Housing Solutions: Expanding the Ways Communities Can Say Yes to Families in Crisis
Across Texas, families experiencing homelessness are often caught in a frustrating bind: the help they need exists, but rigid rules, narrow funding uses, and lack of availability prevent agencies from responding quickly or effectively. A missed utility payment becomes an eviction. A short-term crisis becomes prolonged instability.
Housing Solutions, an initiative of Texas Homeless Network (THN), was created to close those gaps: “It expands the ways agencies can say yes to families in crisis,” said Diego Garza, THN’s Housing Solutions Project Manager.
Rather than offering a single program or prescriptive model, Housing Solutions focuses on one core goal: Identify barriers that impede crisis response and develop tools which empower agencies and Texans to overcome those obstacles. The result is a flexible, community-driven strategy designed to expand the ways agencies and families can reach stability.
Flexible funding for long-term support
Housing Solutions combines data analysis, local partnerships and flexible funding to test new ways of responding to family homelessness, especially in places where traditional funding streams are too restrictive or scarce. This flexible approach is key to ensuring communities not only address homelessness but also other social challenges.
“Homelessness is a housing issue, and housing is a healthcare issue,” Garza said. “When housing fails, everything else is harder to sustain.”
Where the Work Is Happening
Using THN’s Homeless Management Information System data, statewide data-sharing networks, and funding analyses, Texas Homeless Network identified regions with high concentrations of families experiencing homelessness and limited funding capacity. Pilot projects are underway in four regions including Hidalgo County, Laredo, Victoria, and Texarkana.
These cities reflect a mix of rural and mid-sized communities, many of which lack the staffing or resources to compete for highly restrictive grants despite deep local knowledge of what families actually need.
Two Tools, One Strategy
Housing Solutions is currently being piloted through two complementary initiatives: the Innovation Fund and the Family Trust Partnership. Each addresses a different failure point in the system.
Innovation Fund: Flexible Funding for Urgent Needs
Many agencies know exactly how to help a family but don’t have permission to use funds without following strict guidelines.
The Innovation Fund provides private, flexible dollars that agencies can use to address urgent, real-world barriers that traditional funding cannot cover. All funds must go directly to families (not administrative costs), but beyond that, agencies are trusted to design solutions that make sense locally.
“We wanted to create something that gives [agencies] a little bit more freedom, since they’re the people on the ground doing this work, they know how to combat issues best,” Garza said. “It’s a grant that allows agencies to innovate solutions in their areas.”
Agencies are required to document how funds are used and, critically, identify the gap that made the funding necessary. This ensures flexibility doesn’t become a default substitute for existing resources and generates insight into where systems are failing.
What we know so far:
While Housing Solutions’ Innovation Fund is still in early phases, evidence from similar flexible funding efforts is strong. In one Texas community, a small flexible funding pool, between $50,000 and $80,000, helped more than 100 families achieve stable housing, Garza said. The takeaway is not that money alone solves homelessness, but that targeted flexibility can dramatically increase effectiveness. Innovation Funds are not unlimited, nor are they a replacement for sustained public investment. Results will take time to measure, and outcomes will vary by region. The goal is learning what works, where, and why.
Family Trust Partnership: Trusting Families to Choose Stability
If Innovation Funds trust agencies, the Family Trust Partnership takes the next step: trusting families themselves.
Launching as a pilot in Laredo, the Family Trust Partnership will serve 25 families through direct cash transfers paired with supportive services. Families work with a dedicated family mentor to develop a stability plan based on their own priorities and timelines.
“Family Trust is trusting that families who are in crisis are the best people to choose how to get themselves out of crisis,” Garza said. “It gives families the opportunity to get some runway, find some stability, and be able to address the actual crises that are causing homelessness.”
Rather than forcing immediate housing placements, families can decide when they are ready to move, where they want to live, and what stability looks like for their household.
Direct cash support is delivered through a Givecard debit-card platform, while supportive services including budgeting, planning, and navigation, are provided by THN’s Family Mentor in partnership with the Laredo Housing Authority.
What we know so far:
The pilot is intentionally small and resource-intensive. THN has taken care to reroute families who need higher levels of care to other local resources during this initial learning phase. Outcomes will be tracked every six months, with expansion dependent on demonstrated effectiveness and additional funding.
A Community-Driven Response
Housing Solutions is designed to develop alongside community needs.
Agencies participating in the Innovation Fund will engage in shared learning sessions and submit brief impact reflections, helping reveal patterns: What needs show up repeatedly? Where are systems breaking down? What solutions are emerging locally that could inform future funding or policy?
This reflective process is especially important in rural communities, where capacity is limited and needs are highly specific. Over time, these insights can help funders, policymakers, and providers respond with greater precision and fewer unintended barriers.
By focusing on flexibility, trust, and data-informed learning, the initiative aims to close the gaps that keep families cycling through crises and to offer practical insights other communities can adapt.
Without the expansion of affordable housing and commensurate investment in homelessness and public housing programs, homelessness will continue, Garza said. Housing Solutions offers agencies and families more latitude to create solutions within the deficiencies of the current system.
Because ending family homelessness is not about doing more of the same.
It’s about building systems that can actually say yes when it matters most.