The University of Houston will use a $5 million anonymous donation to study the region’s response to homelessness, according to the university.
The details
UH announced the launch of the Institute for Housing, Homelessness and Health, or IH3. The initiative will study how housing, health and other systems interact. The goal is to better understand where people experiencing homelessness encounter gaps in healthcare and other services and identify opportunities to intervene, according to UH.
University officials announced IH3 at the Aug. 26 Houston City Council meeting and said the partnership with the city and other organizations aims to make homelessness “rare” and “brief.”
Partnerships include the city of Houston, Harris County and the Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County, which leads The Way Home, the region’s coordinated response system.
Ben King, founding director of IH3, said the goal is not to replace any programs that are working, but to focus on what the university can do to help address homelessness.
“[IH3] will focus on things the university is especially well equipped to do: bring together people, study complex problems, connect and analyze information, evaluate what works, test new ideas,” King said. “And train the next generation of professionals who will go on to work in these systems.”
Funding the project
The $5 million anonymous donation was a one-time donation that helped launch the initiative, but university officials said many of the people who will work on the initiative are already faculty and staff members of UH.
King said he would like to see the initiative expand and they are currently working on getting additional grants and contracts as part of the initiative.
“We’ll be braiding funding from a lot of different areas, and we hope to continue to look at the community, who is anyone excited about systems-level solutions,” he said.
One more thing
The initiative will officially launch Sept. 1.
