Housing Stability Assistance

iCare Foundation is developing a Housing Stability Assistance program to prevent eviction and homelessness among low-income families across Greater Tampa Bay. Housing loss is not just a housing problem — it is the trigger that sets off a cascade of crises: job loss, school disruption for children, family separation, and health deterioration. Most families who lose housing were one emergency away from stability. They needed intervention before the crisis became catastrophic.

Our program will provide emergency rental assistance, landlord mediation, comprehensive housing case management, and rapid rehousing support — meeting families at their point of need and keeping them housed. Prevention is dramatically more cost-effective than emergency response: keeping a family housed costs a fraction of what emergency shelter, child welfare involvement, and the long-term consequences of homelessness cost our community.

Hillsborough County consistently ranks among Florida's highest counties for eviction filings — with over 28,000 filings annually. Many of these evictions are for small amounts — one or two months of missed rent — that could be resolved with targeted assistance and mediation. Instead, families lose their housing, children lose their school stability, and communities lose the productive residents they cannot afford to lose.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed both how quickly housing instability escalates and how effectively targeted intervention can prevent it — when emergency rental assistance programs were funded and deployed, eviction rates dropped dramatically. iCare's Housing Stability program builds on that evidence: timely, targeted, community-based intervention prevents the individual tragedies and systemic costs of mass eviction.