Durham, North Carolina  ·  The Library

Durham Rare & Brief

The Strategic Framework to Make Homelessness Rare and Brief  ·  City of Durham & Durham County

What this is

A library, not a website. It is a shelf for the things we publish — stories from neighbors, assessments of homelessness systems and processes, newsletters, and the foundational documents that outline Durham’s Strategic Framework to Make Homelessness Rare and Brief — so that each one has a home and a link we can send.

Stories from neighbors 3 items
Data and Assessments 4 items
Reports and Presentations 5 items
System mapping 2 items
Newsletters 3 items
Briefs 11 items
Tools, Guides, and Resources That Helped Shape Our Work 18 items

Work by other people that shaped ours — national guides and toolkits, peer-city evaluations, and the Durham reports that preceded the Framework. These are not our documents; they are the sources we learned from.

Case conferencing and flexible funds

Case Conferencing Action PackChange ideas and practical advice to make case conferencing action-oriented.Community Solutions / Built for Zero PDF Case Conferencing Tool Bank: Agenda Building KitDesign principles, preparation, and an agenda template.Community Solutions / Built for Zero PDF Case Conferencing Tool Bank: Facilitator’s Guide to Transforming Team CultureBuilding the skills and cultural norms that make case conferencing work.Community Solutions / Built for Zero PDF Built for Zero Flex Fund GuideHow communities set up, use, and measure the impact of flexible funding.Community Solutions / Built for Zero PDF

Data quality and backbone execution

Family Quality Data Scorecard RubricThe 2024 guidance document behind quality-data standards for families.Community Solutions / Built for Zero PDF Single Adults Quality Data Scorecard RubricThe 2025 guidance document behind quality-data standards for single adults.Community Solutions / Built for Zero PDF Backbone Execution Measurement TemplateThe self-assessment Durham uses to measure backbone execution.Community Solutions / Built for Zero PDF

Unsheltered homelessness and encampments

Encampment Resolution GuideA practical guide to resolving encampments with housing-focused responses.Benioff Homelessness & Housing Initiative PDF Evaluation of Denver’s All In Mile High Initiative2025 interim report on Denver’s citywide push to house unsheltered neighbors.Urban Institute PDF Wake County Unsheltered Homelessness Response PilotSix-month update, July 2025 — a neighboring county’s unsheltered pilot.Wake County PDF Unsheltered Homelessness: Trends, Characteristics, and Homeless HistoriesNational research on who experiences unsheltered homelessness, and for how long.Urban Institute PDF Homelessness in US Cities and DowntownsThe perception, the reality, and how to address both.Brookings PDF

Populations and inflow

Community Strategies to Understand and Reduce Veteran Inflow into HomelessnessResearch on where veteran homelessness begins and how communities slow it.Urban Institute PDF

Durham context

Adapting the Durham HSAC’s Strategic Approach to Addressing HomelessnessThe 2024 consulting report that helped set the stage for this Framework.Duke Sanford / consulting team, 2024 PDF Durham Housing Initiative Task Force: Housing RecommendationsSeptember 2025 recommendations shaping Durham’s housing supply strategy.Durham Housing Initiative Task Force PDF Housing and Hope: Built to Last — Annual Report 2025A Durham provider’s annual report on the year’s work.Housing for New Hope PDF

On the web

Housing-Focused Responses to Unsheltered HomelessnessCase studies from four communities — Atlanta, Monterey/San Benito, Newark, and Jackson/West Tennessee — that reduced unsheltered homelessness by expanding permanent housing access.National Alliance to End Homelessness Link How Communities Assess the Quality of Their Homelessness DataThe four components Built for Zero uses to judge quality by-name data — outreach, provider participation, policies, and data infrastructure — and how communities improved on each.Community Solutions Link
The Framework 2 items