Homeless Information and Resources

Centralized Intake for Homeless Programs

(253) 682-3401

Pierce County Community Connections Homelessness Unit

Pierce County Department of Community Connections Homelessness Unit contracts with nonprofit agencies to provide housing and services to those experiencing and at risk of homelessness in our community through the following programs:

Read more about our efforts in a speech by Alice Shobe, Executive Director of Building Changes, given at our homeless awareness luncheon in November of 2011.

Pierce County Homeless Survey

Each January, the Pierce County Continuum of Care conducts a two-day survey of people experiencing homelessness in our community. The 2012 homeless survey took place January 26-27. Results from the survey will be available in late spring.

Click below for Pierce County Homeless Count Reports in a PDF format.

Please direct any questions on the Homeless Survey to Rae Ann Giron at 253-798-6931, or email rgiron@co.pierce.wa.us.

Plans to End Homelessness

The Pierce County Community Connections Homeless Program Office is the lead entity for the development, implementation and oversight of plans to end homelessness. Currently, there are three strategic plans to end homelessness for different populations and with different timelines. The Continuum of Care is currently working to integrate these plans into one.

Outside In, Strategic Plan to End Family Homelessness

The Washington Families Fund (administered by Building Changes), with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other private sector funders, is expanding its work in targeted counties in Washington in order to test, in combination, emerging new concepts and strategies that have proven effective, individually, in reducing family homelessness in a number of communities across the United States.

To this end, the foundation and Building Changes have asked Pierce, King and Snohomish Counties to develop a Plan to End Homelessness with the ultimate goal for each county to identify a series of systems change interventions related to five strategies the foundation hypothesizes will have the greatest impact. These key concepts/strategies include prevention, coordinated entry, rapid re-housing, tailored programs and economic opportunities.

The first phase of the planning process developed a Landscape Assessment, and the second phase developed a Strategic Plan. These two phases are completed and the documents can be found below. The final phase of planning is the Implementation Plan, expected to be completed later this summer.

System Landscape Assessment

Appendices

Strategic Plan Draft

Implementation Plan

Ten Year Homeless Housing Plan

In 2005, the Washington State Legislature passed the Homeless Housing and Assistance Act that authorized the collection of document recording fees to fund the development and implementation of plans to reduce homelessness by 50% by the year 2015 in each county in the state.

Download the Homeless Housing Plan in pdf format.

The Road Home: Ending Chronic Homelessness, A Ten Year Plan for Pierce County

The Pierce County Coalition for the Homeless presents The Road Home: Ending Chronic Homelessness, A Ten Year Plan for Pierce County with the confidence that chronic homelessness is a serious, community-based crisis. We believe that there are solutions to the problems of chronic homelessness, that solving chronic homelessness is one of many important steps to ending overall homelessness, and that solving homelessness is critical to the overall economic development and health of Tacoma and Pierce County. The Road Home presents a plan based on these beliefs with reasonable goals to achieve within the next ten years.