Host Homes Program

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The Host Homes Program is collaboration between Home of the Innocents Aftercare Program and the Coalition for the Homeless in an effort to help end young adults experiencing homelessness in the city of Louisville.

Host homes is a model designed to address the temporary (1-3 months) housing needs of homeless young adults by connecting them with caring adults from the community who are willing to provide safe housing, food, and support. Hosts are unpaid trained volunteers who want to be part of a community solution to ending homelessness.

The individual(s) interested in hosting their home must be 25 years of age, have a private space for a young adult to stay, and be able to support the added food and utility costs hosting would entail.

Hosts go through a vetting process that includes background checks and child abuse and neglect checks. This is followed up with two interviews with the Host Homes program Manager and a young adult advisory board member. Included in the second interview is a home visit to ensure the space the young adult will be staying in is safe.

Finally hosts attend 2 days of training, where they are trained on things such as cultural competency, LGBTQ+ knowledge, trauma informed care, homelessness, as well as other topics to better understand the young adults that might be moving in with them.

The young adults will also go through a vetting process of the same background checks and will have been enrolled in Home of the Innocent's Aftercare program receiving services. The young adults chosen to be a part of this program are very stable and have worked very hard and are very close to having a home they can call their own.

Once hosts have been approved and the young adult chooses a volunteer host home, each will meet with the Host Homes program manager and the young adult's case manager. This meeting takes place in the host home to get to know each other. They will meet then again one more time to decide if it is a good fit, before the client moves in.

Throughout the process, the Host Homes program manager will be the advocate for the host and the case manager will be the primary advocate for the young adult.