During 2019 and 2020, Enterprise staff provided technical assistance to members of StriveTogether’s Cradle to Career Network and their partners in Dayton, Ohio; Memphis, Tennessee; and Racine, Wisconsin. The assistance included supporting local housing and education stakeholders as they worked to build stronger partnerships that address interrelated housing and education challenges. Through this work and other relevant technical assistance engagements, Enterprise developed and tested many of the elements featured in this toolkit, including the partnership stages framework and the Shared Outcomes Discussion guide included in Appendix F.
In support of this toolkit, the Urban Institute conducted case study research to identify housing and education collaborations that can offer lessons for similar efforts. The research involved document review and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders from 10 collaborations. These organizations included housing providers, educators, collective impact backbone organizations, resource centers, technical assistance providers and a state agency. The focus of the data collection was on motivations for initiating partnerships, leadership structure, funding and sustainability, systems-level efforts, data use and outcomes tracking, and cycles of continuous improvement.
The collaborations included the following entities:
- Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority’s Early Childhood Initiative in Summit County, Ohio
- Avenue of Life’s Impact KCK in Wyandotte County, Kansas
- Boulder Housing Partners and the “I Have a Dream” Foundation’s Bringing School Home in Boulder, Colorado
- The Field Center for Children’s Policy Practice & Research’s Foster Care to College in Pennsylvania
- Minnesota Interagency Council on Homelessness’s Homework Starts with Home program in Minnesota
- Partnership for Children & Youth’s Housing and Education (HousED) initiative in California
- Project Hope in Boston, Massachusetts
- Purpose Built Communities in Atlanta, Georgia
- Star-C in Atlanta, Georgia
- Tacoma Housing Authority’s College Housing Assistance Program in Tacoma, Washington
The research team used the data from the interviews to inform this toolkit and a research brief: Aligning Housing and Education: Evidence of Promising Practices and Structural Challenges, released July 2020.