Best Practices

Alabama offers some of the very best shelter, housing and services in support of individuals and families experiencing or threatened with homelessness.

Do you have a best practice to share? If your agency, organization or program is interested in showcasing its program or housing as a "best practice" in one of the categories listed below, please email us at alaehinformation@gmail.com.

Learn more! If you're interested in learning more about the programs and housing described here, just click at the end of each article.

permanent independent housing for low income individuals and/or families

permanent supportive housing

transitional housing

Stepping Stones Cottages (Hobson City, AL)

Health Services Center

The Health Services Center is the recipient of a new Rural Housing and Economic Development grant to develop a small community of cottages in Hobson City. The purpose of the project is to provide supportive transitional housing for homeless persons, regardless of HIV status. According to recent data from the National AIDS Housing Coalition, safe and affordable housing is a critical strategy in HIV prevention. For example, studies have shown that rates of HIV infection are 3 times to 16 times higher among persons who are homeless or unstably housed, compared to similar persons with stable housing. Additionally, 3% to 14% of all homeless persons are HIV positive (10 times the rate in the general population). The Health Services Center intends to provide intensive supportive services, including case management and prevention education programming to residents of the cottages. This project is an innovative model of utilizing affordable, supportive housing in the effort to prevent the spread of HIV.

The Health Services Center is a rural AIDS Service Provider offering a full spectrum of medical and supportive services to people living with HIV across a large, sparsely populated area in East Central Alabama. In 2010 Health Services Center served 173 people in households living with HIV with direct housing assistance (i.e. a bed).

For more information on the Stepping Stones Cottages, please contact Rita Flegel, Housing Office Director, at (256) 835-7669 or by email Rhflegel@hscal.org.

emergency shelter

homeless prevention programs

hiv/aids programming or housing

substance/chemical abuse programming or housing

special needs housing

housing or programs for victims of domestic violence

re-entry programs and housing

neighborhood revitalization

YWoodlawn (Birmingham, AL)

YWCA Central Alabama

HUD dollars provide the core funding stream that is enabling the YWCA Central Alabama to revitalize a blighted section of Birmingham’s South Woodlawn neighborhood located roughly 3 miles east of the downtown area. Beginning with the YWCA’s first property acquisition in 2007, this target area known as “YWoodlawn” has since received a much needed an infusion of public and private investment including almost $5 million dollars in HOME funding and $325,000 in CDBG funding through the City of Birmingham and its Community Development Office. These public funds leveraged enormous private support as the YWCA embarked on a capital campaign that raised an additional $6 million dollars from the generosity of its private donors.

In less than 48 months, the YWCA acquired four apartment complexes originally totaling 71 two bedroom units, two blighted single family houses, vacant land and a small commercial building. Additionally a long standing non-profit family shelter approached the YWCA and asked that it be allowed to become a program of the YWCA as it did not have the resources to adequately accommodate the tremendous increase demands they were facing in providing emergency facilities for two parent families, women with at least one son aged 10 and older and single fathers with custody of minor children. As such, the Interfaith Hospitality House corporately dissolved and became the YWCA’s newest program.

The outcomes have been, and will continue to be, significant; they include safe, decent rental housing affordable to local residents within the target area; increased housing stability through new construction, renovated multi-family housing and eventually new affordable homebuyer and asset-building opportunities; fully ADA compliant rental units—no such units existed previously in these apartment buildings; supports and resources for families including systemic interventions like the Bridges Out of Poverty work in order to equip them for success in permanent housing all of which are now, and will continue providing, hope and opportunity for an entire community.

For more information on the YWCA Central Alabama’s “YWoodlawn” initiative, go to www.ywcabham.org/housing or contact Jennifer Clarke, Chief Housing Officer, at jclarke@ywcabham.org.