clara County’s program helped resident Desiré Campusano stay afloat. She received rental assistance multiple times over several years through major life transitions, including being in between jobs and when her rent skyrocketed from $1,500 to $2,400 over the course of three years. With help from the program, she was able to remain housed and also received assistance to move into an affordable apartment.

“It helped me to even be able to move in, because I didn’t have any savings whatsoever,” Campusano told San José Spotlight. “So not only did it help me to actually move in and get my stability back, but the case manager followed up and checked in.”

As instability plagues the country and more people fall into poverty due to cuts to welfare programs, Keanna Ward, who was formerly homeless, said this program is essential to creating a safety net for people living paycheck to paycheck.

“We need services and programs like this to help people, because there’s a rise in unemployment, especially amongst women,” Ward told San José Spotlight.

A spokesperson for the Sobrato Organization, said they believe housing is essential for economic mobility and community belonging.

“While our work is deeply rooted in Silicon Valley, the forces driving housing instability are national in scope,” she told San José Spotlight. “If we are serious about strengthening communities and expanding economic mobility, we must be equally serious about ensuring that families across the country have access to stable housing.”

This story was originally published by San José Spotlight and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.