The Ten-Year Plan lays out a series of five key strategies and actions, with clear goals and measurable outcomes. Below is a brief review of our accomplishments under each of the key strategies to date - impressive not only for their magnitude, but also for their effectiveness.

1. Prevent homelessness
2. Help people move rapidly from homelessness to housing
3. Increase the efficiency of existing systems
4. Build public and political will
5. Measure and report progress

Preventing homelessness

• Local prevention programs helped over 5,000 people with emergency assistance. Bellevue, Kent, Kirkland and Seattle all increased homeless prevention funding, as did the Seattle Foundation, Medina Foundation and United Way of King County.
• Outreach services to homeless people and access to treatment services improved. Discharge planning for people exiting hospitals and jails was enhanced. These improvements helped to provide the stability so crucial to preventing homelessness.

Help people move rapidly from homelessness to housing

• More than 4,600 individuals in almost 3,000 households were able to leave homelessness. These successes included people in our nationally recognized programs that help people “graduate” from service-intensive housing to affordable community housing.
• A total of 662 new units or dedicated subsidies opened in 2008, with another 1,242 in the pipeline. Our cumulative total of 3,344 units opened or in the pipeline exceeds the entire ten-year plan goals of most major cities.

Increased the efficiency of existing systems

• The Funders Group, comprised of all the major funders committed to ending homelessness within King County, formed in 2008 to align resource and planning efforts focused on housing production and system efficiencies.

Build public and political will

• United Way of King County and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are pursuing major initiatives around ending homelessness, helping to keep this issue at the forefront of awareness. The Committee to End Homelessness continues its Speakers Bureau and education and outreach efforts across the county.

Measure and Report Progress

• The first Safe Harbors information management system report (external) was issued and we continued a tradition of detailed reports on our point-in-time count of homeless persons.
• Downtown Emergency Service Center won the 2007 Maxwell Award for Excellence (external) for 1811 Eastlake, a "housing first" program for 75 homeless men and women with chronic alcohol addiction. It is the first of its kind in Washington State to address the needs of alcoholics who are the heaviest users of crisis services. The project included a $400,000 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant to evaluate the effects of the project, and the data generated through that evaluation is being used nationwide to promote this approach.
• The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Sound Families program, (external) serving families in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties issued its final report, including a detailed evaluation of participant's housing stability and lessons learned. From the report:
• 1,487 families (4,455 individuals) were served and as of June 2007:
• 64 percent of the families had been homeless before, some four or more times.
• Among those successfully completing the transitional stay within their program, 89 percent were able to secure permanent housing after exit.
• Full time employment tripled from entry to exit.

There are solutions...

We can make a society in which fewer families become homeless, in which families that do become homeless don't stay that way for long, and in which homeless families that become stable stay stable - permanently. It’s not easy. But we are resilient, and we are in this fight for as long as it lasts.

William H. Gates Sr. at the National Alliance to End Homelessness National Conference, Seattle, WA - January 2008