Pillars to End and Prevent Homelessness: Lessons from Vanguard Cities
Across the world, cities are grappling with the urgent challenge to end homelessness. While contexts vary, shaped by local housing markets, social protection systems, government structures, and social conditions, the core principles of how to prevent and end homelessness are the same. It is essential to shift systems from managing crises to more sustainable solutions. Across the globe, IGH Vanguard Cities are making efforts to end and prevent homelessness. Several of these initiatives are documented in our 2026 report, Vanguard Cities Case Studies: Initiatives to Prevent and End Homelessness, which seeks to use local insights to inform global approaches.
The Case Studies Report documents approaches developed by eleven of our Vanguard Cities, including Buenos Aires, Chicago, Glasgow, Greater Manchester, Mongolia, Lisbon, Santiago, São Paulo, Sydney, Tshwane, and Uruguay. Drawing on these real-world examples, this blog explores key factors in the progress of the programs and international evidence, highlighting five necessary elements in the homelessness response to achieve a meaningful, lasting impact.
Five Pillars for Progress
Prevention
Prevention is key to ending homelessness. To be effective, it must address the underlying causes of homelessness and support people before they lose their homes. In practice, preventive strategies can include, but not be limited to:
- Ending discharges into homelessness from institutions
- Preventing evictions
- Providing rent and financial assistance
- Facilitating access to housing, health, and support services
- Implementing Housing First and housing-led approaches
- Expanding affordable housing
IGH Case Studies highlight Greater Manchester’s Pathfinder service, which demonstrates the impact of prevention efforts with young people at risk of experiencing homelessness. This program shows how data-informed strategies, tailored to individual needs and integrated with housing and broader support services, can lead to more effective outcomes and interventions.
Housing First
In parallel, Vanguard Cities are rethinking how housing is delivered. The Housing First model has been internationally recognized as one of the best and most effective approaches in addressing and preventing homelessness. The model’s principles establish that there should be no conditions for receiving assistance and hold opposing views to the Staircase model, which involves successive stages that people must follow. Instead, Housing First offers immediate access to permanent housing, along with flexible, tailored, and person-centered support.
The model’s principles have been adapted to local contexts in Santiago, Chile, and Lisbon. In both Vanguard Cities, Housing First programs provide long-term housing and multidisciplinary, person-centered support, with high retention rates and plans for geographical expansion. Delivered through strong collaboration with NGOs and civil society, the initiatives underscore the importance of cross-sector partnerships in the homelessness response. With this approach, housing serves as the foundation, while comprehensive support makes it sustainable.
Innovative Housing Initiatives
Even in financial and infrastructure-constrained contexts, the evidence shows that housing solutions often cost less per person than shelters and deliver better long-term outcomes. Some innovative approaches are upgrading and refurbishing existing buildings, expanding social and community housing, bringing vacant properties back into use, and providing rental vouchers and subsidies.
For example, the Vila Reencontro program in São Paulo, Brazil, moves beyond large shelters by offering family-centered, private modular units. After a flexible two-year period, families receive rental subsidies to support long-term housing stability.
Lived-Experience
Effective solutions require meaningful collaboration at every level of the homelessness system, involving people with lived experiences who can identify gaps in services, strengthen programs to meet real needs, and shape policies through leadership, advisory, peer support, research, and program design. True partnership means sharing power and ensuring experts by experience are active decision-makers, not just symbolic participants.
Across the Vanguard Cities, people with lived experience are shaping solutions from the Collective NITEP and Casa de Sueños in Uruguay, to the Ulziit-Asar Shelter in Mongolia, É Um Restaurante in Lisbon, and a co-developed prevention plan in Greater Manchester.
System-Wide Responses
Finally, ending homelessness requires coordinated, city-wide frameworks that bring services, policies, and partners together. Key building elements include:
- Understanding community housing needs
- Strong prevention and support policies
- Integrated, comprehensive services
- Data-driven decision-making and monitoring
- Cross-sector collaboration across government, NGOs, business, and communities
Cities like Buenos Aires, Glasgow, and Sydney are conducting ongoing system reviews to strengthen their responses. Others are tailoring support for specific groups, such as older adults in Tshwane and people living in encampments in Chicago, showing the power of city-wide systems to adapt and respond.
Overall, the IGH Case Studies report underscores that meaningful progress is possible when approaches are grounded in evidence, adapted to local contexts, and built on strong collaboration. Combining these five pillars, homelessness response should incorporate a strong emphasis on prevention, Housing First and housing-led strategies, lived experiences, and effective city leadership, combined with broad multi-sectoral coordination.
Read the blog in Spanish here/Lee el blog en español aquí: https://ighomelessness.org/lecciones-desde-las-ciudades-vanguardia