• Conference Update: Join us at the Rapid Re-Housing Clinic!

  January 05, 2011

  Today's post comes to us from Kim Walker. It’s that time again! It’s T – five weeks (!) until the Alliance’s National Conference on Ending Family Homelessness, set this year in Oakland, Calif. For you veterans out there, you know that the Alliance strives to make the conference as informative, interesting, and useful as possible, chock full of workshops, meetings, plenary sessions, and group discussions. (Seriously – check out this year’s agenda.) And we’re not planning on disappointing in February! In fact, the Alliance’s Center for Capacity Building is taking it up a notch and offering a day-long Rapid Re-Housing for Families clinic at the February conference. Rapid re-housing is a strategy focused on returning people experiencing homelessness to permanent housing as quickly as possible by eliminating their barriers to obtaining and retaining permanent housing. Doing this effectively requires the careful implementation of a number of strategies, including effective housing search and location, landlord engagement, and home-based case management. Needless to say, it’s not always easy – and that’s where we want to help. Our clinic will review the nuts and bolts of rapid re-housing and include interactive activities and discussions to ensure participants leave with a clear idea of how to make their rapid re-housing program more successful. We're capping registration at 100, so be sure you register now! We think that this clinic will be a great way to kick of the conference (it’s slated for Wednesday, Feb. 9 starting at 9:30 a.m.) and really get participants energized for the workshops and sessions to come! And as a note: all clinic participants must be registered for our conference before signing up for the clinic. If you have any questions about the clinic, feel free to send them to Kim Walker. We can’t wait to see you there!... Read More »
• Check out the Alliance's Columbus Model

  November 30, 2010

  The Alliance just put out a huge (seriously, it’s hefty) toolkit – what we’re calling the Columbus Model. So here's the thing: Columbus, OH is really good at ending homelessness. Really, they've done all the right things: focused on prevention, implemented rapid re-housing techniques, encouraged excellent data collecting - all the things that make a program measurably successful. They're so good, in fact, that we published a community snapshot on their 46 percent decrease in homelessness a few years ago. And they're still at it! With laser-focus on performance measurement and performance evaluation of both their community-wide homeless assistance system and their individual programs, Columbus has managed to really focus on improving assistance and reducing homelessness. Lucky for you, we've distilled the lessons learned in this community and we're sharing them with you so that you can implement them in yours! Our four-part profile of the Columbus Model includes: Becoming a Data Driven System, Performance Measurement and Evaluation, Quality Improvment, and System Overview. We've also included tools and samples that you can download and adapt for your own community. Why do you care? You care because next year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development is going to get serious about the outcomes laid out in the HEARTH Act (that's the reauthorization of the McKinney Vento Grants) - and communities everywhere are going to have to shape up to meet those outcomes. One of the great things about the Columbus Model... Read More »
• But what about the children?

  November 08, 2010

  Okay, so I really mean what about the youth. Today, we hosted our first in a series of webinars about youth homelessness. Here's the thing about youth homelessness: we know just enough to know that we hardly know anything at all. We know a little: RHYA shows us that there are young people out there looking for help. Data from the juvenile justice and the foster care systems show us that young people are exiting those systems and ending up homeless. Research from institutions like Chapin Hall outline the relationship between youth homelessness and child welfare. We know that there's a problem. But we're grappling with pieces of the puzzle. And if we at the Alliance have learned anything at all, it's that we must fully understand a problem in order to really get serious about solving it. So we're asking you guys to start with the data. On our webinar today, Barbara Poppe from the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness and Nan Roman, the Alliance's own president, emphasized the importance of including youth in the 2011 community point-in-time counts. The first step to solving a problem, we've concluded, is to determine the scope of the problem. As a critical observer in the field, I can testify that I've been hearing stories from advocates and reporters alike asking if there's any evidence to back up anecdotal data about an increase in homeless youth and specifically about the vulnerability of those... Read More »
• Friday News Roundup: Are we really okay with that? Edition

  November 05, 2010

  News stories from across the country this week seemed to point to a growing epidemic of youth homelessness. In New Hampshire a letter to the editor (aptly) titled “In Claremont, 1 in 10 kids is homeless - Is New Hampshire really okay with that?” called for more funding for youth programs. Headed out west, in Green Bay, WI another piece reports a 20 percent increase over last year in the number of school-aged kids experiencing homelessness. How can we let this happen? I think most people agree that youth homelessness is a problem that just plain shouldn’t exist. It’s time to take action. Unfortunately, there is just not enough data on youth homelessness - and we can’t solve a problem unless we fully understand it. Luckily (!) we’re here to help! The Alliance president, Nan Roman, along with executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness will hold a webinar on Monday, November 8 at 2 p.m. ET going over strategies to acquire an accurate homeless youth count. We know they’re out there, we know we can help, and now it’s time to figure out how. Join us for our webinar on Monday – register here. Another buzz topic this week was the prevalence of homelessness in rural areas. Folks in rural North Carolina and North Dakota are proclaiming “Homelessness is here.” The prevalence of rural homelessness can come as a surprise, even to those in the communities themselves. Homelessn... Read More »
• How to Count Homeless Youth - Find out With Nan Roman and Barbra Poppe!

  November 04, 2010

  We know they’re out there. Young people who are living on the streets alone. Runaway and Homeless Youth Act (RHYA) program counts show us that there are young people seeking assistance in communities across the country. The National Extranet Optimized Runaway and Homeless Youth Management Information System (NEO-RHYMIS) shows us that there are thousands of young people seeking basic services and beds. We know they’re out there – but that’s about all we know. Lost in the mix of seasons greetings and veterans remembrance is a noteworthy event that doesn’t hit the radar for most Americans this month: it’s National Homeless Youth Awareness Month. It’s a really important month. Despite the fact that everyone will agree that youth homelessness is an existing problem, there’s nothing else to agree on: we have no reliable or regular source of data on this vulnerable subpopulation. We know they’re there, we know they’re young, we know they need our help. But we don’t know how many there are, we don’t know much about the characteristics of this group, we don’t know how they enter or exit homelessness, we don’t know how they survive while experiencing homelessness, we don’t know how long they’re homeless, where, or how. And we can’t solve a problem without fully understanding it. So that’s where we need to start: with data. We at the Alliance are encouraging our local ... Read More »
• The 10 Best Things on Our Website

  October 20, 2010

  So after tipping my hat to the 100,000 Homes Campaign for featuring our interactive tools and maps on their (awesome!) blog, I did a little tooling around to remind myself of other really useful tools on our very own website! The Alliance has, for almost 30 years, lead the campaign to end homelessness in the United States. And over the decades, we’ve accumulated the data, best practices, and effective strategies necessary to end homelessness. And we’re hoping to share them with you! After checking out our most visited pages and most popular tools, we’ve compiled a list of ten things - links, pages, reports – you need in order to end homelessness in your community (read: really great tools and info). And, just for good measure, I've tossed in a couple not-so-popular but ever-so-useful links as well. The About Homelessness section. This section gives you a broad snapshot of homelessness at the national level and includes sections and information on different demographics, the cost of homelessness, and maps produced by the Homelessness Research Institute(HRI).   The Interactive Tools and Solutions section. HRI produces a number of charts, tools, and maps to help you better understand homelessness. Some of the more recent tools illustrate the number of doubled-up households in the United States, HPRP spending per household in the cities we’re tracking, and reductions in point-in-time counts necessary to meet the goals outlined in the federal strategic plan to end homel... Read More »
• Encouraging community investment in Lincoln NE

  October 07, 2010

  Today's guest post is the next - and last! - installment of our Nebraska series from Kim Walker of our Center for Capacity Building. For more about the Center for Capacity Building and the services they offer, check on the Training section of our website. Believe it or not, our time in Lincoln is at an end! This last visited was from September 29 – October 1. The bulk of this last visit was a presentation to the larger Lincoln community, particularly targeting those whose work touches homeless individuals and have not been present for our meetings thus far. It’s about rallying community support and understanding that in order to make big change, we have to all be willing to invest in that change. For our piece, we’ll review the process we’ve gone through with the Lincoln Homeless Coalition, including the data we collected through our survey and data analysis. Then we’ll turn things over to the Coalition members, who will talk in-depth about each of the goals they have for Lincoln’s system and invite the audience to become involved. This is where, if all goes well, we’ll see our hard work turn to into collective action as the larger community takes ownership of the work ahead. In addition to presenting, we’ll be visiting the Coalition’s Project Homeless Connect event. Like other communities across the country, Lincoln puts on this one-day event that brings together different service... Read More »
• More dispatches from Nebraska

  September 09, 2010

  You may remember that Kim Walker of the Alliance’s Center for Capacity Building is launching a new tool to end homelessness in Nebraska. Today – while she and our colleague Sam are en route to the Lincoln, she shares thoughts for their next trip! It’s back to Lincoln tomorrow – and this time, my fellow Capacity Building Associate, Samantha Batko, will be joining me! Our mission for the visit is to finalize the plan that Lincoln started the first time around. This will entail doing some refining of the Lincoln Homeless Coalition members’ initial ideas, particularly the five goals they chose as the most important in helping them shift their system in the direction of ending family homelessness. Last time around, there were a lot of different strategies and resources suggested to help Lincoln accomplish their goals, but now it’s time to decide which strategies and resources are the best and most promising ones. Completing a workable timeline is also of the utmost importance with this visit. Beyond just finishing up the plan – which is no small feat – we also hope to get the group jump-started with implementation. We are hoping to get the ball rolling so by our next visit, Lincoln will be able to report some progress on each of the five goals they’ve selected. While we at the Alliance our big plans of comprehensive and thoughtful planning, what we are really after is successful implementation that gets positiv... Read More »
• A Note from Our Intern Stephanie!

  August 25, 2010

  Today’s blog post comes Stephanie Wege, a Capacity Building intern this summer at the Alliance, talking about her work in the Center for Capacity Building. Interning at the Alliance this summer has been a wonderful experience. I’ve learned about the Center for Capacity Building and the tools that it has to offer communities near and far. The Center for Capacity Building not only provides leadership in instruction, but also encourages and fosters collaboration nationwide. Working with them has enabled me to understand the complexity of homelessness. This summer I have gained insight into the function of technical assistance and training projects. They provide a valuable link between legislation and the activities of homeless service providers. As I’ve learned from various survey assessments that I’ve conducted this summer, providers are often confused by the language of the legislation, inhibiting their ability to enact necessary changes. However, even if the language is clear in some instances, many homelessness assistance systems are not endowed with the staff and finances necessary to permit required changes. There is an overwhelming need, according to the HPRP Implementation Survey, for tools that will help communities to overcome these barriers. In light of assessments like these, the Capacity Building team has put into action tools that will hasten the implementation of HPRP measures. I assisted the Center for Capacity Building in formulating an Ending Homelessness 101 Web-based training to outline essential steps to ending homelessness as a re... Read More »
• An Update from Kim on Nebraska!

  August 24, 2010

  Today’s post is a follow up from Kimberly Walker, a Capacity Building Associate here at the Alliance. Hello all! Well, I’m happy to report that things in Lincoln went very well! Our first day there, Iain and I spent the morning meeting the members of the Lincoln Homeless Coalition (all wonderful, engaged people!) and listening to a presentation about their homeless system. We had a diverse group that included providers, a representative from the state, a liaison from the public school system, and the administrator of the HPRP grant. Iain and I spent that first afternoon presenting our findings to the group. A lot of our recommendations centered on how the Coalition could shift their system toward an approach focused on rapid re-housing. Our second day was all about facilitation. We split our group into two and, after a brief recap of what we had discussed the day before, put them to work on deciding on and prioritizing goals for their system based on the gaps we had identified the day before. From their original list of thirty, Coalition members selected the five that were most important to them. After the goals had been selected, each group engaged in an exercise in which they connected each goal to potential strategies, resources, timelines, and evaluation methods. Our next visit, in a little less than three weeks, will focus on fine-tuning the beginnings of the plan the group developed. Next tim... Read More »
• Building Capacity to End Homelessness

  August 23, 2010

  Today's blog comes from Norm Suchar, the recently promoted Director of the Center for Capacity Building. Read on to hear about what the Center is up to! There’s a lot happening in the homelessness assistance world these days, and we at the Alliance are working on big things to help communities implement the HEARTH Act and end homelessness. The Center for Capacity Building is the Alliance’s training, technical assistance, and consulting arm. Over the years, we’ve worked on a lot of interesting projects, including the Rural Homelessness Initiative of Southeast and Central Ohio, which as the name implies is a homelessness planning and implementation project in a 17 county region in Ohio, and Shifting Gears, an initiative to help homelessness assistance providers transition to a housing first approach. More recently, we’ve been working with communities in the DC metro area to implement strategies that reduce family homelessness, holding trainings on rapid re-housing and creating and piloting a new Ending Family Homelessness Tool. The Center’s mission is to bring together three areas of the homelessness assistance field: what we aspire to, what we know, and what we practice. Over the past decade, the aspiration to end homelessness has taken hold. Over 300 communities have plans to end homelessness, and now the federal government has an ambitious plan to prevent and end homelessness. At the same time what we know about solving homelessness through prevention and rapid re-housing has increased... Read More »
• A New Capacity Center Tool

  August 17, 2010

  Today's post comes from Kimberly Walker, a Capacity Building Associate here at the Alliance. Hello all! Kim here. As part of the Center for Capacity Building, my job is to help communities improve their homeless systems. As part of that mission, I’m working on the Center’s new Ending Family Homelessness Tool and Pilot Project (or the EFHT/PP). I’ve been told this may be of interest to our blog readers, so I thought I’d give you a synopsis of what exactly it is. The Tool This tool turns what the Alliance staff has learned over the years about best practices in ending homelessness, what we’ve learned from the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP), and the new Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act requirements into a measuring stick for communities. The EFHT will hopefully encourage communities to use these standards to judge where their system is now and where it needs to be in order for them to end family homelessness. The tool has several different parts (some that are finished, some that are still being developed/considered): 1) A set of three surveys regarding what communities think about their homeless system 2) A data collection worksheet 3) A resource list 4) A planning document 5) A check-in document (after a plan has been made), and 6) A community forum As a final product, we hope to create a completely web-based version of these documents that communiti... Read More »
• Friday: News Roundup! the NOFA

  September 25, 2009

  Today, a post from Amanda Krusemark, assistant to the President and a jane-of-all-trades member of the staff. The news: HUD released the NOFA today, which may seem insignificant to many, but often represents a large percentage of homeless assistance funding for many communities. The big news today is that Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) finally released the 2009 CoC NOFA. In homeless industry talk a NOFA is a Notice of Funding Availability. It let folks across the country know that the application for federal funds is available. Specifically, the NOFA explains the pertinent details, including how much money is available, who is eligible, what the funds can be used for, and how to complete an application for funding. In essence, the NOFA is the siren call for service providers to apply for federal funding. This particular NOFA is a pretty big deal for homeless service providers, because it covers the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance programs. As we’ve discussed before, the McKinney-Vento programs represent the largest chunk of federal funds dedicated solely to homeless programs. Applying for these funds is one of the biggest jobs that Continuums of Care (CoC) – the official administrative unit in charge of homeless programs - do all year, because these funds will be often be the biggest single funding sources for homeless programs for the year. We’ve talked a lot on this blog about the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP) and other stimu... Read More »

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