Resource Library

An initiative of the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute, Civics for Life is an online resource center for multigenerational civics education, civil discourse and civic engagement.

The Urban Institute conducted a first-of-its-kind survey of land-use decisionmakers nationwide to collect and analyze data on the racial and gender characteristics, housing tenures, and occupations of land-use decision making board members across 482 jurisdictions and 601 land-use decision making bodies within the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the United States. 

For more than 30 years, the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) has employed varying measures and data to assess the affordability and availability of rental housing for different income groups, which it publishes in The Gap report. The report also includes data on housing cost burden prevalence and examines the demographics, disability and work status, and other characteristics of the extremely low-income households most impacted by the national shortage of affordable and available rental homes.

The report covers findings about the lowest-income renters in the U.S. and outlines the shortage of affordable and available rental homes.

The Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has released a new toolkit to help HUD grantees and community developers support faith-based organizations that want to build and preserve affordable housing in their communities, in partnership with the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC).

“Missing Middle” Housing is multi-family structures that exist in harmony with single-family neighborhoods. Middle Housing is more walkable, sustainable, and attainable than single-family homes, promoting home ownership and rental options for everyone.

Local Housing Solutions is a one-stop resource for comprehensive, balanced, and equitable local housing strategies.

While communities strive towards providing permanent housing for all who need it, they are still faced with serving the existing unsheltered population, prompting the question: “What do we do in the meantime?” The strategies in this document explain how communities might respond in these situations.

VeteransGuide.org and the 2025 Veterans Affairs Disability Calculator, an initiative by the Disability Advocate Group, LLC, is dedicated to helping U.S. armed forces veterans understand and secure the VA disability compensation they deserve. 

Harm reduction includes a range of policies, programs, and practices that meet vulnerable individuals like runaway and homeless youth where they're at. Harm reduction practices are designed to acknowledge and reduce the risks young people face every day by developing youth-centered strategies to enhance safety in ways that work for them. Learn how to embed harm reduction techniques into your work with youth during COVID-19 and beyond to create brave spaces where youth get the care and services they deserve.

Rapid Re-Housing Works is an informational hub developed by the National Alliance to End Homelessness. It outlines the three core components of rapid re-housing: housing identification, rent and move-in assistance, and case management. The hub offers downloadable resources such as toolkits, webinars, infographics, and training links to support effective program implementation.

The Emergency Shelter Learning Series provides guidance and tools to help shelters become more effective and accessible. Focused on a Housing First approach, it offers webinars and resources to improve shelter practices and better support people in crisis.

This video from the Homeless and Housing Resource Center highlights five practical strategies for making shelters more welcoming and accessible to people experiencing homelessness. It focuses on removing common obstacles that keep individuals from entering or staying in shelters, such as strict rules or unsafe environments. The video encourages adopting trauma-informed, low-barrier approaches that prioritize safety, dignity, and trust-building between staff and residents.

SOAR (SSI/SSDI Outreach, Access, and Recovery) is a program through SAMHSA designed to help individuals experiencing or at risk of homelessness—and who also have serious mental illness, medical impairments, or co-occurring substance use disorders—gain access to Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). It accomplishes this by training case managers, offering technical assistance, and facilitating inter-agency coordination to improve application approval rates and speed.

Learn how to craft asset-framed narratives, convert empirical research and evidence into energy, use social math to inspire people to action, future pace your stakeholders to inspire them, and pivot away from dominant narratives designed to stop your progress. From boardroom to block, from pilot to policy, this is adaptive leadership that helps you pivot, reframe loss as a gain, and most importantly, make the strongest possible case for your work.

The HUD Exchange page on "Centering Lived Experience" focuses on the importance of including individuals who have experienced homelessness in the planning and decision-making processes of Continuum of Care (CoC) programs. It promotes meaningful engagement by ensuring that their voices are heard, respected, and influence real change. The page highlights practices such as compensation, leadership development, and creating inclusive spaces to prevent tokenism and strengthen system effectiveness. 

The National Alliance to End Homelessness provides toolkits and training materials on Permanent Supportive Housing, a proven solution that combines affordable housing with voluntary support services to help people with chronic homelessness achieve stability and independence. It offers guidance on best practices, implementation, and service coordination.

This resource from the National Alliance to End Homelessness outlines a Housing-Focused Street Outreach Framework designed to help communities engage people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. It provides strategies for connecting individuals to permanent housing quickly and effectively through person-centered outreach, case management, and system coordination.

This webinar explores how emergency shelters can be redesigned to support people experiencing homelessness by focusing on housing outcomes. It highlights strategies for creating low-barrier, trauma-informed shelter environments that prioritize safety, dignity, and easy access. The discussion includes how shelters can integrate the voices of people with lived experience and align more closely with permanent housing goals to improve overall system effectiveness.

The Conflict Resolution Network (CRN) website is dedicated to teaching practical, easy-to-understand skills for resolving conflicts in everyday life. These skills apply across a range of settings, including families, workplaces, communities, and even international contexts. CRN promotes a collaborative, win/win approach and provides tools like empathy, assertiveness, and conflict mapping to help people manage and resolve disputes effectively.

This resource explains trauma-informed care as a way for organizations to understand and respond to the effects of trauma. It focuses on creating safe, supportive spaces where people feel respected and empowered. Key ideas include safety, trust, and avoiding further harm. It also gives tips for making programs more trauma-aware through staff training and supportive policies.