Five Years Later - How the COVID-19 Response Strengthened Homelessness Solutions

Fryda Ochoa • April 7, 2025

On this World Health Day – and after five years of COVID-19 being declared a global pandemic, we reflect on our system’s work through the Community COVID Housing Program (CCHP).

Launched at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, CCHP was an unprecedented effort to quickly and effectively house people experiencing homelessness while responding to a public health crisis.



With an influx of emergency relief funding, CCHP was both an opportunity and a challenge. It heavily informed how we approach homelessness today, offering lessons that continue to guide our strategies.

Creation of CCHP


CFTH, in collaboration with the City of Houston and Harris County, launched the Community COVID Housing Program (CCHP). This $65-million initiative aimed to serve 5,000 individuals in phase one of the program and 7,000 individuals in phase two, focusing on:

  • Permanently housing those experiencing literal homelessness, including individuals in shelters, encampments, or on the streets.
  • Preventing potential homelessness resulting from the economic impacts of COVID-19.

Challenges and Collaboration


One of the biggest hurdles in launching CCHP was the speed at which our system had to act. While urgency was necessary to help those most vulnerable, we moved faster than what our internal systems were prepared for.


Despite the challenges, CCHP demonstrated the power of cross-sector collaboration. Our partnership with the City of Houston and Harris County was essential in making the program work. Their willingness to adapt allowed CCHP to start up quickly and reach thousands of people at risk. Additionally, CCHP strengthened our partnership with The Harris Center for Mental Health and IDD, Houston’s local mental health authority. Their various teams played a crucial role in ensuring that people experiencing homelessness had access to mental health services and supportive care.


This level of collaboration set the tone for how we work together today. It demonstrated that when government agencies, nonprofits and service providers align behind a shared goal, real solutions emerge at scale.

Lessons Learned


  • Balancing Urgency with Strategic Planning: Moving fast without alignment can create long-term challenges. While rapid action is essential in a crisis, accountability, clear expectations and strong coordination must always be prioritized.


  • Shaping Core Strategies: CCHP played a key role in refining our outreach and encampment decommissioning, both of which remain essential to our homeless response system today.


  • Matching the Right Interventions: Placing people in the first available housing option isn’t always the best solution. By focusing on matching individuals with the right intervention type, we saw improved long-term housing stability and greater system efficiency. CCHP allowed us to “pilot” rapid-rehousing and diversion interventions, strategies that we aim to continue building on as we enter the next phase of our work.


  • Sustainable Solutions Require Flexible Funding: The influx of emergency relief dollars provided the flexibility to implement innovative solutions promptly, highlighting the importance of adaptable funding mechanisms beyond moments of crisis. This flexible funding allowed us to serve more people in a quick and efficient way, something that our current federal funding just isn’t allocated to do.

Impact


In total, over 18,300 people experiencing homelessness or at imminent risk were housed or diverted from homelessness since the implementation of CCHP in October 2020.


Even though the program has ended, CCHP fundamentally changed how our system addresses homelessness. It strengthened our ability to have strategic conversations with our funders and partners, ensuring that decisions are driven by data and made with long-term sustainability in mind. 


Most importantly, CCHP reinforced that homelessness is solvable when we have the right resources, strong collaboration and a commitment to solutions that are proven to work.


While the urgency of COVID-19 has passed, the urgency to end homelessness remains. By continuing to apply what we learned and build on the work, we are aiming to create a system where anyone experiencing homelessness has a safe place to sleep tonight and a home within 30-90 days.

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