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Policy responses to persistent homelessness can generally be divided into at least four often coexisting categories. First, an "emergency" or "accommodation" response involves expanding shelters and food providers to lessen the hardship of homelessness but without doing much to help persons escape the streets. This approach was characteristic of the initial response to homelessness in the early 1980s. Out of this approach emerged a "restorative" response, which provides an extensive array of supportive services to remedy the individual shortcomings of persons who are homeless so they can compete, or at least function, in mainstream housed society. This is basically the approach of the Continuum of Care program, created by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under the Clinton administration, which encouraged localities to provide mental health and substance abuse treatment, employment counseling, case management, and household and parenting courses to guide persons through emergency and transitional shelters to permanent housing. A third type of response is "preventive" and aims to address the structural causes of homelessness by promoting the creation of affordable and subsidized housing, closing gaps in social service systems, and increasing the stock of living wage employment. This response is championed by advocacy groups and many researchers and is evident in the July 2003 Bring America Home Act (HR 2897). A final policy response consists of efforts to "criminalize" homelessness through ordinances that give police authority to cite both homeless persons for subsistence activities, such as panhandling and sleeping in public, and service providers who provide health care services and distribute meals in public parks. This NIMBY-like response is usually advocated by businesses, residents, and their political representatives in areas with sizable homeless populations.

To date, accommodative, restorative, and criminalizing responses have dominated, forming a two-pronged but contradictory approach in which a limited number of services are available to help persons subsist amid homelessness or exit their situation, and punitive efforts seek to discourage persons from living on the street, especially in prime spaces. However, recent campaigns to end homelessness have gained momentum. These efforts basically combine the preventative approach to "close the front door" into homelessness and the restorative approach to "open the back door" out of homelessness. While these plans to end homelessness incorporate both professional expertise regarding best social service practices and broader consciousness of structural causes, estimates of the cost to prevent future incidences of homelessness and move the currently homeless off the streets are far beyond what is presently devoted to the problem. Thus, the realization of the goal to end homelessness depends on the ability of partnership members to mobilize public concern about the problem and secure sufficient resources to implement all of the components of their ambitious plans.

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