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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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  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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  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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  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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  Field Notes: Mastering the Retooling Dance

  April 17, 2013

  To improve homeless assistance, many providers and community leaders are exploring options for retooling transitional housing programs to models that help people move more quickly into permanent housing, while providing the support they need to remain stably housed. This process can be at times arduous and overwhelming, especially for programs with a long history in a particular transitional housing model.

  Perhaps, if we start to think about the planning and implementation of a new model as taking “dance lessons,” it may reframe the retooling journey as an opportunity to learn a new dance with some great new steps for a successful retooling process. Those of use with two left feet take dance lessons to learn from others with experience and skill, and we realize that it takes determination, some stumbling, lots of practice, and following the direction of others who have mastered the art of dance.

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  Field Notes: Implementing the CoC Regulations

  April 03, 2013

  Though the rule is out and Continuum of Care (CoC) competition season has passed – well, almost –there’s still some work left to do regarding the Continuum of Care regulations.

  Around the time the regulations were released, we released several documents offering guidance on them, including a copy of our comments and a summary document. Last week, we released a brief on the next step: namely, how to implement the CoC rule and take advantage of the opportunities in it to promote best practices in your community. Here are some of the issues we address.

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

  March 28, 2013

  There is a deep gulf between what we know we should do, and what we actually do. We can see across it, we can even describe what the other side looks like, but we are not sure how to actually cross it. This is where some homeless service providers find themselves in their efforts to move toward rapid re-housing.

  Last year the Alliance trained 172 organizations in Virginia on rapid re-housing. We also brought in Kris Billhardt, Director of Volunteers of America, Oregon’s Home Free program, to conduct trainings on rapid re-housing for survivors of domestic violence. The next step in helping service providers in Virginia adopt rapid re-housing was to help them bridge the gap between what they now knew about rapid re-housing, and the practices and policies of their organizations.

  To accomplish this, the Alliance launched seven Learning Collaboratives. A Learning Collaborative is an opportunity for organizations to make changes in the way they operate, while being supported by their peers and experts in rapid re-housing. Here is how it works.

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  Field Notes: What if your program’s leadership doesn’t support retooling?

  March 19, 2013

  Continuing our series of answering frequently asked questions,  today’s vlog answers a question on the topic of retooling transitional housing programs: “What if our organization’s executive director/leadership does not support the retooling our transitional housing program, but the local Continuum of Care is moving in that direction?”

  This is a question I received during our Performance Improvement Clinics, where we often discuss retooling transitional housing as a possible change strategy. In these discussions, we have learned that reluctant leadership can be a struggle, particularly for organizations that have operated a transitional housing program for many years under the same board of directors or executive director.

  In this video I share information and ideas from providers who have retooled their programs as well as ideas from my own experience in retooling a transitional housing program prior to my work here at the Alliance. The key to engaging organizational leadership is through education and lots of dialogue, both at the organizational and the community levels.

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  Field Notes: Incorporating Consumers

  March 13, 2013

  So far in our series on how programs can best implement the HEARTH Act, we've talked about the importance of a permanent housing focus, performance measurement, and building systems-level cooperation. Our final topic today is consumer involvement.

  A consumer presence on the new Continuum of Care (CoC) board, as well as the boards of all CoC-funded recipients and subrecipients, is now mandated by the interim CoC regulations. The intent of the new regulations is to improve the way we serve consumers - without their feedback, it is impossible to keep track of their needs and how well homeless assistance programs and systems are meeting those needs. Here are some questions you should ask about your program to determine how well you are incorporating consumer input into your program’s design and operations:

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  Field Notes: Retooling Transitional Housing Success Stories

  February 27, 2013

  Today we continue our vlog series where Alliance staff members answer common questions on a particular topic. Kim Walker kicked our series off by answering five common questions on Coordinated Assessment. Today, Alliance Capacity Building Associate Kay Moshier McDivitt answers a common question we receive about retooling transitional housing programs: “can you give me some real examples of programs that have retooled?”

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  Field Notes: The Systems Perspective

  February 12, 2013

  So far in our series on how programs can best implement the HEARTH Act, we’ve talked about the importance of a permanent housing focus and performance measurement. Today we explore another important aspect: collaboration.

  While providers will need to make changes to their individual programs to improve performance, one of the biggest shifts under the HEARTH Act is the need for a focus on the system. Providers will need to work together and with other stakeholders to create one effective homeless assistance system. Cooperation between providers in system-wide endeavors such as coordinated assessment can lead to greater efficiency and a homeless assistance system better equipped to meet the needs of people experiencing homelessness.

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  Field Notes: The Importance of Performance Measurement

  February 06, 2013

  A few weeks ago, we introduced a new blog series on HEARTH Implementation best practices that we’ve identified at the program and system levels. In our first entry in the series, we discussed the need for programs to adopt a permanent housing focus. Today we will talk about another crucial practice for programs to master: performance measurement!

  In most communities, homeless assistance programs were developed before good research and data were available about who was homeless and what strategies most effectively prevented and ended homelessness. Community data can help you identify who in the community is being served well and who is slipping through the cracks. Indeed, performance measurement, besides being a requirement under the CoC regulations, is the only way you can know how well your program is performing and whether your current model is a successful one. That’s why it is crucial that you  measure your program’s performance at consistent intervals around permanent housing related outcomes.

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  Field Notes: Tackling Assessment and Referrals as Part of Coordinated Assessment

  January 30, 2013

  Over the course of the past year, we have worked with communities across the country, and we’ve learned a lot about coordinated assessment. Today, we’d like to share with you some of those lessons.

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  Field Notes: Focusing on Permanent Housing

  January 23, 2013

  Many communities just finished the process of submitting their Continuum of Care (CoC) applications to HUD in which they talked about how they plan to expand on their successes and improve on their weaknesses in ending homelessness locally. These applications contained ideas about how to target interventions more carefully, count more accurately, and improve performance across the board. At the Alliance, we’ve been thinking about how best to implement the HEARTH Act as well, on a national scale. In the coming months, we’re going to share with our readers some HEARTH Implementation best practices that we’ve identified at the program and system levels.

  For today’s blog, we’d like to talk about how to incorporate a permanent housing focus into your program’s work.

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  Field Notes: Housing Locators and Supply and Demand

  January 16, 2013

  In March 2008 Fairfax County, VA, approved their Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness and soon afterwards, the County's Office to Prevent and End Homelessness (OPEH) partnered with Good Shepherd Housing and Family Services to implement a County-wide housing location services network. The impact of housing locators hired at various shelters and transitional housing programs was immediate and substantial.

  Within homeless services, housing locators are basically real estate agents for individuals and families who are experiencing homelessness. Like real estate agents, they locate suitable and affordable housing for their clients, negotiate a good price, and facilitate the placement of their clients into housing. They reach out to private landlords, large housing complexes, real estate agents, and public housing agencies to create housing options that work for their clients.

  In 2011, working with homeless families residing in shelters in Fairfax County, our agency's housing locators helped cut the families' average shelter stay by more than 50 days, a decline of more than 30 percent over the previous year. In all, housing locators created more capacity and efficiencies within the existing homeless services programs and served as a critical bridge to housing.

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  Field Notes: Thinking about Homelessness Prevention

  January 09, 2013

  Improving homelessness prevention programs requires that providers and funders shift how they determine whom to award prevention funds. As the chart below will demonstrate, we can have the highest impact by serving the highest risk households, even though our success rate will be lower.

  One of the biggest challenges with doing homelessness prevention well is targeting to the right group. For a prevention presentation I did recently, I created a chart that shows some of the paradox involved in targeting prevention assistance well.

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  Field Notes: Progressive Engagement Activity

  December 19, 2012

  During last summer’s conference, we did an exercise that demonstrates to an audience how a progressive engagement process works. Progressive engagement refers to a strategy of providing a small amount of assistance to everybody who enters your homelessness system, then waiting to see if that works. If it doesn’t, you provide more assistance and wait to see if that works. If not, you apply even more, until eventually you provide your most intensive interventions to the few people who are left.

  We did the exercise with an audience of about 75 people. Here’s how it worked:

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  Field Notes: Talking About Tiers

  December 12, 2012

  Earlier this week, I participated in a webinar with our friends at the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) and Joyce Probst MacAlpine from Dayton/Montgomery County, Ohio about thinking strategically about the NOFA for the the Continuum of Care (CoC) Program.

  The webinar should be posted on USICH’s website in the next few days. In the meantime, it’s worth reiterating and expanding on a few points about the tiering process and how to get the most out of it.

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  Field Notes: Rapid Re-Housing Outcomes, Community Examples, and Evaluation

  December 06, 2012

  Today we’ve released the fifth and final training module in a five-part training series on rapid re-housing. In this short video, Alliance Capacity Building Associate Kimberly Walker discusses outcomes and evaluations, and provides community examples. When we conduct our rapid re-housing clinics in person, this portion of the training is usually where participants have the most questions and feedback. If you have missed the previous modules, don’t worry, you can find them here.

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  Field Notes: Five Questions About Coordinated Assessment

  November 14, 2012

  Hi all! Today we’re excited to introduce the first in a new series of vlogs that concentrates on answering five questions on some of the most important and relevant topics in homeless assistance. Today’s blog is on coordinated assessment, where we cover topics ranging from serving domestic violence survivors to developing assessment tools. Each of these videos will feature Capacity Building staff talking about common questions that we at the Center have been asked recently. If there’s a topic you’d like us to cover next, let us know by emailing thecenter@naeh.org.

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