The HEARTH Act will reward communities that demonstrate effectiveness in helping individuals and families achieve stable housing outcomes, reducing recidivism, and reducing how long people remain homeless. This workshop will examine how communities organize their homeless program services to achieve these outcomes. Strategies to “right-size” homelessness interventions, including shelter and permanent supportive housing, will be examined.

1. HEARTH Implementation – Presentation Notes (Liz Drapa)
1. How we organize ourselves (Chicago & Indiana)
o Chicago: One Continuum of Care; public/private partnership; have full CoC of
interventions including shelter, rolling stock housing, prevention, PSH. Right now
working on targeting & access, HPRP. Have big state budget crisis.
o Indiana: Balance of State (includes all but Indianapolis and South Bend). Full CoC
of interventions, heavier on the TH and shelter than PSH. Have a pipeline of new
PSH projects. Right now working on triage, targeting & access.
2. What are practical, doable things each community can do right now
o Don’t wait for the regulations just to get started thinking about your performance and
national competitiveness. If you are waiting, you will already be behind.
o Measure your current grantee performance against the national standards. What are
the changes you can make now that will have impact on performance in the future?
Ask if a low-performing program is really one that is needed or that the community
wants. If yes, who else could fund it – is that a local foundation? City? Is the impact
on our overall performance too great to keep it under HUD funding?
o Hold webinars/meetings with CoC members to make sure everyone is on board,
knows what you are talking about, understands when the changes will occur
o Understand your gaps now, so if there are new opportunities, new dollars, you can act
quickly. Especially think about the gaps for any priority populations like veterans,
vulnerable families, youth.
o Start thinking through the current local resource allocation (City, State, PHA,
foundations).
3. How we’ve been successful in Chicago to date (interventions & outcomes achieved;
successes & failures)
o PSH: Create new units mostly through the HUD Bonus Project, a local rental subsidy
program, and the Division of Mental Health Bridge Subsidy program. Have a
successful Street to Home Initiative and systems integration teams for new chronic
homeless projects.
o PHwSS: Permanent Housing with Short-Term Support is a rolling stock, 2 year
transitional housing program that uses HUD TH dollars to provide subsidy & services
to families and individuals. After 2 years, the agency moves the subsidy on, the
family stays housed. Over 600 units in place. We will begin a pilot for one
application, one centralized waiting list for these units in fall. Agencies have
consolidated their criteria, agreed to a shorter application process in favor of making
it easier for clients to apply and receive housing.
o Prevention & Rapid Rehousing: Started a small pilot for rapid rehousing before
HPRP came out; HPRP in Chicago focuses on both prevention & rapid rehousing.
Thinking through who it doesn’t work for and what interventions those are.
o Non-disabled, low-income households: City established a housing locator program to
house people who don’t qualify for any HUD McKinney resources and have enough
money to pay for a moderately priced market rate unit. Very successful program.
Short application process. 6 locators throughout city.

2. o Housing Options Tool: Many conversations in Chicago & Indiana around matching
each person to the right intervention and also making it easier for clients to get
housed. The tool was created to screen for the most appropriate fit for housing for
each person. The survey is 50-60 questions and the client/case manager receives a
results screen of housing, in order of what is most appropriate. Indiana is using it as
the virtual point of entry for HPRP. Indiana is also expanding it into a triage contract,
where CSH will talk county by county, with stakeholders about the intercept points
into homelessness, and what interventions are needed.
www.chicagohousingoptions.org and www.indianahousingoptions.org
o Performance: Since 2004, Chicago has a stronger emphasis on performance in its
HUD evaluation instrument. There is a minimum capacity threshold and Chicago de-
funds low-scoring agencies. Developed a program models chart which outlines
performance standards. Indiana is alerting those in the bottom 20% of the HUD
funding for performance that they have 1 year to improve their performance or they
will lose their funding.
Both Chicago and Indiana have begun their work on HEARTH, understanding the current shelter
configurations, formal & informal policies and practices, and are writing new standards. They
are also beginning to train ESG delegates on HMIS, and are continuing to improve and raise the
standard under performance.
Liz Drapa
Corporation for Supportive Housing
Liz.drapa@csh.org