Ending Homelessness Today
The official blog of the National Alliance to End Homelessness
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A detailed look at Veteran Homelessness
August 10, 2012
The following blog post is adapted from “Tackling Veteran Homelessness with HUDStat,” the lead story of the summer issue of Evidence Matters, a publication by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
More than 2.4 million American soldiers have served in Operation Iraqi Freedom/New Dawn and Operation Enduring Freedom since September 11, 2001.2 Hundreds of thousands of these men and women have returned from Iraq, and many more will be returning from Afghanistan in the next few years.
“Soldiers are returning with higher rates of injury after multiple deployments with severe economic hardships,” says John Driscoll, president and chief executive officer of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. Studies show that nearly 20 percent of returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have experienced a traumatic brain injury, and 10 to 18 percent suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
A recent Pew Research Center survey showed that post-9/11 veterans found the transition to civilian life harder and had higher rates of post-traumatic stress than veterans who served in previous wars. Rates of military sexual trauma, which is associated with an increased risk of developing PTSD, are high among female veterans, who make up more than 11 percent of veterans of these two wars. For both male and female veterans, PTSD is linked to an increased risk of depression and substance abuse, which exacerbate .
The economic downturn and high unemployment rates add to the challenges these soldiers face on returning from active duty. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that veterans between the ages of 25 and 34, who make up more than half of post-9/11 veterans, had a 2011 unemployment rate of 12 percent, compared with 9.3 percent for nonveterans. Among veterans aged 18 to 24, the unemployment rate is much higher — 30.2 percent.
All of these factors contribute to an increased risk of homelessness for returning veterans, even though they have higher education levels (62 percent of veterans over the age of 25 have at least some college compared with 56.4 percent of nonveterans) and higher median incomes compared with the general population. Female veterans and younger veterans are more than twice as likely to be homeless as their nonveteran counterparts.
According to HUD’s 2011 Point-in-Time (PIT) Estimates of Homelessness, veterans constitute 14 percent of the homeless population, although they represent only 10 percent of the U.S. adult population. This PIT count documented 67,495 homeless veterans on a single night in January, a number that is 12 percent lower than a year earlier. Throughout the entire year that ended in September 2010, nearly 145,000 veterans were homeless for at least one night.
Ending homelessness among veterans is a top priority for the White House, HUD, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). This commitment is reflected in the nation’s first comprehensive plan to prevent and end homelessness, Opening Doors. Released by the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) in 2010, the federal plan sets the goal of ending veteran homelessness by 2015.
To achieve this goal, Opening Doors calls for breaking down institutional silos, increasing collaboration among and within all levels of government, and improving data collection and analysis. Accordingly, HUD collaborates with other federal agencies to collect data and target assistance programs to move veterans from the street into permanent supportive housing — a critical component of the USICH plan.
To learn about how HUD is tackling veteran homelessness with HUDStat, a new data-driven performance management tool, see the 2012 issue of Evidence Matters.
... Read More »
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Much ado about Data: Responses to the Individuals Ending Homelessness Survey
August 09, 2012
Today’s blog is from Jeni Gamble, the Alliance’s Director of Development and Communications.
As a new member of the Alliance team, and someone who is relatively new to the housing first movement, I wanted to get a better understanding of what advances advocates believe have had the greatest impact in our fight to end homelessness. Last month, I sent out a short survey to the 2012 Annual conference presenters and scholarship recipients, more than 200 individuals in total. The survey was designed to garner qualitative responses regarding the improvements and changes we are seeing in housing and homelessness, and to help us learn what these leaders in the field saw as being essential to our progress.
Like many of you, I entered this field somewhat by accident. I started in an emergency shelter in the late 1990s where I worked with domestic violence survivors and their families. Often a client would spend months in an emergency shelter before moving on to transitional housing, where she would stay for nearly a year, and only then, after months of appointments, applications and interviews, would she receive a voucher for housing assistance. Needless to say, Housing First was not the approach we used back then.
I am only beginning to review the 44 unduplicated responses and identify themes, but one thing is clear, the use of data in decision-making is one of the most significant advances in the field.
Read More »
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Field Notes: Subsidies and Rapid Re-Housing
August 07, 2012
Over the past few months, we at the Center for Capacity Building have been releasing short modules devoted to various aspects of rapid re-housing. Here is the third in our five-part series, which covers how to structure and pay for rental subsidies. (If you’d like to learn more about the first two modules in the series, please see Kay’s blog post).
Clearly subsidies are a big part of any successful rapid re-housing program, but many providers remain skeptical. For instance, some providers are doubtful that any subsidy short of a Housing Choice Voucher will be enough to end someone’s homelessness. However, our data show that this is not the case. Temporary, short-term, or medium-term subsidies are often enough to lift households out of homelessness.
Another frustrating part for providers is the matter of figuring out how much each household should be receiving. The trick here is to be flexible. No two households are the same, and programs need to devote time to assessing each household’s needs, or at the very least be prepared to adjust the amount of financial assistance they offer, especially if a crisis arises.
A successful program is one that stabilizes the household with the minimum amount of money possible, while also standing ready to increase the amount of assistance provided if such an increase should become necessary.
I’ll save the rest of... Read More »
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Preparing for Your Community’s Point in Time Count
August 07, 2012
January 2013 will be here before you know it. And what does that mean? In January many communities across the country will be conducting point in time (PIT) counts of persons experiencing homelessness.
Why Are PIT Counts Important?
Collecting and using data on both sheltered and unsheltered unaccompanied youth experiencing homelessness can help communities improve policies and programming;
Data can provide communities with a baseline of the number of unaccompanied youth to determine if there are increases or decreases over time;
Data can be used to help with requesting funding through the grant process;
Results of the PIT count can raise awareness of the issue of youth homelessness.
Why is Including Youth Important?
Historically, unaccompanied youth are undercounted during PIT counts; therefore, many communities do not have an accurate estimate of the prevalence and nature of youth homelessness.
Annually, HUD is mandated to submit a report to Congress called the Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR). The report describes the number and characteristics of all people experiencing homelessness across the nation. If youth are left out, then Congress is not provided with that data within the report and they will have less information to make informed decisions about funding and resources at the federal level.
Alliance Tools and Resources
The Alliance has developed tools and resources to help communities purposefully include youth in their PIT counts. Over the next few months we will do even more to help everyone plan, organize and... Read More »
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Another Update from Maddison Bruer
August 06, 2012
Today’s guest blog is from Maddison Bruer, who we will be hearing from periodically on our blog this summer as she updates us on her work withBridges of Norman.
Hi ya’ll! It seems the longer I stay here in Oklahoma, the more my southern roots take over. I hope all of you are having a fantastic summer, as I have been. One of my part-time jobs this summer is working under the supervision of a Geography professor at Oklahoma University doing research on one of the predominant Native American tribes, the Chickasaw, and how tobacco use impacts their nation.
The reason I mention this is twofold, one being that it has taught me a lot about research methods, which I believe is important for my work on the youth homelessness front, two being that while visiting the small town of Ada, Oklahoma (the capital of the Chickasaw Nation) to conduct some field research, I stumbled upon a youth shelter. At first glance, I was astounded to have found another youth shelter. As many of you probably know, youth shelters here are few and far between.
I asked my team to stop and I hopped out to do some investigating. The building was very new looking and well maintained, but I must say I was slightly shocked to see babies of all ages just sitting on the sidewalks, half clothed, and some crying.
This was the... Read More »
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Some songs about homelessness
August 03, 2012
Here at the Alliance we have a lot of multimedia sent to us all the time – music, films, artwork – all of it in support of our mission of ending homelessness. It’s heartening to us that people feel strongly enough about the issue of homelessness to make it the subject of their art, and that they have a high enough opinion of our organization to want to share it with us.
So now we’d like to share with you a few items that have recently come to our attention: two videos and a song.
The first was brought to us by John McGah, a presenter at our July conference who has also written guest pieces for the blog you’re reading right now. He directs the Give US Your Poor initiative and is a Senior Associate at the National Center on Family Homelessness.
This is the music video for the song “Poorhouse” by Great American Taxi.
You can see Vince Herman, singer-songwriter of Great American Taxi, talk about his own brush with homelessness here.
The second song is called “Housing First.” It’s hard to imagine someone taking a concept like housing-first and turning it into a catchy, slickly produced folk-rock song, but that’s exactly what singer-songwriter Daniel Paul Nelson did.
Click here to listen to it on Soundcloud.
... Read More »
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New Opportunities to Improve Families’ Employment Outcomes
August 02, 2012
States have an important new opportunity to improve the employment outcomes of low-income families. In July, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an InformationMemorandum indicating the Administration’s interest in granting waivers to states for the administration of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program. States may now seek waivers from the administration that allow them to experiment with new strategies to help low-income parents on TANF connect with employment.
States are required to demonstrate that 50 percent of the TANF caseload complies with work activity requirements. Advocates have long been concerned that the federal rules regarding “what counts” as a work activity is often a poor match for what many parents need to successfully prepare for, or enter, the workforce. Families in which a parent or a child has a disability are often poorly served under the current rules. Some are unable to meet the required number of hours in a work activity. Others require work preparation activities that are not countable, and so are simply not offered.
The mismatch between what families need to transition to work and what TANF agencies can provide has important consequences. Some households face impending time limits for cash assistance without ever receiving the individually tailored supports that could help them succeed in the workforce. High numbers of families, including those that include a member with a disability, lose cash assistance because they are... Read More »
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Field Notes: Allocating Resources
August 01, 2012
At our recent annual conference, we held a workshop on the topic of allocating resources. One of the presentations in that session included some data and suggestions that are worth sharing again, particularly as we turn to the new HEARTH CoC regulations and the next NOFA.
You can see the slides here from the presentation by Katharine Gale, one of our close partners who has assembled a lot of the data that’s been collected about cost-effectiveness and outcomes.
Pay special attention to slides 4, 5, 7, and 14, which present the aggregated data from numerous communities.
I’ve had a chance to look at a lot of data from different communities very closely. One thing that stands out is that there tends to be a lot of variation between the average cost and outcomes of different programs within communities, far more than the variation between different communities.
In other words, the difference in average cost and outcomes, for instance, between an urban area with a high cost of living, and a rural area with a lower cost of living, isn’t that dramatic. However, the difference in cost and outcomes between two programs in a particular community can be very large.
This presentation does a nice job of summarizing that data and also identifying some of the key questions that community leaders and homeless assistance providers should be asking themselves as they implement the new CoC regulations and... Read More »
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Olmstead and the American Disabilities Act
July 31, 2012
In his highlights of the themes of our 2012 National Conference, our Vice President Steve Berg touched on the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in its 1999 Olmstead decision.
The Supreme Court ruled that the Act requires states to grant people with disabilities the choice of where to live, and that states must avoid placing them in living situations that segregate them from the rest of society. The Olmstead decision, and a number of cases that followed, spoke specifically about state Medicaid programs. However, the Olmsteaddecision is about “community integration” broadly, and has continues to shape the ways in which state programs and services promote the rights of people with disabilities, particularly their right to live in the least restrictive settings of their choice.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has an interest in upholding Olmsteadprinciples, as it does all federal fair housing provisions. While HUD’s purview may raise thorny questions about what kinds of housing are suitable for disabled people who are experiencing homelessness, an important, practical implication of the Olmstead decision is that it makes more resources available to house people who are experiencing chronic homelessness.
Recently, HUD published guidance about the role of public housing agencies (PHAs) in reducing inappropriate institutionalization of persons with disabilities. It is worth... Read More »
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Congressman Launches Anti-Bullying Caucus
July 30, 2012
Today’s post was written by Edward J. SanFilippo, Youth Policy Fellow for the Alliance.
On Thursday, June 28, 2012, Congressman Mike Honda and his colleagues launched the Congressional Anti-Bullying Caucus(CABC). The CABC is a bipartisan caucus made up of members of Congress who are “committed to the belief that all communities deserve a safe environment to thrive, and that our nation is in urgent need of solutions that stop bullying – both offline and online – now and forever.”
While the link between bullying and homelessness might seem remote, youths often cite school issues as a factor in their pathway to homelessness. Bullying can enhance feelings of isolation and can contribute to a youth feeling disconnected from their community. Problems at home only exacerbate this problem. As a colleague recently stated, if a youth feels marginalized at school and misunderstood (or worse) at home, they might see leaving as their only option.
“More than thirteen million children are teased, taunted, and physically assaulted by their peers each year,” Chairman Honda said in a statement. “This bullying is not confined to classroom walls; the fear and hurt that so many people feel in America today is an urgent call to action.”
The CABC is seeking to address the bullying component of this problem, and the Alliance is one of the organizations formally supporting the caucus. Our focus,... Read More »
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A Dispatch from the International AIDS Conference
July 27, 2012
Today’s guest blog is from Nancy Bernstine, executive director of the National AIDS Housing Coalition.
Today the International AIDS Conference (IAC), which is being held in the U.S. for the first time in 22 years, is concluding.
This convening of 20,000 people from across the world gave us an opportunity to explore the global dimensions of housing for people with HIV-AIDS. The National AIDS Housing Coalition (NAHC) and our Canadian partners, the Ontario HIV Treatment Network (OHTN), are pleased to have sponsored an affiliated independent event, the International Leadership Summit on Housing on July 21 at the World Bank’s Preston Auditorium.
Housing remains the most critical need of people with HIV-AIDS living in the United States. The Housing Opportunities for Persons With AIDS program (HOPWA) serves about 60,000 households, but according to grantee reports, more than 145,000 people who are in need of housing assistance still go unserved.
Research on housing and people living with HIV-AIDS (much of which has been presented through the Housing and HIV-AIDS Research Summit series) documents improved health care outcomes for people with HIV-AIDS who are challenged by poverty, homelessness and stigma. Research also has shown that housing assistance can be a cost-effective health care intervention for people with HIV-AIDS, with a cost “per quality-adjusted life year” in the same range as such widely accepted health care practices as mammography and renal dialysis.
The purpose of our summit was to bring together, from every continent, researchers, policy makers, se... Read More »
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Capitol Hill Day 2012: A Resounding Success
July 26, 2012
Last week, advocates from across the country participated in Capitol Hill Day 2012 in conjunction with the Alliance’s National Conference on Ending Homelessness in Washington, DC. Hundreds of conference attendees took advantage of the fact that they were in the nation’s capital to meet with their congressional delegations and educate them about homelessness in their communities and the ways in which federal policy can better support local efforts to prevent and end homelessness.
This is the third Capitol Hill Day I have planned in my time at the Alliance, and the level of participation and the dedication of this year’s conference attendees have made it the most impressive by far. Results and “report-backs” from meetings are still trickling in, so it’s too early to announce the full results of Capitol Hill Day 2012. I urge you to keep an eye on this blog next month for a full summary of the event and its immediate impact.
In the meantime, I’d like to highlight some preliminary results that we do have. Advocates attended a record of about 280 congressional meetings – an increase of about 22 percent compared to just two years ago. That’s incredible! And nearly 70 of those were with members of congress.
We are still calculating precisely how many people participated in all of these meetings, but the statistic I am most excited to share is this: participants from a record-breaking 44 states attended congressional meetings. This means that representatives fr... Read More »
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Field Notes: New Tools for Coordinated Assessment
July 25, 2012
Last week, I had the pleasure of presenting at and moderating the Coordinated Assessment workshop at our 2012 National Conference on Ending Homelessness. We had a big audience and some fabulous presenters. Though I’d like to think everyone came to our session because of their passion for the topic (and certainly some people did!), I have a feeling the release of the new HUD Continuum of Care regulations that mandated that communities adopt the approach probably played a bigger part in the attendance.
Communities want to make sure they’re doing things right, and because of that, we’ve had a lot of questions about how communities should get started, what they should think through carefully, and who to involve in their coordinated assessment plans. We’ve been fortunate that some communities who have developed resources for use in their own coordinated assessment processes have generously agreed to share those resources with other communities who are just now getting started.
This has allowed us update our Coordinated Assessment Toolkit with even more tools from a number of communities, including Philadelphia, PA; Memphis/Shelby County, TN; Dayton/Montgomery County, OH; and Minneapolis/Hennepin County, MN.
These new tools will help communities develop:
An assessment tool to use upon a household’s arrival to a coordinated assessment center
A data release authorization form that ensures the protection of client confidentiality
Ideas about how to staff a coordinated assessment process
A better understanding of how th... Read More »
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VA official reflects on how her life experience has informed her work
July 24, 2012
Today’s guest blog is from Stacy Vasquez, the Deputy Director for Homeless Veteran Initiatives at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
As a member of the fourth generation in my family to serve in the armed forces, I feel a particular affinity for current and former soldiers, sailors, Guardsmen, airmen, and Marines. As a child, I lived in a battered women’s shelter, so I also have a deep concern for those who have no place to call home.
I am grateful for the chance to put all of my experiences to use in my most important mission yet: ending homelessness among Veterans.
The risk factors that lead to homelessness are universal. Job loss, health problems, a missed rent check: these are setbacks that can affect any one of us. But they can be particularly acute for Veterans who have made so many sacrifices both stateside and abroad to fulfill their military duties.
My father, who served in the Navy in Vietnam, suffered from severe post-traumatic stress disorder. This led to an inability to work, along with alcoholism and even violence. When I was 9, my mother removed my brother and me from the situation and our home.
Eventually, my father reached out to the Department of Veterans Affairs for help. He received counseling, got sober, remarried, and by all accounts was a good husband to his second wife. But he never saw my brother or me again. Had he o... Read More »
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25 years after McKinney-Vento
July 23, 2012
This past Sunday, July 22, marked 25 years since President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act, named after congressman from Connecticut who poured a lot of his time and energy into doing something about what was then the new problem of mass homelessness. The final vote in Congress was 65-8 in the Senate and 301-115 in the House. Years later the Act was renamed the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, adding the name of Bruce Vento, a congressman from Minnesota whose commitment to the issue matched Representative McKinney’s.
Everyone involved in getting the act passed regarded it as a first step. The bill provided funding that allowed program operators to try out a variety of approaches to solving the problem. With these resources, for more than 10 years, program operators around the country worked to construct an impressive array of shelters, supportive services, and temporary and permanent housing.
Yet when a major federal research study in the late 1990s showed that the number of people experiencing homelessness had not gone down, few people were surprised. If anything, even more people were homeless at that time than in 1987, the year the act was signed into law.
The new resources and new programs had allowed advocates to improve the lives of individuals experiencing homelessness and serve communities where homelessness existed, but the problem of homelessness remained. So a movement to end homelessness began.
It started in the late 1990s and pic... Read More »
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Our 2012 Conference: Some Themes and thoughts
July 20, 2012
We’d like to thank the nearly 1,500 practitioners, public officials and other stakeholders who took time out of their busy schedules to attend our 2012 National Conference on Ending Homelessness. For us in the Alliance, the level of enthusiasm and positivity on display in the plenary sessions and workshops was immensely gratifying. The homeless assistance community has come far, in terms of its overall level of sophistication and focus on implementation in order to get results, and the conference was a great opportunity for people to share what they have learned, as well as for those of us in the community to engage in a discussion about what we still must do to achieve our goals.
In her remarks at the conference’s closing plenary, Alliance CEO Nan Roman touched on a few of the themes that emerged over the course of the three days. I’ll expand on some of those here.
Targeting – The message came through loud and clear: there are a range of interventions to draw upon, but for an intervention to be successful it must be targeted at the right people. Specifically, supportive housing is our most intensive intervention, and it is designed for the most vulnerable population with the most severe disabilities. If such people are screened out in favor of people with fewer challenges, they will live and probably die on the streets.
Olmstead – The Olmstead case reminded us that large programs devoted solely to housing p... Read More »
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Tomorrow is Capitol Hill Day 2012!
July 17, 2012
We at the Alliance are getting increasingly excited for tomorrow, July 18 – the official Capitol Hill Day 2012! Capitol Hill Day is held every year in conjunction with our National Conference on Ending Homelessness. This year, conference participants from an astounding – and record-breaking! 44 states will head up to Capitol Hill to meet with their senators, representatives, and their staff members. They are scheduled to attend upwards of 250 meetings.
We’ve been extremely busy! Conference participants have been stopping by the Advocacy Information Table at the conference to pick up Capitol Hill Day Packets that contain information on each of the official Capitol Hill Day policy priorities. Advocates will then educate members of congress and their staff about the great work being done in their communities to solve homelessness, and explain the impact of these policy issues on their efforts.
If you’re unable to attend the conference, please keep an eye on this blog next month for a full report of the success of this year’s Capitol Hill Day. In the meantime, you can always check out last year’s report and get involved in the Alliance’s advocacy efforts by checking out our ongoing campaigns.
But if you ARE at the conference, we hope you plan to participate in Capitol Hill Day 2012! It couldn’t be any easier. Your state captains have been busy scheduling meetings. They just need YOU to participate! Stop by the Advocacy Information Table to get more informatio... Read More »
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HUD's Mark Johnston speaks at 2012 National Conference
July 17, 2012
This year will be a year of change for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and, by extension, for advocates and people working on behalf of people experiencing homelessness, said HUD’s acting assistant secretary for the Office of Community Planning and Development, Mark Johnston.
Speaking at the opening plenary session of the 2012 National Conference on Ending Homelessness on Monday, July 16, Assistant Secretary Johnston addressed what is perhaps the most significant piece of news circulating the conference, the release on Saturday, July 15 of the Continuum of Care interim regulations under the HEARTH Act.
Assistant Secretary Johnston reminded the nearly 1,500 practitioners, public officials, and advocates at the conference that the new regulations will alter how communities manage and distribute resources in the future, but will also provide communities with important tools that have the potential to strengthen prevention and rapid re-housing efforts.
He noted that the HEARTH was signed into law in 2009, the same year as the Recovery Act, which created the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP). Developing and implementing both policy initiatives have been a challenge for his agency, he said, but doing so has taught HUD officials a great deal about homelessness prevention and rapid re-housing.
“In retrospect, it was great timing,” he added.
HUD officials have incorporated lessons learned from the implementation of HPRP into their regulations for the HEARTH act.
But Assistant Secretary Johnston also acknowledged the difficult fiscal environment in which agencies and ad... Read More »
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The Regs are out!
July 16, 2012
Just in time for our conference, HUD has published an interim rule for the new Continuum of Care program (CoC program). The regulations follow the HEARTH Act closely, so if you've read any of our material about the changes made by the HEARTH Act, you already know much of the story. However, there are a few new and interesting things.
First of all, the regulations provide a little more detail on what will be expected with coordinated assessment systems. Your CoC will have to develop a process that assesses people's need for housing and services. There are numerous ways HUD will allow you to structure a coordinated assessment system, including having one centralized location where the assessments take place, using a 2-1-1 based system, or having multiple entry points. In addition to conducting the assessment, CoCs will have to have uniform process for evaluating eligibility for different types of assistance for determining how people will be prioritized for different types of assistance. We discuss a lot of these issues in our Coordinated Assessment Toolkit.
There are now two types of permanent housing--permanent supportive housing and rapid re-housing. Permanent supportive will generally look and function as it does currently, however, there are a several changes. The match will be 25 percent cash or in-kind as it will be for all activities except for leasing, which has no match requirement. Projects will be allowed to get funding for rental assistance and services... Read More »
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Leaders in the Fight Against Youth Homelessness honored
July 13, 2012
On Wednesday, July 12, the White House and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness recognized some of the foremost leaders in responding to youth homelessness at Champions of Change: Fight Against Homelessness. The 13 awardees shared their own experiences serving youth in two panel discussions hosted by the Shaun Donovan, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and Bryan Samuels of the Administration for Children, Youth, and Families.
A recurring theme of the day was the shortage of resources needed to address the problem of youth homelessness. During the discussion, one panelist speculated that New York City’s subway system could be that city’s largest provider of overnight accommodation for homeless youth.
Panelists also spoke about the importance of helping youth and their families reconnect and ensuring that appropriate services are in place for them when that is not possible. In Santa Clara, CA, up to a third of youth served by the Bill Wilson Center have homeless parents, which has led the agency to increase the resources it provides to help families and their children stay together.
Panelists explored how to improve services for youth, many of whom have complex needs. Awardee Sherilyn Adams of Larkin Street Youth Services in San Francisco noted that the difficulty lies not in dealing with the kids themselves but, rather, contending with the insufficient systems meant to support them.
To learn more about the Champions of Change, visit the USICH website. A video of the even... Read More »
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