Using Organizational Collaboration and Community Partnerships to Transition Families from Homelessness to Home Ownership: The HomeBuy5 Program

Abstract

For more than a decade, the HomeBuy5 Program has successfully helped families who were homeless find an apartment, while working with them to develop a plan to move from homelessness to homeownership. This article provides an historical overview of how the program developed and evolved, a detailed discussion of the program's process and structure, the role of organizational collaboration and community partners, and demographic information on the families that have been served. It is argued that this program can be a prototype for other communities as they increase their efforts to eliminate homelessness.

Social Change Efforts of Direct Service Nonprofits: The Role of Funding and Collaborations in Shaping Social Innovations

“…Solving A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t 8 socially based problems is the underlying intention of social innovation. Likewise, collaboration has been found to be a key aspect in case study research on social change within organizations that result in improvements to service delivery models and outcomes for service users (Davey & Ivery, 2009;Gutierrez, Glenmaye, & DeLois, 1995;Mulroy, 1997Mulroy, , 2000Rogers, 2009). …”

“…While previous research has pointed out the importance of collaboration in creating social change (Nichols, 2006), it tends to consider collaboration as a uniquely positive construct and one that is measured by the extent to which organizations are collaborating (Davey & Ivery, 2009;Gutierrez, Glenmaye, & DeLois, 1995). It is also important to consider the quality and the level of interconnectivity between organizations, as these aspects of collaboration can impact the willingness of organizations to engage in integrated social change efforts (Hodges & Hardiman, 2006;Sandfort, 1999).…”

Build to sustain: collaborative partnerships between university researchers and criminal justice practitioners

“…A few strategies leading to successful collaborations include open, frequent, on-going communication (Elder et al, 2013;Johnson, Zorn, Yung Tam, Lamontagne, & Johnson, 2003), partner-ready leadership (Austin et al, 1999;Johnson et al, 2003;Minkler, Vasquez, Tajik, & Peterson, 2008), and a clear research purpose or agenda (Davey & Ivery, 2009). During a collaborative partnership with the local community, the San Diego Prevention Research Center found that open communication lines lead to quality input and feedback from all partners (Elder et al, 2013).…”

“…The emergent interest is in how collaborations and partnerships between community service agencies, universities, and governmental agencies can address social and other problems in thoughtful ways. Collaboration is a decision-making process between two or more organizations (Davey & Ivery, 2009) usually uniting separate groups to achieve a mutual goal (Reilly, 2001). These relationships occur for various reasons including shared vision (Wolff, 2001), opportunity (e.g.…”

“…criminal justice and psychology) combined with collaborative partnerships (Allen-Meares, 2008;Mizrahi & Rosenthal, 2001) such as those between universities and governmental agencies. Collaborative relationships between practitioners and researchers mobilize agencies; expand networks (Davey & Ivery, 2009); enhance capacity building; respond to community problems; create more community-driven initiatives (Reilly, 2001); and produce research that is practical for the field (Bell et al, 2004).…”