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Quality Supportive Housing: Standards & Funding Alignment

Purpose: To establish supportive housing standards starting with site-based supportive housing settings financed by Minnesota Housing (and its funding partners), with a future goal to address funding alignment aimed at strengthening the supportive housing infrastructure statewide.

Phase One: Develop Supportive Housing Standards. Goals of this work included:

  1. Define “operating” and “service” activities to establish common vocabulary among funders and stakeholders;
  2. Engage stakeholders to establish a minimum package of services and operating standards that must be provided to qualify a project as supportive housing. These standards will include:
    • Minimum staff qualifications and training
    • Required service sets for supportive housing and minimum level of service activities and project operating requirements
    • Outcomes & Performance Benchmarks
  3. All work must be done in a manner that intentionally and actively antiracist and aimed at eliminating racial and ethnic disparities both in services as well as performance This includes, but is not limited to, anti-oppressive and culturally responsive services for people with disabilities and LGBTQIA2S+ communities.
  4. People with lived experience are key stakeholders that will be engaged in all phases of the standards development

In fall 2021, North Star Policy Consulting worked with the Supportive Housing Alliance to establish draft supportive housing standards for site-based supportive housing settings. These draft standards were based on the results of an existing literature review and feedback from stakeholder engagement. A copy of North Star Policy’s final report can be found here.

Between September 2022 and November 2022, Supportive Housing Alliance members conducted additional stakeholder engagement to further refine the draft standards. In December 2022, the Supportive Housing Alliance published Supportive Housing Standards for Site-Based Supportive Housing and they were included as best practices in Minnesota Housing’s 2023 Multifamily Consolidated Request for Proposals (RFP). The Standards can be found here. More about the project and process for creating The Standards can found here.

The Supportive Housing Alliance recommends that funders of site-based supportive housing adopt these standards for organizations and developments they fund that provide site-based supportive housing.

Phase Two: Supportive Housing Standards Operating Guidance

In March 2023, the Alliance began an effort to co-create Operating Guidelines to support the implementation of the Standards.

A common theme heard throughout stakeholder engagement sessions on The Standards, was the need to provide more context, examples, suggestions, and information on promising practices in Supportive Housing. Developed in conjunction with 10 supportive housing providers representing both the Metro Area and Greater Minnesota, the Operating Guidelines are driven by national best practices and the practices that our supportive housing community have identified as effective and useful at successfully implementing and running quality supportive housing. The goal of the Operating Guidelines is to set providers up for success in implementing the new Supportive Housing Standards.

A copy of the Operating Guidelines can be found here.

If you would like to send feedback on The Standards or the Operating Guidelines, please email the Supportive Housing Alliance at info@supportivehousingalliance.org or fill out the contact form on the website.

Phase Three: Funding Alignment: Develop a new funding alignment methodology that will commit services and operating funding at the same time as housing development financing is committed by Minnesota Housing.  This funding methodology will:

  • Set consistent rates
  • Fund required levels of operating functions to meet the new minimum operating requirements expected to qualify a project as supportive housing
  • Fund required levels of services to meet the new minimum services requirements expected to qualify a project as supportive housing
  • Evaluate existing service funding to determine how it might be repurposed as part of implementing the new methodology