The Transitional Housing programs at Covenant House provide excellent models for community organizations to look to when planning their own youth homelessness initiatives. No matter the size of the community, the issue of youth homelessness exists and innovative approaches are needed to help solve it. This toolkit provides an example of how to move forward in addressing this critical issue.

Transitional housing, as we have addressed in other resources, including the Foyer Toolkit, Coming of Age and A Safe and Decent Place to Live, is a key method of assisting youth as they grow developmentally. The strength of the Foyer’s Hub and Spoke model is clear – youth have the ability to grow and develop the necessary skills needed to sustain them independently.

The two Covenant House models, while sharing many commonalities, are different in how they are implemented. This provides a useful example of how the resources and needs of a community should be used to guide the development of a program to ensure that it best fits the youth in that area.

We encourage you to see these case studies as a starting point. Read, review, pull them apart and reassemble them to create the program that will best serve your young people and your location.  We hope that you benefit from the ideas and the collected resources to get your program up and running quicker and more efficiently.