Thursday, March 5, 2026
The organization, Strategies to End Homelessness, evolved from its 2007 focus on homelessness response to a broader mission emphasizing prevention and data-driven solutions, enhancing community impact and services.
When our agency was founded as an organization in 2007, we were intended to do just one thing, and our original name was that one thing: The Cincinnati/Hamilton County Continuum of Care for the Homeless, Inc. The name made sense because running the local Continuum of Care was all we did, and quite frankly it was all we were intended to do at the time.
Between our founding in 2007 and 2011, we took on many additional responsibilities. We opened the Central Access Point Helpline to better connect homeless families to emergency shelters.
We started handling Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG), Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) and took our first steps into the world of homelessness prevention by administering American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds, work which then evolved into our current Shelter Diversion program.
By 2012, our old, very specific name had become cumbersome because it no longer spoke to everything we were doing as an organization. So that year we changed our name to something that more accurately reflected our growing role in the community and our broadening work.
Our new name, Strategies to End Homelessness, more clearly stated who we were and what we wanted to do.
Since then, our roles and responsibilities have continued to grow. We expanded CAP from a service that only worked with families seeking shelter to one that helps many people, including single individuals, access a variety of housing programs.
We implemented a Coordinated Entry system to ensure that the people who are most vulnerable are the highest priority for housing programs. We started administering CoC funds when the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development named us a Unified Funding Agency, one of the first three communities in the country given this responsibility.
We built and expanded our Compliance work to make sure funds are not only being used but being used most appropriately. We became the HMIS Lead Agency and made sure our community not only had an awesome HMIS system and data, but incredible user support to match.
We developed data analytics capacity to make sure we were getting every bit of knowledge we could from that HMIS data.
And within the CoC, we started using HMIS and other data in a new, outcomes-driven way for prioritizing programs to receive renewal funding.
We recognized that we needed to have better and expanded access to quality affordable housing, so we started RentConnect. And we took our data work to a whole new level by securing the City of Cincinnati’s first-ever Impact Award to begin using predictive data analytics to reduce family evictions.
In short, 2012 to today has been another period of incredible growth, work and increasing responsibilities, so it is once again time to look at how we are presenting ourselves to our community and others.
Innovation + Prevention Redefined
This is where we lead. STEH stands apart from other conveners, other community lead agencies, in that we are building what most cities don’t have. We are one of only a handful of organizations in the world using predictive analytics to stop evictions before they happen, piloting outcomes-driven models and building eviction prevention programs that simply don’t exist in other communities.
As a result, Cincinnati doesn’t have to look to bigger cities for answers. The most innovative work in the country is happening right here, and Strategies is setting the bar for how communities everywhere can tackle homelessness differently.
Why are we refreshing our brand?
Since 2012, our roles in the community have changed considerably. We’ve gone from being an organization that only addressed homelessness in the past tense, after it had occurred, to being one that is focused on preventing homelessness before it happens, while still ensuring emergency and crisis services are available.
We’ve also evolved from being an organization that did not focus on data to being one that is led by data pertaining to outcomes, who is homeless and who is most likely to become homeless. Our approach to the problem of homelessness has matured and become multi-faceted, with an emphasis on innovation, so the way we present ourselves to the community needs to change as well.
What does our new visual identity represent?
A continued emphasis on data-driven innovation and improvement, while maintaining our focus on the people we serve.
How does this brand support STEH’s long-term strategy and impact?
Our three goals are to prevent homelessness whenever possible, provide a high level of assistance to people experiencing homelessness, and to offer solutions to homelessness through housing. Before 2012, we were focused on the latter two goals — assisting people who were already homeless and offering housing solutions.
But prevention reduces the demand on both emergency assistance services and housing programs, and does so at a lower cost, with better outcomes, while saving people the trauma of homelessness. Our new brand recognizes the reality that when we prevent homelessness from happening in the first place, the whole community benefits.
What stays the same — and what’s evolving?
The foundation of the organization is still making sure that people currently experiencing homelessness are offered the assistance they need to the maximum extent possible.
What is evolving is our emphasis on ensuring as few people as possible find themselves experiencing homelessness, and using data and innovations identified through that data to address the issue of homelessness in the most trauma-informed, cost-effective and outcomes-based ways possible.
This brand refresh is not a change in mission — it’s a clearer expression of who we are today and where we are headed together as a community.
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