Achieving Functional Zero
Functional zero is a milestone in ending homelessness where a community ensures it's rare, brief, and non-recurring, meaning fewer people are homeless than can be housed monthly, creating systems to quickly resolve new instances and prevent recurrence, often for specific groups like veterans or the chronically homeless. It's achieved not by eliminating all homelessness, but by having robust systems to quickly move people into permanent housing, making homelessness a rare and brief crisis, not a chronic state.
Are you looking for your community to reach Functional Zero? Let's get started.
About Barb Oliver
In the year 2000, Barb was being evicted from her home and faced homelessness. A good friend rescued her and saved her life. Eighteen years later, she found Sound Foundations NW, an organization who built tiny homes for our neighbors experiencing homelessness. Within two years, she was their Director of Operations. There she lead a team that created an assembly line to streamline the process. The organization went from finishing two homes every three weeks to 3-4 homes every week and has built hundreds of tiny homes.
We have converted what we know about managing an assembly line to the entire process of the Continuum of Care. People experiencing homelessness need to move through the system with as few bottlenecks as possible. The system must be flexible and simple to understand. We understand what it takes to do that. We now help communities like yours do the same thing.
