Separation from pets is one of the most common reasons people experiencing homelessness refuse shelter and services.

By learning about how to serve people together with their pets, communities can remove one more barrier to housing for people experiencing homelessness. Our friends at the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) partnered with PetSmart to produce a guide for homeless services and animal welfare organizations to work together to serve people and their pets.

Prefer to watch/listen instead of read?

NAEH still has you covered. As part of their Emergency Shelter Learning series, they produced a webinar on increasing pet-friendliness of shelter and services.

Need help building the will to keep people and pets together?

It can be hard for some people to understand why honoring the human-animal bond is important, especially to people experiencing homelessness. This 20-minute video does an excellent job making the case for the importance of keeping people and pets together.

You can also take inspiration from the University of Washington’s pop-up gallery, which presented images of pets with their owners experiencing homelessness alongside data collected about homelessness and the benefits of pet ownership.

Find more short, inspirational videos honoring specifically the dog-human bond and homelessness at mydogismyhome.org.