Flowers for Whatcom

What is Permanent Supportive Housing

Permanent supportive housing provides long-term stable housing with ongoing supportive services for individuals and families experiencing homelessness or with a history of homelessness and disability. In other words, it is a place where people who would otherwise be sleeping outside exposed to the elements, can receive both the housing and support they need in order to build a life. That means, permanent supportive housing has two basic ingredients: housing & support.

Housing

Since it is difficult to get clean & sober, manage a mental illness, hold a job, or do much of anything without a safe and comfortable place to call home, almost all permanent supportive housing uses a model called ‘housing first’ which has been the gold standard for intervening in homelessness for more than 30 years. Housing first is a very simple idea: if people have housing, everything else they might want to accomplish becomes easier.

Support

Housing first does not mean ‘housing-only.’ Sleeping indoors is only a very small part of most people’s idea of the good life, so what happens after that? It depends! Just like ideas vary among people who don’t need support in order to maintain their housing, people who need such support have all kinds of different goals and ambitions for themselves and their families. The kind of support someone receives is going to depend a lot on how they answer the most fundamental of human questions: what do they want their life to be about? But of course, there are some common themes. Help staying sober, help finding a job, and help being a great parent are some of the most common.