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NOTE: This is a post by guest blogger Kara A Mergl, Director of Research and Evaluation at Common Ground, reflecting on the past few years as seen in major local and national press.

I guess you can say it all began back in 2003 when Common Ground began piloting its Street-to-Home method. West Midtown Manhattan and the Times Square area of NYC certainly did not look the same back then as they do now.  The program’s major strides were made between 2005, when Becky Kanis made her first NPR appearance, and 2007, when the number of homeless in Time Square decreased by 87%; from 55 street homeless down to just 7. Today, there is only one remaining homeless individual still sleeping on the streets. New York City’s Department of Homeless Services recognized the success of this method and in 2007 deployed it across all five boroughs. The question remained, however, if this method would succeed outside of New York City.

Other communities, such as Denver, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago and Washington, DC, began to take notice.  One of the first partnerships around this method was with Los Angeles County and Project 50.  Project 50, championed by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, brought together 24 public and private agencies with the shared goal of identifying and housing the 50 most vulnerable homeless individuals living on the streets of Skid Row. At the one-year anniversary of the initial registry, by all measures, Project 50 was a success; 49 individuals housed and an 88% retention rate.

Things sure have been busy since then!  Leaders across the nation have joined in the effort to house our most vulnerable individuals.  Communities such as Nashville, New Orleans, Denver, Phoenix, Charlotte, Detroit, Portland, Santa Monica, Hollywood, Hartford, and even Brisbane, Australia, just to name a few, have  joined the effort  to help solve homelessness.   It has been through these partnerships and shared learning that we have been able to make such strides in reducing homelessness across the nation.   We are all very excited to welcome new communities to this collaborative and forge ahead until we reach our goals of housing 100,000 vulnerable homeless individuals by 2013.