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  Give Homeless People a Voice on Capitol Hill

  May 23, 2013

  It’s that time of the year again! And no, we’re not just talking about Memorial Day parades, barbeques, and beach trips. The Alliance’s National Conference on Ending Homelessness, which is held in Washington, DC every July, is quickly approaching! Each year in conjunction with the conference, the Alliance hosts Capitol Hill Day, which provides a unique opportunity for conference participants to meet with members of Congress and their staff while in our nation’s capital. This year, Capitol Hill Day will take place on the afternoon of Wednesday, July 24.

  Capitol Hill Day allows conference participants to impact federal policy by sharing their on-the-ground experiences working to end homelessness, as well as best practices they have learned about at the conference, with their congressional offices. Policymakers have many issues vying for their attention. So, the goals of Capitol Hill Day are to convince them to make ending homelessness a federal priority, educate them about smart policy solutions, and encourage them to take specific next steps to support these solutions. These face-to-face meetings are highly effective advocacy forums, as they help members of Congress feel more connected to the issue of homelessness in their districts.

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  Field Notes: The Rapid Re-Housing Role-Playing Game

  May 22, 2013

  The Center for Capacity Building does quite a bit of training, and we have learned that you can stand in front of people and talk for only so long. Activities and exercises that give people a chance to experiment with new concepts can lead to paradigm shifts and can be more fun then watching us talk. Today we are sharing a rapid re-housing role playing game that we use during our trainings.

  We use this game as part of our trainings on rapid re-housing after we have introduced participants to the basics of the rapid re-housing model. The game illustrates how rapid re-housing works and explores the different roles involved: homeless families, housing locators, and landlords, among others. The full game takes about an hour and a half to play and requires eight players.

  Give this game a try to break up your next board or staff meeting and then let us how it goes!

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  Data Points: Rapid Re-Housing Works

  May 21, 2013

  Some of the major research questions circulating now are: Does rapid re-housing really work? Do people who are rapidly re-housed remain housed?  A recent report by Jason Rodriguez for the Georgia Department of Community Affairs, Homelessness Recurrence in Georgia sheds some light on these questions. Rodriguez used HMIS data to examine risk factors for returns to homelessness in the state of Georgia.

  Overall, Rodriguez found that the most significant predictor of a person returning to homelessness in Georgia was that the person exited a program type that was NOT rapid re-housing. Those who exited an emergency shelter were 4.7 times more likely to become homeless again than those who exited a rapid re-housing program. Similarly, those who exited a transitional housing program were four times more likely to become homeless than those exiting a rapid re-housing program.

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  Early Registration Closing Soon!

  May 20, 2013

  If you have been following previous conference blogs, the Alliance newsletter, and other Alliance social media, you know that the 2013 National Conference on Ending Homelessness will be here before we know it!

  As the conference is quickly approaching, the early registration deadline is as well. If you have not yet registered, you can save significantly by taking advantage of the early registration option. The deadline for early online registration is 3 p.m. ET on Wednesday, May 22. If you are registering by mail, your form must be postmarked on or before Wednesday, May 22. To register early, and for more information on deadlines and registration rates, visit the conference registration page.

  There is much in store for this year’s conference, which will be held at the Renaissance Washington DC Hotel July 22 to 24 in Washington, DC. You can learn all about what’s happening at the conference by visiting the conference website where you will find conference session descriptions, the various workshops tracks offered, and other various exciting events we have in store for attendees.

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  The First ever Funders Institute: Harnessing Potential, Powering Change

  May 16, 2013

  Last year I was with a group of funders from all across the U.S. doing a ‘tour’ of Skid Row in Los Angeles. The group was being led by two residents, Jim and Ed – men who were formerly homeless but were now living in permanent supportive housing in the area. They spoke of their journeys, from life on the mean streets to lives of safety, dignity and permanence in their own homes.
  As we walked down the street, lined with people asleep on the sidewalk, pushing shopping carts or sitting on curbs, one of the members of our troop asked our escorts about food. “Do people living on the streets get enough to eat?” she wanted to know. “What’s being done about feeding people?”

  There was laughter from both men and they stopped and turned to us. “Enough to eat?” asked Jim. “We get so much food we don’t know what to do with it. Every community group, ladies group and faith group brings food to Skid Row. We don’t need more food – what people need here are homes.”

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  Field Notes: Performance Improvement Clinic Delivers More than Numbers

  May 15, 2013

  I entered the Pine Camp Arts and Community Center in the north side of Richmond eager to discuss the Richmond metro area’s homeless response system’s performance data. I was expecting a presentation filled with charts and graphs showing exits to permanent housing, costs per exits, returns to homelessness, lengths of homelessness, and other data to demonstrate the region’s performance towards reducing homelessness.

  These expectations were met  – but the most important thing I learned from the “Performance Improvement Clinic,” conducted by the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) and sponsored by Homeward and the City of Richmond, doesn’t fit into a bar graph . I learned that, if we are to end homelessness, we need a collective, honest, and courageous community response.

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  Send us your data! (Please)

  May 14, 2013

  Two weeks ago, every continuum of care was required to submit their point in time count to HUD, but they aren’t the only people who want it. The Homelessness Research Institute wants your data too. We use data from the point in time counts to evaluate what is happening in communities across the country. When there are reductions, we look for what a community may be doing differently that has impacted their success in ending homelessness. Once we dive in deeper, we may use an exemplar program or community at our conferences and on our website, like we did with Fairfax County, VA. This could be you! Even if your community hasn’t decreased homelessness, we still track all reported increases and decreases on an interactive map on our website. As of the posting of this blog, 17 out of 30 communities have reported a decrease in homelessness. If you click on a particular location, you can find the original source of the data. If you’d like to have your community featured on our map, email a link to your count or a media clip that discusses your count to counts@naeh.org. ... Read More »
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  2013 National Conference Update: Workshop Tracks

  May 13, 2013

  We have a little more than two months to go before our next National Conference here in DC. Two months seems a long time at this point, but putting these conferences together is a huge undertaking and we’re all very aware at how quickly the conference can sneak up on us. So we’re already busy preparing the 80 workshops for the two-day event. (I’m currently in the middle of lining up speakers for my two communications workshops, which I’m very excited about.)

  While the workshops themselves are still far from finished, we have nailed down their titles, which you can find on the Alliance website, and we’ve managed to put together all but one of the conference tracks. Workshop tracks are designed to guide participants who are interested in a given topic through a progressive set of workshops. Each workshop in a track will build on the previous one, resulting, we hope, in a complete as possible picture of that issue.

  Here’s a quick look at the tracks we have planned. Please bear in mind that these are very brief descriptions. With 80 workshops, it would be crazy to try to cover everything in a single blog post. You can find a full list of the comprehensive descriptions and their corresponding workshops on the Alliance website. For now, this should give you a taste of what you can expect to see in July.

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  Honoring All Mothers this Mother’s Day

  May 10, 2013

  How do we honor our mothers?  Hopefully on Sunday you will have an opportunity to convey your gratitude to the mothers in your life, your own mother, the mother of your children, and the mothers of your grandchildren, your nieces, and nephews. Please don’t forget take a moment this weekend to reflect on the mothers in our neighborhoods and communities who are struggling

  We at the Alliance are beginning to hear stories about how poor mothers with children across the country are being affected by the spending cuts to assistance programs under sequestration.  These cuts are further restricting an already fragile support system for low income families and taking a toll on the lives of mothers and their children.

  Head Start programs that provide parenting support and child development services are being cut. Low income families are losing the housing subsidies they have been promised. And many of the women who will feel the impact of sequestration are survivors of domestic violence who have fled violent homes only to end up in emergency shelters.

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  Alliance President Keynote Remarks, 2013 National Family and Youth Conference

  May 10, 2013

  Back in February,  about 900 advocates, practitioners, and officials convened in Seattle for two days of sharing innovative practices and new research on family and youth homelessness at the Alliance’s 2013 National Conference on Ending Family and Youth Homelessness. These are the keynote remarks delivered by the Alliance's President and CEO Nan Roman at that conference.

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  Mental Health and Military Appreciation

  May 09, 2013

  In our media-driven, socially-conscious era, every month has its many associations, and May is no exception. Did you know that May is National Salad Month? Neither did I. It’s also National Mental Health Awareness month and Military Appreciation Month. It’s fitting that these two issues share a month because, due to over ten years of continuous conflict, they are inextricably linked.

  With a small, all-volunteer military pressed into duty for over a decade, many service members have faced multiple deployments and experienced  sexual trauma, horrifying urban combat, traumatic head wounds, and they have suffered from lack of employment opportunities when they return home. All of these factors can contribute to mental health issues.

  As many as 40 percent of all veterans will experience some form of mental health or trauma related symptoms as a result of their service.  These are complex and often long lasting conditions that veterans will live with for many years. The Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) have both struggled to come to grips with this growing problem.

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  Resources for Meeting Ann Oliva’s Recommendations

  May 08, 2013

  On Monday, Ann Oliva, Director of the Office of Special Needs Assistance Programs at HUD released a letter  with information and recommendations for CoC leaders and stakeholders. The letter outlined four things community stakeholders should consider in striving to reach the goals laid out in Opening Doors. We have a number of resources on our website that address the various recommendations in Ms. Oliva’s letter, and I wanted to highlight them today because I know our website can be a little overwhelming at times.

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  State of Homelessness 2013: Ending Veteran Homelessness

  May 06, 2013

  Last month, the Homelessness Research Institute here at the Alliance released our annual research report: The State of Homelessness in America. The report provides information on trends in homelessness in addition to other economic, housing and demographic factors. One of the subpopulations we examined was homeless veterans.

  Between 2011 and 2012 overall homelessness among veterans decreased 7.2 percent, which is great progress, but the rate of homelessness among veterans remained higher than the rate of homelessness among the general population, at 29 homeless veterans for every 10,000 veterans in the general population.

  Last week, the Alliance published a one page graphic representation of the current trends in veteran homelessness. The map on this one pager shows the one year change in veteran homelessness from 2011 to 2012 in each state. Minnesota decreased veteran homelessness by 31.2 percent, the largest percentage decrease in the country.

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  Homelessness and Mental Health: Moving Past Stereotypes

  May 06, 2013

  Many people automatically associate homelessness with mental illness, based on stereotypes of men and women on city streets, disheveled and talking to themselves. In fact, certain groups of people experiencing homelessness do live with severe mental health conditions, though this is not true of all homeless people. With May being Mental Health Awareness Month, this is a good time to take a look at the connection between homelessness and mental illness.

  Of the 633,800 people who were homeless on any given night in 2012, about 99,900 people (or 18 percent) could be described as severely mentally ill. Many are chronically homeless, meaning they have been without homes for a long time or have experienced multiple episodes of homelessness. Their mental conditions make it impossible for them to remain stably housed for long without intensive help. The consensus in the homeless assistance field is that best way to help them is by providing permanent supportive housing.

  That’s not the entire story, however.

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  Damaging Effects of Sequestration Felt by the Most Vulnerable

  May 02, 2013

  While sequestration was only put in place two months ago, already the stories are piling up. Predictably, the news is bad. Take Roger in Fairfax, VA – after 10 years of being homeless, the light at the end of the tunnel was extinguished when the PHA canceled his interview for a Section 8 Voucher due to lack of funds. Or Steven, in Honolulu, HI who fears that this Section 8 Voucher will be taken away and he’ll be forced out on the street. Or a resident in El Paso, TX who is now required to make the choice between striking out on his own or moving to the city’s far less desirable Public Housing. These heartbreaking stories are not unique. In fact, they’re just the tip of the iceberg – there are, and will continue to be, hundreds of stories and thousands of people just like Roger and Steven.

  We are already hearing stories from across the country about threats to individuals’ and families’ Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers. From California to Connecticut, people are hearing that they may lose their current housing if their PHAs can’t find a way to keep them housed. Families in Iowa have had their recently-issued vouchers rescinded. Hundreds were taken back in New Orleans, too.

  In some places, Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) are being forced to raise rents on their residents in order to keep them housed. A housing authority in Indiana notes that even if it requires increased rents, it will likely have to scale back on basic services such as repairs and flood insurance due to sequestration cuts. The Worcester Housing Authority in Massachusetts will be forced to raise rents nearly 4-fold over two years, even after laying off staff people.

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  Field Notes: Why Retool?

  May 01, 2013

  Today we are presenting the third entry in our series of vlogs answering frequently asked questions about retooling transitional housing. In this vlog, Alliance Capacity Building Associate Kay Moshier McDivitt addresses one of the most fundamental questions she receives during Performance Improvement Clinics, where she often discusses retooling transitional housing as a possible change strategy. “Why retool?” Kay discusses her experience talking with transitional housing providers who have retooled, and their motivations for doing so.

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  How Medicaid Can Help Homeless and At-Risk Individuals

  April 29, 2013

  At least three vulnerable groups could benefit from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in ways that could reduce homelessness and risks of homelessness: chronically homeless individuals; young people aging out of foster care; and ex-offenders, also known as homecomers.

  Medicaid expansion, which is optional for states, could potentially cover all uninsured men with incomes under $15,000 – meaning most chronically homeless people and homecomers would have better access to medical and behavioral health care. Under the ACA states also must extend coverage to former foster youth until age 26, which will give these young people additional time to receive ongoing treatments and services. And under the ACA signing up for Medicaid  will be easier  across the country, as states must remove barriers to enrollment.

  The ACA will not end homelessness! Housing is the primary intervention to solve homelessness. However, vulnerable people also need supports and services to be stable in housing. Medicaid can help individuals, and covering them will help strained communities by adding resources for services that accompany housing assistance. The proof will be in implementation, starting next year.

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  Field Notes: How to Plan a Learning Collaborative – Step Two

  April 24, 2013

  This blog post is the second in a series from the Alliance on designing a Learning Collaborative for your community. (You can read the first post in the series here.)

  A Learning Collaborative is a great way to provide the support and expertise that organizations may need in order to make the changes necessary to adopt rapid re-housing. Last month the Alliance launched seven Learning Collaboratives to help 31 organizations in Virginian bridge the gap between their understanding of rapid re-housing and the practices and policies of their organizations.

  I am currently organizing these Learning Collaboratives and today I would like to share with you share a resource we developed that can help you plan a similar initiative in your community. It's stock application based on the Alliance’s own application.

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  The State of Homelessness in America 2013: Chapter 3

  April 23, 2013

  All this month, we’ve been doing weekly posts about our recently released report The State of Homelessness in America 2013. This week we’ll be taking a look at Chapter 3 of the report. Chapter 3 includes an examination of demographic and household factors among groups that are particularly at risk of homelessness: poor households living doubled up, poor single individuals, poor families headed by a single adult, and poor adults accessing safety net benefits.

  “Doubling-up” refers to when a family or individual is living in another family member or friend’s house for economic reasons. It is the most often cited previous living situation for individuals and families entering the homelessness system. Nationally, the number of doubled up poor households increased by almost 10 percent. This increase is part of a trend over the last several years, increasing from 4.6 million in 2007 to 7.4 million in 2011.

  Additionally, the majority of the homeless population is made up of single unaccompanied adults, and the majority of homeless families are headed by a single adult—usually female. The populations of poor individuals and poor families headed by a single person both increased and, like “doubled up” households, the size of these at-risk populations have been steadily growing over the last 5 years.

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  What Happened with Sequestration?

  April 22, 2013

  Lately, we’ve been talking a lot about the federal budget. We wrapped up fiscal year (FY) 2013 in mid-March with some good news for HUD’s McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Grants: the program received a post-sequestration increase! Shortly after, we released our State of Homelessness in America 2013, and the Administration released its FY 2014 Budget Proposal. In other words, it seems like we’ve moved past all the talk of the fiscal cliff and sequestration. But have we?
  The President’s Budget Proposal had some great news for HUD – proposing increases to a variety of programs, including, once again, the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Grants. All the funding levels proposed by the President for all federal programs include an important caveat – they assume sequestration will be reversed. Well, OK, but where is that assumption coming from? Can we assume that sequestration was just a blip that’s probably going to go away?

  The answer, of course, like so many other things related to federal policymaking lately, is that we don’t quite know. No one on either side of the aisle will argue that sequestration is good policy. Indiscriminate cuts to virtually all federal programs won’t make much of a dent in the federal deficit, and they will most certainly have a negative impact on the operation of many federal programs. But unfortunately, sequestration is a done deal. It went into effect on March 1 and while some programs haven’t yet felt the pinch of the 5 percent cut, they no doubt will, with many of those negative impacts being felt as the summer approaches.

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