The document discusses strategies for assessing and improving a homelessness assistance system based on the HEARTH Act. It recommends measuring outcomes like exits to permanent housing, lengths of homeless episodes, and returns to homelessness. It provides examples of interventions like diversion programs, rapid re-housing, and permanent supportive housing that can help reduce shelter use, time homeless, and repeat episodes. The document concludes by discussing making a transition to proven strategies that better achieve the goals of the HEARTH Act through analyzing data, programs, gaps and underserved groups.
The document announces The HEARTH Academy training program to help communities implement the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act. The HEARTH Academy will include an implementation clinic, webinars, tools and individualized consulting to help communities assess their homelessness system and implement proven strategies to prevent and end homelessness per the goals of the HEARTH Act. The training will cover topics like the implications of the HEARTH Act, data and performance improvement, and assessing local homelessness systems.
File the hearth_act_changes_to_hud_s_homeless_assistance_programs_presentatio...Geraldine McCafferty
The HEARTH Act makes significant changes to HUD's homeless assistance programs:
1) It emphasizes homelessness prevention and rapid re-housing by allowing ESG funds to be used for these activities and requiring 40% of ESG funds be used for prevention and re-housing.
2) It consolidates competitive homeless assistance programs into a single Continuum of Care program that focuses on performance outcomes like reducing lengths of homelessness.
3) It provides more flexibility for rural communities in applying for funds and allows serving those at risk of homelessness.
The HEARTH Act makes significant changes to programs that fund services and housing for people experiencing homelessness. It consolidates the Supportive Housing, Shelter Plus Care, and Moderate Rehabilitation/SRO programs into a single Continuum of Care program. The Emergency Solutions Grants program is expanded to include activities from the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program. Communities will need to measure lengths of homeless episodes, returns to homelessness, and the number of people who become homeless. The definition of homelessness is broadened to include people who are losing housing or living in motels/doubled-up situations.
The Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act will make some significant changes to the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance programs. This 23-slide presentation will - in detail - outline those changes, highlighting the ways the program will change and what it might mean for your community.
This document summarizes two learning labs that discussed how communities in Cincinnati, OH and Fairfax County, VA utilized stakeholder workgroups to improve their responses to homelessness. The Cincinnati workshop described how they created a unified vision and were inclusive of all stakeholders to coordinate services and achieve system changes. Fairfax County implemented task groups with stakeholder involvement, ownership, and accountability to develop plans and protocols to prevent homelessness and increase housing options. Both communities saw decreases in rates of homelessness through data-driven and collaborative approaches.
The HEARTH Act makes significant changes to HUD's McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance programs, including more emphasis on homelessness prevention and rapid re-housing. It combines the Supportive Housing Program, Shelter Plus Care, and Moderate Rehabilitation/Single Room Occupancy Program into a single Continuum of Care program. Communities will need to ensure coordination between the Consolidated Plan and Continuum of Care application and integrate performance standards to achieve reduced lengths of homelessness. The act provides more funding and flexibility but communities must prepare delivery systems and program mixes to take advantage of the changes.
The document discusses improving targeting efforts for homelessness prevention. It describes the history of prevention programs in Hennepin County, Minnesota, which initially focused on cash assistance to prevent shelter entry. An evaluation found prevention funds were going to families less likely to become homeless. New criteria prioritize very low-income families facing immediate housing loss who cannot resolve the crisis themselves without assistance and are likely to sustain housing after aid ends. A preliminary 6-month evaluation found very few families returned to shelters, suggesting the revised targeting is a more effective use of prevention funds.
The document announces The HEARTH Academy training program to help communities implement the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act. The HEARTH Academy will include an implementation clinic, webinars, tools and individualized consulting to help communities assess their homelessness system and implement proven strategies to prevent and end homelessness per the goals of the HEARTH Act. The training will cover topics like the implications of the HEARTH Act, data and performance improvement, and assessing local homelessness systems.
File the hearth_act_changes_to_hud_s_homeless_assistance_programs_presentatio...Geraldine McCafferty
The HEARTH Act makes significant changes to HUD's homeless assistance programs:
1) It emphasizes homelessness prevention and rapid re-housing by allowing ESG funds to be used for these activities and requiring 40% of ESG funds be used for prevention and re-housing.
2) It consolidates competitive homeless assistance programs into a single Continuum of Care program that focuses on performance outcomes like reducing lengths of homelessness.
3) It provides more flexibility for rural communities in applying for funds and allows serving those at risk of homelessness.
The HEARTH Act makes significant changes to programs that fund services and housing for people experiencing homelessness. It consolidates the Supportive Housing, Shelter Plus Care, and Moderate Rehabilitation/SRO programs into a single Continuum of Care program. The Emergency Solutions Grants program is expanded to include activities from the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program. Communities will need to measure lengths of homeless episodes, returns to homelessness, and the number of people who become homeless. The definition of homelessness is broadened to include people who are losing housing or living in motels/doubled-up situations.
The Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act will make some significant changes to the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance programs. This 23-slide presentation will - in detail - outline those changes, highlighting the ways the program will change and what it might mean for your community.
This document summarizes two learning labs that discussed how communities in Cincinnati, OH and Fairfax County, VA utilized stakeholder workgroups to improve their responses to homelessness. The Cincinnati workshop described how they created a unified vision and were inclusive of all stakeholders to coordinate services and achieve system changes. Fairfax County implemented task groups with stakeholder involvement, ownership, and accountability to develop plans and protocols to prevent homelessness and increase housing options. Both communities saw decreases in rates of homelessness through data-driven and collaborative approaches.
The HEARTH Act makes significant changes to HUD's McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance programs, including more emphasis on homelessness prevention and rapid re-housing. It combines the Supportive Housing Program, Shelter Plus Care, and Moderate Rehabilitation/Single Room Occupancy Program into a single Continuum of Care program. Communities will need to ensure coordination between the Consolidated Plan and Continuum of Care application and integrate performance standards to achieve reduced lengths of homelessness. The act provides more funding and flexibility but communities must prepare delivery systems and program mixes to take advantage of the changes.
The document discusses improving targeting efforts for homelessness prevention. It describes the history of prevention programs in Hennepin County, Minnesota, which initially focused on cash assistance to prevent shelter entry. An evaluation found prevention funds were going to families less likely to become homeless. New criteria prioritize very low-income families facing immediate housing loss who cannot resolve the crisis themselves without assistance and are likely to sustain housing after aid ends. A preliminary 6-month evaluation found very few families returned to shelters, suggesting the revised targeting is a more effective use of prevention funds.
This document discusses shelter diversion as a strategy to reduce homelessness. Shelter diversion identifies individuals and families at risk of homelessness and provides assistance to prevent them from entering emergency shelters. The goals are to provide early intervention through assessment and problem-solving to divert clients to other assistance options instead of shelters. Key principles are to determine if shelter is needed, divert to other prevention assistance whenever possible, and make shelter admission a last resort. Diversion focuses on crisis intervention and resolving immediate housing needs through expedited assistance and short-term housing plans. Staff require special skills for rapid assessment of housing options and resources. Data is collected on diversion outcomes. Questions address implementing diversion across agencies or regions and linking it to homelessness prevention programs.
02112015 Modelling Collective Defined Contribution SchemesSarah Luheshi
The document summarizes the results of modeling a Collective Defined Contribution (CDC) pension scheme compared to Defined Contribution (DC) schemes. The modeling found that in the long run, once mature, the CDC scheme produced higher replacement rates than DC schemes, requiring only a 10% contribution rate. In the short term without initial funding, the CDC scheme had similar outcomes to aggressive DC drawdown but was less likely to run out of funds. Key assumptions around funding levels and population size affected the CDC scheme's performance versus DC.
This document summarizes a presentation on the impact of budget cuts to housing assistance programs. It discusses how the Budget Control Act led to automatic spending cuts (sequestration) that have significantly reduced funding for programs like housing vouchers. As a result, hundreds of thousands fewer families are receiving housing assistance. Advocates are urged to contact members of Congress to emphasize how cuts threaten efforts to end homelessness and ask that housing programs be prioritized in any budget deal. Restoring funding could help maintain assistance for vulnerable groups and prevent increased homelessness.
Integration and the Better Care Fund - DFG Champions Roadshows 2017Foundations HIA
The document provides an overview of the Better Care Fund (BCF) program in the UK, which brings together health and social care funding. It discusses how the Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) is an integral part of delivering BCF plans by funding home adaptations. The main changes for 2017-2019 include a two-year planning cycle, reduced national conditions, and increased funding contributions. Examples are given of how the DFG has been used through the BCF to fund home adaptations that support independent living and reduce hospital admissions.
3.8 What’s at Stake: Federal Policy Decisions in 2012 and Beyond
Speaker: Liz Schott
The deficit reduction deal and further decisions made by Congress to reduce the federal deficit have made, and will continue to make, a tremendous impact on low-income housing and homeless assistance programs for many years to come. This workshop will cover the important funding decisions of the past months with an outlook on select programs for the upcoming year and beyond. Presenters will discuss ways in which advocates can make an impact at this incredibly important time to preserve and increase funding for key programs.
This document discusses strategies for preventing homelessness in New York City. It recommends targeting prevention services to communities that contribute disproportionately to shelter entry. Data on past shelter users can help identify at-risk families for outreach. The city purchased data on buildings at risk of foreclosure to provide assistance to tenants. Tracking which households receive services versus those who enter shelters, and comparing served versus unserved communities, can show the impact of prevention strategies. Evaluations with random assignment can also assess causal effects, though results may be controversial and take time.
Paul Howarth, Policy Consultant for Policy in Practice was invited to speak at the Westminster Briefing in November 2019 on the topic of 'Welfare reforms and reducing rent arrears'.
This presentation provided a detailed look of the current benefits system, a forecast of the latest Universal Credit updates as well as an overview of Policy in Practice's data-led approach to tackling poverty and reducing rent arrears.
For further information visit www.policyinpractice.co.uk, call 0330 088 9242 or email hello@policyinpractice.co.uk.
Frontline Practice within Housing First Programs by Benjamin Henwood from the workshop 5.9 Research on the Efficacy of Housing First at the 2014 National Conference on Ending Homelessness.
Chicago's plan to end homelessness is based on a public-private collaboration established in 2001. The plan adopts a "Housing First" approach to move people from shelters into permanent housing. Key elements include increasing homelessness prevention, aligning funding with best practices, and setting performance expectations that minimize discharging families from one homeless program to another. Recent evidence shows increased funding for prevention and permanent housing units, as well as phasing out transitional shelters and housing in favor of rapid re-housing models.
Partnership working session - DFG Champions BristolFoundations HIA
The document summarizes the findings and recommendations from a review of the Disabled Facilities Grant process in Cambridgeshire. Key findings included that new services are needed to support long-term planning for aging in place, existing home improvement agencies will need to adapt to increasing demand, and funding arrangements across systems will need to change to enable preventative services. Next steps proposed developing options for early intervention, revising policies, improving home improvement agency performance, and piloting a new early help offer. The overall outcome aimed to support independent living through suitable housing.
Good practice session - DFG Champions roadshow BristolFoundations HIA
The document outlines best practices for developing a strategic partnership between housing, health, and social care sectors in Dorset, England. It discusses moving from a postcode lottery of care provision to a unified vision through a partnership agreement between six districts. This agreement redesigned working practices and perspectives to implement sector best practices. It also details how Dorset Accessible Homes expanded traditional compliance assessments and redefined their "service" to provide more housing options, assistive technology, adaptations, and handyperson services through streamlined processes, increased budgets, and widened eligibility like the Dorset Accessible Homes Grant which provides a £5,000 disregard and looks at the bigger picture.
Webinar: Profiling your DHP budget to mitigate the impact of welfare reforms Policy in Practice
Deven Ghelani and Zoe Charlesworth, Policy in Practice, discuss how local authorities can spend their DHP budgets most effectively, to ensure people who need the support the most receive it.
View these slides to learn:
1. How DHP money is spent nationwide and why underspends occur
2. How to identify individual households most in need and what support they need
3. How to know if your DHP support is reaching the right people
4. Where to target your DHP engagement campaigns
Central government has increased the DHP budget by £35m in 2017-2018 to help with the transition of welfare reforms and it is important that the increased funding is made available to those who need it most.
Whilst some assessments of the impact of reforms have taken place, DWP advise local authorities to carry out more detailed work to identify those most in need of discretionary support.
"You may want to profile your caseload to identify certain groups among those potentially affected by the changes, and establish the level of demand among those groups. Although DWP has already carried out various Equality Impact Assessments in relation to HB reform you may want to carry out a more detailed assessment for your area."
Discretionary Housing Payments Guidance Manual, DWP, Dec 2016
Policy in Practice has helped local authorities identify individual households most at risk from aggregate and cumulative welfare reforms so that support programmes can be targeted where they are most needed.
This webinar was held on Wednesday 1 March 2017 at 10:30
View YouTube recording here https://youtu.be/sjNreOrBMWc
The Legislation, Conservation and Outreach Committee discussed the growing need to improve ratepayer understanding of water bills, system investments, and value of services. The committee recommended focusing communications on this issue as a priority for 2013-2014. Near-term recommendations included leveraging existing activities like newsletters and developing new outreach materials. A summer campaign showing a water awareness video in movie theaters was proposed to educate large numbers of water users during peak months at a cost of $35,000.
This document describes a program called SBIRT in Schools that implements Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) for adolescents at risk of substance abuse. It will partner with six communities to screen youth and link those at low-moderate risk to a brief mentoring intervention aimed at enhancing social supports. Youth identified at higher risk will be referred to treatment. The goals are to increase youth SBIRT capacity, connect sites to resources and best practices, and test approaches that can be more widely replicated to prevent substance abuse.
The document summarizes the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) program. It requests $332 million for 2015 to provide housing assistance and supportive services to over 52,000 low-income households living with HIV/AIDS. Ninety percent of funds are distributed by formula to states and cities, and 10% are competitive grants. The program provides various housing options and aims to improve health outcomes and reduce costs by promoting housing stability for this vulnerable population.
2.2 Implementing the HEARTH Act: Preparing for the New Emergency Solutions Grant
Speaker: Sally Harrison
Under the HEARTH Act, homelessness prevention and rapid re-housing are eligible activities for the new Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG). Presenters will review the changes to the ESG program and discuss ways to transition programs from HPRP to ESG funding. Presenters will also discuss strategies for implementing ESG and will explore successful program models. Other resources for funding these programs will be explored in workshop 5.6.
We are piloting a service to improve the wellbeing and emotional resilience of older people suffering from mild depression, anxiety or social isolation.
The document discusses how federal Ryan White Part A funds are allocated from the federal government to local planning councils and service providers, with the local planning council determining how funds are distributed across different service categories based on factors like service utilization data, spending history, and unit costs. It provides an example of how one planning council allocated over 80% of its funds to core medical services and the remainder to supportive services.
Local political leaders have been crucial in efforts to move communities toward a solutions-focused homelessness system. In doing so, they have convinced other local opinion leaders to make ending homelessness a top priority. Speakers will facilitate a robust discussion around why it’s important to get political leaders involved in the fight to end homelessness locally, how to do so, and the benefits for the community.
The document discusses three challenges related to homelessness: lack of sympathy for the homeless, working with communities, and getting people into work. It provides survey results showing that more people feel sympathy for homeless dogs than homeless people with issues. It also shows that many believe the homeless refuse help themselves. The document then discusses Thames Reach's work with families and helping the homeless find jobs or return home. It proposes collaborative solutions bringing together various groups to provide early intervention and community support for the homeless.
This document discusses shelter diversion as a strategy to reduce homelessness. Shelter diversion identifies individuals and families at risk of homelessness and provides assistance to prevent them from entering emergency shelters. The goals are to provide early intervention through assessment and problem-solving to divert clients to other assistance options instead of shelters. Key principles are to determine if shelter is needed, divert to other prevention assistance whenever possible, and make shelter admission a last resort. Diversion focuses on crisis intervention and resolving immediate housing needs through expedited assistance and short-term housing plans. Staff require special skills for rapid assessment of housing options and resources. Data is collected on diversion outcomes. Questions address implementing diversion across agencies or regions and linking it to homelessness prevention programs.
02112015 Modelling Collective Defined Contribution SchemesSarah Luheshi
The document summarizes the results of modeling a Collective Defined Contribution (CDC) pension scheme compared to Defined Contribution (DC) schemes. The modeling found that in the long run, once mature, the CDC scheme produced higher replacement rates than DC schemes, requiring only a 10% contribution rate. In the short term without initial funding, the CDC scheme had similar outcomes to aggressive DC drawdown but was less likely to run out of funds. Key assumptions around funding levels and population size affected the CDC scheme's performance versus DC.
This document summarizes a presentation on the impact of budget cuts to housing assistance programs. It discusses how the Budget Control Act led to automatic spending cuts (sequestration) that have significantly reduced funding for programs like housing vouchers. As a result, hundreds of thousands fewer families are receiving housing assistance. Advocates are urged to contact members of Congress to emphasize how cuts threaten efforts to end homelessness and ask that housing programs be prioritized in any budget deal. Restoring funding could help maintain assistance for vulnerable groups and prevent increased homelessness.
Integration and the Better Care Fund - DFG Champions Roadshows 2017Foundations HIA
The document provides an overview of the Better Care Fund (BCF) program in the UK, which brings together health and social care funding. It discusses how the Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) is an integral part of delivering BCF plans by funding home adaptations. The main changes for 2017-2019 include a two-year planning cycle, reduced national conditions, and increased funding contributions. Examples are given of how the DFG has been used through the BCF to fund home adaptations that support independent living and reduce hospital admissions.
3.8 What’s at Stake: Federal Policy Decisions in 2012 and Beyond
Speaker: Liz Schott
The deficit reduction deal and further decisions made by Congress to reduce the federal deficit have made, and will continue to make, a tremendous impact on low-income housing and homeless assistance programs for many years to come. This workshop will cover the important funding decisions of the past months with an outlook on select programs for the upcoming year and beyond. Presenters will discuss ways in which advocates can make an impact at this incredibly important time to preserve and increase funding for key programs.
This document discusses strategies for preventing homelessness in New York City. It recommends targeting prevention services to communities that contribute disproportionately to shelter entry. Data on past shelter users can help identify at-risk families for outreach. The city purchased data on buildings at risk of foreclosure to provide assistance to tenants. Tracking which households receive services versus those who enter shelters, and comparing served versus unserved communities, can show the impact of prevention strategies. Evaluations with random assignment can also assess causal effects, though results may be controversial and take time.
Paul Howarth, Policy Consultant for Policy in Practice was invited to speak at the Westminster Briefing in November 2019 on the topic of 'Welfare reforms and reducing rent arrears'.
This presentation provided a detailed look of the current benefits system, a forecast of the latest Universal Credit updates as well as an overview of Policy in Practice's data-led approach to tackling poverty and reducing rent arrears.
For further information visit www.policyinpractice.co.uk, call 0330 088 9242 or email hello@policyinpractice.co.uk.
Frontline Practice within Housing First Programs by Benjamin Henwood from the workshop 5.9 Research on the Efficacy of Housing First at the 2014 National Conference on Ending Homelessness.
Chicago's plan to end homelessness is based on a public-private collaboration established in 2001. The plan adopts a "Housing First" approach to move people from shelters into permanent housing. Key elements include increasing homelessness prevention, aligning funding with best practices, and setting performance expectations that minimize discharging families from one homeless program to another. Recent evidence shows increased funding for prevention and permanent housing units, as well as phasing out transitional shelters and housing in favor of rapid re-housing models.
Partnership working session - DFG Champions BristolFoundations HIA
The document summarizes the findings and recommendations from a review of the Disabled Facilities Grant process in Cambridgeshire. Key findings included that new services are needed to support long-term planning for aging in place, existing home improvement agencies will need to adapt to increasing demand, and funding arrangements across systems will need to change to enable preventative services. Next steps proposed developing options for early intervention, revising policies, improving home improvement agency performance, and piloting a new early help offer. The overall outcome aimed to support independent living through suitable housing.
Good practice session - DFG Champions roadshow BristolFoundations HIA
The document outlines best practices for developing a strategic partnership between housing, health, and social care sectors in Dorset, England. It discusses moving from a postcode lottery of care provision to a unified vision through a partnership agreement between six districts. This agreement redesigned working practices and perspectives to implement sector best practices. It also details how Dorset Accessible Homes expanded traditional compliance assessments and redefined their "service" to provide more housing options, assistive technology, adaptations, and handyperson services through streamlined processes, increased budgets, and widened eligibility like the Dorset Accessible Homes Grant which provides a £5,000 disregard and looks at the bigger picture.
Webinar: Profiling your DHP budget to mitigate the impact of welfare reforms Policy in Practice
Deven Ghelani and Zoe Charlesworth, Policy in Practice, discuss how local authorities can spend their DHP budgets most effectively, to ensure people who need the support the most receive it.
View these slides to learn:
1. How DHP money is spent nationwide and why underspends occur
2. How to identify individual households most in need and what support they need
3. How to know if your DHP support is reaching the right people
4. Where to target your DHP engagement campaigns
Central government has increased the DHP budget by £35m in 2017-2018 to help with the transition of welfare reforms and it is important that the increased funding is made available to those who need it most.
Whilst some assessments of the impact of reforms have taken place, DWP advise local authorities to carry out more detailed work to identify those most in need of discretionary support.
"You may want to profile your caseload to identify certain groups among those potentially affected by the changes, and establish the level of demand among those groups. Although DWP has already carried out various Equality Impact Assessments in relation to HB reform you may want to carry out a more detailed assessment for your area."
Discretionary Housing Payments Guidance Manual, DWP, Dec 2016
Policy in Practice has helped local authorities identify individual households most at risk from aggregate and cumulative welfare reforms so that support programmes can be targeted where they are most needed.
This webinar was held on Wednesday 1 March 2017 at 10:30
View YouTube recording here https://youtu.be/sjNreOrBMWc
The Legislation, Conservation and Outreach Committee discussed the growing need to improve ratepayer understanding of water bills, system investments, and value of services. The committee recommended focusing communications on this issue as a priority for 2013-2014. Near-term recommendations included leveraging existing activities like newsletters and developing new outreach materials. A summer campaign showing a water awareness video in movie theaters was proposed to educate large numbers of water users during peak months at a cost of $35,000.
This document describes a program called SBIRT in Schools that implements Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) for adolescents at risk of substance abuse. It will partner with six communities to screen youth and link those at low-moderate risk to a brief mentoring intervention aimed at enhancing social supports. Youth identified at higher risk will be referred to treatment. The goals are to increase youth SBIRT capacity, connect sites to resources and best practices, and test approaches that can be more widely replicated to prevent substance abuse.
The document summarizes the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) program. It requests $332 million for 2015 to provide housing assistance and supportive services to over 52,000 low-income households living with HIV/AIDS. Ninety percent of funds are distributed by formula to states and cities, and 10% are competitive grants. The program provides various housing options and aims to improve health outcomes and reduce costs by promoting housing stability for this vulnerable population.
2.2 Implementing the HEARTH Act: Preparing for the New Emergency Solutions Grant
Speaker: Sally Harrison
Under the HEARTH Act, homelessness prevention and rapid re-housing are eligible activities for the new Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG). Presenters will review the changes to the ESG program and discuss ways to transition programs from HPRP to ESG funding. Presenters will also discuss strategies for implementing ESG and will explore successful program models. Other resources for funding these programs will be explored in workshop 5.6.
We are piloting a service to improve the wellbeing and emotional resilience of older people suffering from mild depression, anxiety or social isolation.
The document discusses how federal Ryan White Part A funds are allocated from the federal government to local planning councils and service providers, with the local planning council determining how funds are distributed across different service categories based on factors like service utilization data, spending history, and unit costs. It provides an example of how one planning council allocated over 80% of its funds to core medical services and the remainder to supportive services.
Local political leaders have been crucial in efforts to move communities toward a solutions-focused homelessness system. In doing so, they have convinced other local opinion leaders to make ending homelessness a top priority. Speakers will facilitate a robust discussion around why it’s important to get political leaders involved in the fight to end homelessness locally, how to do so, and the benefits for the community.
The document discusses three challenges related to homelessness: lack of sympathy for the homeless, working with communities, and getting people into work. It provides survey results showing that more people feel sympathy for homeless dogs than homeless people with issues. It also shows that many believe the homeless refuse help themselves. The document then discusses Thames Reach's work with families and helping the homeless find jobs or return home. It proposes collaborative solutions bringing together various groups to provide early intervention and community support for the homeless.
Increasing income through employment is a key component in ending homelessness. This workshop will focus on new initiatives to expand employment opportunities for low income individuals and families, including models such as subsidized and transitional jobs. TANF Emergency Contingency Fund and other funding strategies to support these initiatives will be discussed.
Medicaid is a government health insurance program that can be used to offer services in supportive housing programs. Under the new Health Care Reform law, virtually all homeless people will be eligible, and can benefit from configuring supportive housing services to take advantage of Medicaid reimbursement. Consideration will be given to the administrative and data burdens inherited when a housing provider becomes eligible for reimbursement from Medicaid/medical assistance, as well as the benefits of delivering a flexible array of supports to maintain persons in their homes.
This document discusses the history and activities of two consumer advocacy boards - the Chatham-Chatham Consumer Advocacy Board of Healthcare (CCABoH) and the Homeless Helping Homeless (HHH) program. CCABoH was established in 2002 and has advocated for issues related to healthcare for the homeless. HHH was established in 2010 and aims to educate the community and empower change through advocacy to end homelessness. Both groups hold regular meetings, conduct advocacy activities like meetings with officials, and work to overcome obstacles like engagement and recruitment.
On Wednesday, October 27th at 2 p.m. ET, the National Alliance to End Homelessness Center for Capacity Building hosted the third pre-session in the HEARTH Academy, "Systems Assessment".
This document discusses strategies for assessing and improving a homelessness assistance system based on the HEARTH Act. It recommends surveying consumers, providers and leaders to understand needs. It emphasizes using data to measure outcomes like reducing new and repeated homelessness episodes and lengths of stays. Strategies presented include diversion from shelter, rapid re-housing, transitional housing conversion, and coordinating entry points and assistance levels based on barriers. Participation in the National Alliance to End Homelessness' HEARTH Academy clinic is encouraged to implement proven strategies for preventing and ending homelessness.
Diversion aims to prevent homelessness by providing alternatives to shelter through services like temporary financial assistance, mediation, and case management. It is not a denial of services but rather connects families to housing resources before they enter the shelter system. Diversion improves outcomes by reducing new entries into homelessness, improves quality of life by avoiding stress of shelters, and conserves resources by preserving shelter beds for those most in need. It works best as the first option offered through coordinated entry systems and with flexible funding to provide short-term solutions like rental assistance or relocation costs. Key to diversion is creatively exploring all potential housing options through family, friends, previous landlords, or community services and developing a stabilization plan.
On Wednesday, October 13, 2010, the Center for Capacity Building will host "Performance Improvement Strategies," the second pre-session webinar in the HEARTH Academy series. This webinar presented strategies to reduce length of stay in homelessness, new entries into homelessness, and repeat episodes of homelessness, all of which drive reductions in overall homelessness.
The document discusses the HEARTH Academy, which provides tools and training to help communities achieve the goals of the HEARTH Act. The HEARTH Act aims to reduce homelessness by getting people into housing within 30 days and reducing new and repeat episodes of homelessness. The HEARTH Academy offers a 1.5 day clinic to help communities assess their performance and implement proven strategies. It also provides individual consulting, webinars, and tools to support communities in preventing and ending homelessness.
This document discusses a program called Frequent User Systems Engagement (FUSE) that targets supportive housing to individuals who frequently cycle between public systems like shelters, hospitals, and jails. FUSE identifies these high-cost users through data sharing between agencies and houses them in supportive housing with intensive case management. Evaluations of FUSE in New York City found it significantly reduced shelter and jail use while maintaining high housing retention rates. FUSE has since been replicated in several other cities and has improved cross-system collaboration and resource pooling to address the root causes of homelessness.
The document discusses Lancaster County, Pennsylvania's transition from a system that shelters and manages homelessness to a "housing first" approach focused on prevention, diversion, and rapid rehousing. It outlines Lancaster's journey, which included establishing benchmarks and shortening the length of stay in transitional housing programs. The document provides guidance on strategically planning a transition, including evaluating current programs, creating a new vision, and redefining staff and client roles to focus on immediately connecting people to permanent housing and support services. Lancaster's experience shows positive outcomes from adopting a rapid rehousing model.
The Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP) changed the way many communities think about and deliver housing services. Moving toward a more prevention-oriented approach to homelessness requires an understanding of the benefits and possible drawbacks. Recently, researchers have focused their efforts on the effectiveness of prevention initiatives. This workshop will highlight these studies and discuss the implications at the community-level.
Is your HPRP program serving the right people, at the right time, with the right resources? Early reports on HPRP implementation indicate that many communities are afraid to assist unemployed and extremely low income households for fear that they will be unable sustain their housing. Are they missing the boat? This workshop will explore through an interactive discussion the HPRP eligibility and targeting dilemma and offer concrete steps to analyze if your community is targeting well.
This document discusses assessment, targeting, and prioritization strategies for allocating limited housing resources for homeless populations. It begins by outlining factors that should be considered in assessing individual and family needs, such as demographics, income, health history and barriers to housing. It then discusses tools for prioritizing based on vulnerability and risk of long-term homelessness. Targeting strategies aim to effectively allocate resources based on needs and goals like reducing shelter stays and street homelessness. The document provides examples of coordinated assessment systems and data-driven approaches from different communities. It emphasizes the importance of coordination across systems, using evidence-based practices, and continually evaluating outcomes to improve local homelessness strategies.
Illinois Governor's Commission on Community Safety and Reentry Commission and Working Group: Report by the Housing Subcommittee, October 6, 2005; www.dhs.state.il.us/reentry/
- Supportive housing provides permanent affordable housing combined with flexible voluntary services to help people live stable lives and reduce cycling between homelessness, incarceration, hospitals and shelters.
- Research shows supportive housing reduces recidivism and costs to criminal justice systems while improving health outcomes for tenants. It is an effective approach for people leaving incarceration who often face homelessness and other challenges.
- The document advocates for investing in supportive housing as part of comprehensive reentry efforts to improve lives and more efficiently use public resources.
This document discusses key questions about what comes after initially providing housing to homeless individuals through the Housing First approach. It addresses this question from the perspective of program participants, programs/services, housing programs, and policymakers. For program participants, maintaining social connections while also addressing issues like health, finances, substance use, and employment is important. Programs need to adopt more consumer-driven, community-based support services. Housing programs may need to redefine the role of transitional housing and adopt more principles of Housing First. And for policymakers, implementing Housing First at scale requires continued funding and evaluation while maintaining fidelity to the model.
Training Curriculum: Public Benefits for People who are Homelesskhals
The document discusses challenges homeless individuals face in accessing mainstream resources like SSI, Medicaid, TANF and food stamps. It identifies individual, provider and systems-level barriers. Best practices are presented that aim to increase enrollment through outreach programs, streamlined applications, inter-agency collaboration and policies tailored for homeless applicants. Examples include benefit representatives stationed at homeless centers, universal online applications, Medicaid enrollment for those in hospitals and shelters, and job programs for families exiting shelters.
Presented by Kim Leach.
Responding to rural family homelessness is complicated by problems of identifying homeless families and allocating scarce resources across wide service areas. Rural communities across the country have made significant progress in reducing family homelessness and increasing the effectiveness of their Continuums of Care (CoC). This workshop will profile the strategies of effective rural programs and communities and identify how these strategies can facilitate successful HEARTH implementation.
The document discusses supportive housing as a way to end homelessness. Supportive housing provides coordinated housing and support services to chronically homeless people. It helps them live more stable lives and is cost-effective. Supportive housing is permanent housing that provides affordable rent, safe housing, and accessible on-site support services to help residents gain independence. The document argues that systemic changes are needed, including collaborative planning, investment in resources, and quality assurance, to successfully deliver supportive housing programs.
The document outlines a proposal for an organization called Open Arms that aims to help address homelessness. The organization's mission is to help people without permanent housing by addressing the root causes of their homelessness and ensuring continued support. It will focus on serving homeless individuals and addressing issues like lack of affordable housing, poverty, unemployment, and needs related to mental health and substance use treatment. The proposal discusses political, economic, social, and technological factors that could impact clients as well as considerations around culture, diversity, and organizational design. It includes a line item budget, plans for oversight and evaluation, and recaps the purpose of providing temporary shelter to those without adequate housing.
This presentations by Carl Falconer is from the workshop 3.03 Implementing Effective Governance to End Homelessness from the 2015 National Conference on Ending Homelessness.
Effective governance sets the tone for a systemic focus on ending homelessness. Speakers will discuss the essential elements of effective governance, including managing and measuring performance and right-sizing the crisis response system through resource allocation.
Slides from a presentations by Cynthia Nagendra of the National Alliance to End Homelessness from a webinar that originally streamed on Tuesday, April 7, 2015 covering steps one and three of the Alliance's "5 Steps for Ending Veteran Homelessness" document.
"Housing First and Youth" by Stephen Gaetz from the workshop 4.6 Housing and Service Models for Homeless Youth at the 2014 National Conference on Ending Homelessness.
Rapid Re-Housing with DV Survivors: Approaches that Work by Kris Billhardt from the workshop Providing Rapid Re-housing for Victims of Domestic Violence at the 2014 National Conference on Ending Homelessness.
Non-chronic Adult Homelessness: Background and Opportunities by Dennis Culhane from the workshop 1.7 Non-Chronic Homelessness among Single Adults: An Overview at the 2014 National Conference on Ending Homelessness
California’s Approach for Implementing the Federal Fostering Connections to Success Ac by Lindsay Elliott from
5.8 Ending Homelessness for Youth Aging Out of Foster Care at the 2014 National Conference on Ending Family and Youth Homelessness.
This document summarizes key aspects of health care reform related to homeless families and youth. It discusses how the Affordable Care Act expands Medicaid eligibility for youth and reduces costs for families. It then provides details on Medicaid eligibility categories and coverage groups impacted by the reforms. The rest of the document outlines core Medicaid concepts, different means of covering services including waivers and managed care, and concludes with an overview of Louisiana's permanent supportive housing program.
This document summarizes a workshop on retooling transitional housing programs into rapid re-housing models. The workshop included presentations from providers who have successfully made this transition. They discussed the challenges they faced, such as resistance to change from staff and partners, and the solutions they implemented, like developing new screening and employment assistance components. Presenters emphasized the importance of communication, aligning with community plans, and evaluating outcomes when retooling programs. Retooling requires considering funding, staffing, housing issues, and starting a pilot program before fully implementing changes. Overall, the presentations showed how transitional housing can effectively transition to serving more families through a rapid re-housing model.
The Fusion Project is directed by Kim Wirth and focuses on supporting vulnerable youth through building relationships. It utilizes a theory of change that supports youth to meet basic needs, build relationship skills, and reconnect with family/community for long-term self-sufficiency. The program is relationship-focused, invites voluntary engagement, aims to be authentic and youth/family-led, and inspires change through living its values. Preliminary outcomes show a reduction in homelessness and increased natural supports for youth after engaging with the program.
The document discusses programs and services provided by the LA Gay & Lesbian Center to support homeless LGBTQ youth. It notes that around 6,000 youth experience homelessness in LA County each year, and 40% of homeless youth in Hollywood identify as LGBTQ. The Center provides emergency housing, a transitional living program, independent apartments, and youth development programs focused on education, employment, and permanent connections. Services are trauma-informed and use positive youth development approaches. Outcomes include over 300 youth served annually, with many obtaining education, jobs, housing and community support. The RISE project also aims to improve permanency outcomes for LGBTQ foster youth.
Family Reunification Pilot, Alameda County, CA from the work shop 6.1 Partnering with Child Welfare Agencies to End Family Homelessness at the 2013 National Conference on Ending Homelessness.
Avenues for Homeless Youth operates four programs in the Twin Cities that provide shelter and transitional housing for over 200 homeless youth per year. The programs include a shelter in North Minneapolis, as well as GLBT, suburban, and Minneapolis host home programs. Host homes provide a safe, stable transitional housing option at 50% lower cost than congregate housing. They aim to build long-term supportive relationships critical for youth success. The host home model places homeless youth with volunteer community members who are trained and supported by program managers.
This document describes a learning collaborative hosted by EveryOne Home in Alameda County, California to improve their homeless assistance system. The collaborative was called the EveryOne Housed Academy and brought together staff from homeless services organizations over two days. The goals were to develop a shared understanding of housing first and rapid rehousing approaches, align around common language and tools, and create customized implementation plans to help organizations move more people quickly into permanent housing. Guiding principles for effective learning collaboratives that were followed included making topics concrete and practical, creating space for ongoing learning and application, and unlocking new possibilities through a collaborative process.
This document summarizes a presentation on advocating for policy priorities at the state level. It discusses:
- Why state advocacy is important, such as educating leaders, directing policy and resources, and building coalitions.
- Examples of state advocacy from North Carolina and Minnesota, including securing Medicaid funding for permanent supportive housing in NC and forming a coalition called "Homes for All" in MN to pass affordable housing legislation.
- Tools for effective state advocacy, such as using data to tell a story, developing strategic advocacy plans, and setting priorities at the state level by focusing on key audiences and policy asks.
Shelter diversion by Ed Boyte from 6.5 Maximizing System Effectiveness through Homelessness Prevention from the 2013 National Conference on Ending Homelessness
"Evaluating Philadelphia’s Rapid Re-Housing Impacts on Housing Stability and Income," by Jamie Vanasse Taylor Cloudburst and Katrina Pratt-Roebuck from the 2013 National Conference on Ending Homelessness/.
This document summarizes key points about continuing efforts to end veteran homelessness in the United States. It discusses maintaining political will through continued budget increases. The proposed FY2014 budget represents a 3.5% increase to further programs like SSVF and HUD-VASH that provide housing and services. It also outlines emerging issues like adapting GPD programs and preventing future homelessness through SSVF and other prevention services. The goal is to establish robust systems to ensure functional zero veteran homelessness nationwide.
A Triage Tool for Homeless Youth: Proposed Items and Method by Eric Rice from the workshop 2.5 Research on Homeless Youth at the 2013 National Conference on Ending Youth Homelessness
More from National Alliance to End Homelessness (20)
5. Use data to measure outcomes from your homelessness assistance system.
6. Reduce new episodes of homelessness Reduce lengths of homeless episodes Reduce returns to homelessness HEARTH Measures
7.
8. Track Length of Episodes Shelter 1 16 days Shelter 2 21 days Rapid Re-Housing 90 days Gap 5 days Permanent Housing
9. Track Length of Episodes Shelter 1 16 days Shelter 2 21 days Rapid Re-Housing 90 days Gap 5 days Permanent Housing Length of Stay 42 days
10. More Strategies for Tracking Lengths of Episodes Track average stays in individual programs. Look at how many people use multiple programs.
11. Reduce Repeat Episodes People who exited homelessness during a period of time Of the group that exited, how many experienced an additional episode of homelessness within a period after exiting. 1,000 100
12. Reduce Repeat Episodes Short Follow-Up Period Long Follow-Up Period Focus on rapid re-housing, and things more within the control of homelessness system Focus on self sufficiency, and things more affected by job markets and mainstream systems
13. Perform a Simple Cost Analysis 1. Calculate how much is spent on an intervention for each permanent housing exit. 2. Adjust for the fact that interventions serving higher barrier people will likely cost more for each exit to permanent housing.
14. Compare Interventions Intervention A – $1,000 per exit to PH Intervention B – $5,000 per exit to PH Intervention C – $20,000 per exit to PH
15. Quality Exits The number of people who exit to permanent housing within 60 days of becoming homeless minus the number who exited homelessness one year ago and since returned to homelessness.
16. Field testing now. Estimated release late November System Performance Tool
20. Rapid Re-Housing Hennepin County, MN In one four‐year period, when internal County funding and staffing changes were implemented to support rapid re‐housing, shelter admissions declined by 42%, average length of stay by 47% and the total number of purchased “bed‐nights” was reduced by 70%. (Community Spotlight: Rapid Re‐Housing—Rapid Exit Program in Hennepin County, MN from the HUD HRE website)
24. Example of Progressive Engagement Point of Entry Housed RRH 1 $ RRH 2 $$ RRH 3 $$$ PSH $$$$
25. Example of Triage Point of Entry Housed RRH 1 $ RRH 2 $$ RRH 3 $$$ PSH $$$$ Assessment of Barriers to Housing High: Evictions Substance Use Medium: Inconsistent work No supports Low: Service engaged Income None: Rental history Support network
26. Forecasting a New System Current System New Interventions Shelter nights Days homeless # of entries Diversion RRH 1 RRH 2 RRH 3 PSH Old Design New Design 1-7 30 15 15 0 0 0 120 60 8-30 25 5 10 10 0 0 475 300 31-180 30 0 6 18 6 0 3,150 1,080 181+ * 15 0 0 5 5 5 4,050 765 Total 100 20 31 33 11 5 7,795 2,205 *including multiple episodes Average Length of Episodes 78 28
27. What about all the other programs? Employment Transitional Housing Services
28. Assets Buildings Housing location Stabilization Service coordination Employment Options Shelter Interim Housing Rapid Re-Housing Convert to PSH Transition in Place Specialize Opportunities for Transitional Housing
29. Making the Transition 1. Analyze your data. 2. Analyze your programs. 3. Identify gaps and underserved populations. 4. Prioritize changes. 5. Assign timelines, benchmarks, responsible entities. 6. Start transforming!
31. Implementing proven strategies to end homelessness Presented by the National Alliance to End Homelessness HEARTH Academy Implementation Clinic Participants in this 1.5 day clinic will assess the performance of their homelessness assistance and implement community-wide strategies to better achieve the goals of the HEARTH Act. Individualized Consulting The Alliance’s Center for Capacity Building and other expert consultants will be available to provide customized assistance. Webinars and Tools Webinars, tools, and training materials will help communities prepare for the Implementation Clinic and learn about and implement the strategies that help prevent and end homelessness.
32. Aisha Williams Center for Capacity Building National Alliance to End Homelessness [email_address] 202-942-8298 If you are interested in participating in the HEARTH Academy or would like more information, please contact: Note: The HEARTH Academy is not sponsored by or affiliated with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) or any other federal agency. The HEARTH Academy is a project of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
Editor's Notes
Welcome to the HEARTH Academy’s webinar on System Assessment and Design. The webinar will consist of two parts. The first part is on tools you can use to assess how well your system is working. This part takes approximately 20 minutes. The second part is on how to design an effective homelessness assistance system. This will take approximately 25 minutes.
Understanding how well your system works is a difficult process. Evaluation usually focuses on providers. and providers of homelessness assistance are pressured to perform from a number of directions. They must focus on the requirements of their funding sources. They also have to respond to the needs of consumers of their services, partner organizations, community and political leaders, and other stakeholders. But assessing how well your system works requires a deliberate strategy that steps back from the provider level and focuses on how well the entire process works, from before the time a person becomes homeless to after they exit and have achieved stability. The Alliance is developing a set of tools, both qualitative and quantitative to assist with the assessment process, and we’ll introduce you to some of those tools in this presentation.
Surveying the various stakeholders in your community can generate a wealth of information about how well homelessness assistance works in your community. Asking the right questions is critical. Consumer surveys should focus on a consumer’s needs and whether they were met. Survey questions should focus on what kinds of assistance consumers needed to prevent and end their homeless episodes, what services were provided, and whether they received assistance that was effective and empowering. Surveys of direct service providers should focus on whether consumers are appropriately prioritized for assistance based on need, training of direct service provider staff, access to resources, and an emphasis on continuous improvement. Executive directors, local officials, and other community leaders should be asked about how funding decisions are made, whether good performance is rewarded, and whether landlords are successfully engaged in re-housing efforts.
The Alliance is developing sample survey tools for consumers of homelessness assistance, service providers, and community leaders along with helpful hints about how to analyze the results. The slide is a screenshot from one of those tools, which will be published in the next several weeks.
You have many options to quantitatively measure the outcomes of your community’s efforts to prevent and end homelessness. There are numerous data sources, particularly HMIS, at your disposal. The key is to identify the right things to measure. The best strategy is to take your cue from the performance measures included in the HEARTH Act. They will help you create a system performance measurement strategy so you can better assess your performance on HEARTH Act measures and make progress toward your goal of preventing and ending homelessness.
As a reminder, the three key measures from the HEARTH Act are-- Reducing new episodes of homelessness—this measure will help you assess the effectiveness of your community’s prevention and diversion efforts. Reducing lengths of homeless episodes—this is one of the most challenging measures, it will help you determine if your system helps people move quickly into permanent housing. The HEARTH Act sets a federal goal of ensuring that everybody who becomes homeless moves into permanent housing within 30 days. This goal creates an ambitious target for your community’s rapid re-housing efforts. Reducing returns to homelessness—most people who are re-housed will not return to homelessness, however, your community should have the stabilization services in place to support people who will need additional assistance even after they exit homelessness. Let’s take a look at some of the keys to measuring these outcomes.
One of the key data elements for HEARTH Act measures and for measuring system performance generally is the housing status indicator. One of the challenges is knowing where a person exited to—did they exit to permanent housing? another homeless program? the streets?—and when did they exit. Many programs don’t carefully track what happens when a person exits their program. Programs are not necessarily required to update the housing status field in real time. Consequently, they may know that at one point in time a person was homeless, and several months later, the person was housed, but they may not know exactly when the person moved to housing. The better you can address these challenges, the more precisely you will be able to measure system performance. As you prepare for changing over to the HEARTH Act, examine what you can do to improve data quality. For example, look at programs that record a high number of “other/don’t know” for housing status. Also, change your policies to require that changes in housing status are recorded with the specific date they happened.
Tracking Length of stay is a challenge. The goal is to identify the average length of time between the time a person becomes homeless to the time the same person exits homelessness. This is especially challenging because a person may stay in several programs or no programs at all. Let’s look at an example of a homeless stay and identify what the length of stay is for this individual. The individual becomes homeless by entering a shelter and stays there 16 days. Then there is a 5 day gap where the person was not in any shelter or program. When the person exited, the housing status was listed as “unknown.” The person reenters a different shelter and stays for 21 days. During that shelter stay, the person is referred to a rapid re-housing program. After 21 days in the shelter, the person moves into permanent housing. The person receives 2 months of rental assistance and continues to receive case management after entering permanent housing.
In this case, the length of this person’s homeless episode is 42 days. The fact that they continued to receive assistance through a rapid re-housing program after they entered permanent housing does not affect the length of of the episode. There are many decisions to be made when tracking length of homeless episodes. Many people have gaps in their episodes. At what point do you treat gaps as separate episodes? (30 days?) What do you do about people who have exits to unknown? How do you integrate street outreach into your calculations?
If for some reason you can’t track the entire duration of a homeless episode, there are alternatives. One is to look at the duration of individual program stays for shelter and transitional housing and then supplement it by looking at the number of people who use multiple programs. For example, take a single shelter program, and track the average length of stay within that program, and then look at all users of that shelter program to see how many used multiple shelter or transitional housing programs. By reducing both the average length of stay in individual programs and the rate at which people are using multiple programs, you will be reducing lengths of homeless episodes.
Measuring returns to homelessness requires identifying a cohort of people who exited a program or set of programs and then identifying how many of them became homeless again during some follow up period. In the graphic on the slide, the rate of returns to homelessness would be calculated by looking at a group of people who exited homelessness during a period of time. For example, let’s say you were looking at people who exited homelessness last September and there were a thousand people. Then you would look at your data to see which of those thousand people had an additional spell of homelessness within some period of time, we’ll use 12 months, of their exit. Let’s say that’s a hundred people. Your rate of returns to homelessness would be 10 percent (100 divided by 1,000)
Assessing the extent of repeat episodes of homelessness also requires decisions. One of the main choices is deciding how long a period to follow up. A shorter follow up period—perhaps 90 days—will help you focus your homelessness assistance on interventions that solve immediate housing crises. A longer follow up period-something like 12 months—will assess whether your system is helping people with longer term stability. There are tradeoffs. A focus on shorter periods will encourage your system to house people more rapidly and more directly measures things that are in the control of your system, but will discourage efforts to promote longer term stability. Longer follow-up periods will discourage rapid re-housing, and focus more on longer-term stability, but that stability is often outside of the control or influence of your system. A few additional points. You want to be sure to only count a return to homelessness if the person becomes homeless again, not if they simply come back for more assistance. Continued engagement and assistance for people is a sign of a healthy system. You just don’t want people to re-experience homelessness. You may want to use different returns to homelessness measures in different ways. For example, if you are using the measure to assess individual program performance, you may want to use longer follow-up periods for programs intended to help people make more progress toward self-sufficiency or for programs providing longer term support.
A thorough assessment of your community’s homelessness assistance will require an assessment of where and how you are investing your resources and comparing cost per outcome relative to the needs of the person you are serving. In general, you want to have a lot of interventions that are relatively inexpensive and serve people with relatively few needs, and you want to provide fewer interventions that are expensive and reserve them for people with greater needs. You can do a very simple assessment of cost effectiveness in two steps. 1. Assess how many exits to permanent housing the different parts of your homelessness system is achieving—for example, how many people exit shelter, transitional housing, and rapid re-housing for permanent housing. Look at the total budgets for each of those systems and divide by the number of people who exit to permanent housing. 2. Adjust for the difficulty of the people being served. For example, programs serving people with zero income and more barriers to housing (previous evictions, disabilities, criminal records) would expect to have a higher cost per permanent housing exit than programs serving people with fewer barriers. As you gain experience with this kind of assessment, you’ll want to look at more factors. For example, if an intervention is reducing or increasing costs to other parts of your system or other mainstream systems. You will also want to look at how people use programs in combination. The point of focusing on costs is not just that you make your system more efficient and effective. In many ways costs are a proxy for real trauma and suffering that you are trying to reduce. Lengthy shelter stays are both costly and traumatic, and reducing those costs by reducing shelter stays is a benefit.
These analyses of your homelessness system will allow you to compare different interventions within your community. For example, should we do more rapid re-housing and less transitional housing? More shelter diversion and less shelter? The cost per exit will not be the only factor you will consider, but it should be an important factor. Understanding the cost effectiveness of different interventions in your homelessness system will help you decide where to invest any increases in funding or to decide whether to transition programs to different types. On the slide, the interventions have dramatically different costs per outcome. Is that because they actually serve people with different levels of barriers, or is it because some are more effective than others?
To simplify the process of assessing your homelessness interventions, you can create a hybrid measure that combines various different features. For example, the Alliance is developing a system assessment tool that uses “Quality Exits” as an indicator. The indicator combines length of Homeless episode and returns to homelessness in one measure. Quality exits is calculated by taking all of the people who exited homelessness during a given period of time AND who exited within 60 days of becoming homeless and subtracts the number who exited a year ago and who became homeless again in the subsequent year. You can further refine such a measure by looking at the cost of each quality exit produced by an intervention, and then by adjusting for the level of housing barriers among people served by that intervention.
Now is a good time to mention that the Alliance is developing a tool to help analyze system performance. The tool is being field tested now and will be released in late November. The tool will provide a simple way to analyze your homelessness assistance based on the concepts we discuss in this presentation, including exits to permanent housing, cost effectiveness, lengths of homeless episodes, returns to homelessness, and quality exits.
For the next part of our presentation, we’ll look at how to modify and redesign your community’s homelessness assistance so that it better achieves the results of preventing and ending homelessness. We’ll start by looking at the main functions of a well designed homelessness assistance system. Then we’ll describe some examples of successful strategies for preventing and ending homelessness. We’ll look at how to stitch together different programs into a coordinated system. And finally, we’ll discuss how to plan and transition to a new system in your community.
So we’ll start with the basic functions of a homelessness assistance system. While there are many activities that homelessness assistance organizations perform, there are three that are essential for everybody who experiences a crisis and becomes homeless—prevention, shelter, and re-housing—every homelessness system in every community should be trying to perform these three functions for everybody they can. The first is to attempt to prevent homelessness or divert people who are about to become homeless. The homelessness assistance system should have the tools and resources necessary to address a crisis quickly enough that a person who is about to become homeless, even if that person might become homeless that night, can remain in their housing or find other housing without having to become homeless. The second is to protect and shelter or temporary housing for people who become homeless. Lastly homelessness assistance has to help re-house people as quickly after they become homeless as possible. In many cases re-housing also means providing or linking with additional supports or permanent supportive housing to ensure that people don’t become homeless again. These are the key things that all homelessness assistance systems should be striving to provide, and there are many approaches to performing these functions. Let’s quickly look at a couple of examples of practices.
One of the most effective strategies for prevention of homelessness is the use of shelter diversion strategies. This slide highlights results for a pilot project in Boston, Massachusetts, known as the Dudley Diversion Project. The Dudley Square neighborhood had seen an increase in family homelessness, and this pilot was a response. Each family seeking shelter was offered diversion assistance. Of the 69 families who participated, 29 were diverted from shelter, many stabilizing in their original housing or moving in with family or friends. Obviously, when somebody is coming to shelter for assistance, their situation is bad. Diversion programs basically work on both an immediate plan and a medium term plan. The immediate plan is to find a way to salvage the person’s current housing situation even if only for a short period of time. This can be done by making appeals to the landlord or family member with whom the person was staying and letting them know that you will help the person quickly find a new place to live. Sometimes an offer of financial assistance, to help pay rent for example will help. Next the program provides housing assistance and supportive services designed to help stabilize that housing situation or to help the person move to a new, more stable housing situation. More information about the Dudley Diversion Pilot: http://www.endhomelessness.org/content/article/detail/2208
By now, most of you are probably familiar with rapid re-housing strategies. I’m going to give you just one quick example of the impact rapid re-housing can have when it’s implemented broadly. In Hennepin County, MN, which includes the city of Minneapolis, the implementation of rapid re-housing across their family homelessness system reduced the average length of stay in shelters by 47% and bed-nights of shelter by 71 percent. We highlight Hennepin a lot because they were one of the first to implement rapid re-housing on a broad scale, but many other communities have had success as well. More information: www.hudhre.info/documents/HennepinCounty.pdf
Now we’ll take a look at what a very basic model of an effective homelessness system looks like. We should stop and recognize that there are many different types of communities, different geographies, different histories, and different housing markets that can all affect how homelessness and homelessness assistance looks like. However, this basic model will work in almost any community.
For a person with a housing crisis, their first encounter with the homelessness assistance system might be when they are losing their housing and need shelter—that first contact with the point of entry into your homelessness system. There are several basic tasks of a point of entry system. The first of these is to attempt to prevent the homeless episode through diversion. If diversion is not possible, the point of entry should be assessing the households immediate barriers to housing. This assessment should focus on what it will take to quickly re-house the household. The exact nature of the assessment will depend on what programs are available in your community. However, it should be able to identify a few basic categories: Severe housing barriers such as combinations of disabilities, long histories of homelessness, substance use, etc that indicate that the household should move into permanent supportive housing. Less severe barriers that indicate that the household should begin immediately to work on their re-housing. Special conditions (veterans, domestic violence, etc) where a referral to a particular program or service system is most beneficial. The assessment should NOT be comprehensive. It is not a complete psycho-social evaluation, and it is not intended to develop a service plan. It should only ask for as much information as is necessary to make referrals to the appropriate intervention. There are various different formats for a point of entry. They include: Single physical location. Multiple locations. Virtual Location (phone or web-based) Combined with other service agencies (TANF/Food Stamps) There are advantages and disadvantages to each of these structures. The key for all of them is that they have these attributes: Easily accessible for people who need immediate assistance Uniform so that people get the same assessment and assistance no matter when or where they make first contact Have resources (either directly or through referral) immediately available to prevent a homeless episode
Even while somebody is in shelter however, re-housing is the ultimate goal. Re-housing programs are one of the most challenging but important aspects a homelessness assistance system. There are several keys to an effective re-housing intervention. Rapid Re-housing programs should scale assistance based on need—people who have more barriers to obtaining housing should receive more assistance. Programs should strive to provide “just enough” assistance to obtain housing. This will stretch resources further and enable the program to assist more people. Services should first be focused on obtaining housing and then on maintaining housing. Services should be home-based, voluntary, and focused on connecting consumers with mainstream service providers. Comprehensive information about planning and developing rapid re-housing resources can be found at: www.endhomelessness.org/content/article/detail/2450
Part of an overall homelessness assistance strategy is to know what level of assistance will resolve a housing crisis. The amount of assistance it takes can vary dramatically. And it’s really hard to tell just how much people are going to need. Progressive engagement is a simple strategy to enable you to target your resources effectively. Progressive engagement simply refers to a strategy of starting with a small amount of assistance for a lot of people and then adding more as needed. Here is an example of how it works in practice. I want to stress that this is just one example of how it can be structured. You would want to tailor the specific interventions to the needs of people in your community. For every household who becomes homeless in your system, you provide a basic level of re-housing assistance, which we’re calling Rapid Re-Housing 1. This could include: a list of rental vacancies, tips about how to find an apartment, help negotiating with landlords or friends or family members a person could live with, and some financial assistance for application fees, deposits, etc. If it becomes clear that the household will not quickly exit homelessness with only this much assistance (for example if they have no prospects after 5-7 days of searching), then you provide additional assistance, which might include short-term rental assistance and case management—Rapid Re-Housing 2. At this point, a household should be re-housed, but the job may not be over. If at the end of 3 months, or even earlier, it is clear that the person is going to be evicted, then additional assistance can be provided, such as a medium-term or long-term rental assistance, and more intensive case management and supportive services. At some point, it may even become clear that the person will never be able to achieve even modest housing stability, in which case you may want to provide a housing voucher (if the issue is primarily economic) or you may look at permanent supportive housing (if the person would not be able to maintain housing even with a voucher). In a progressive engagement approach, these programs—RRH 1, RRH 2, and RRH 3—don’t have to be different programs. They can just be different levels of assistance provided by the same program. Also there’s no reason to have 3 levels as opposed 2 or 4 or 5. The benefits of this progressive engagement approach are many. You don’t have to be able to predict beforehand how much assistance a person will need to be re-housed. You can also stretch your limited resources farther. It prevents disruption for the household. They are not literally moving from program to program, or even using different caseworkers. From their perspective, they stay a short period of time in shelter, then are assisted to move into permanent housing. Their level of assistance may be increased or decreased, but their living situation is stable. This approach also has challenges. It means that as a community, you have to find ways to make your assistance fit around the people you are serving. For example, you will have to figure out how to set aside permanent rental subsidies for people that need them. You don’t want to put everybody on the waiting list at the beginning of the process. You want to have a pool of vouchers waiting for those for whom smaller amounts of assistance didn’t work. This also requires that the caseworkers are trained and can recognize when a person has achieved enough stability or when they will need further assistance. This progressive engagement approach is described in more detail in a supplemental document to the US ICH Federal Strategic Plan to End Homelessness: http://www.ich.gov/PDF/OpeningDoors/DennisCulhane_PrevCentApproHomelessnessAssist.pdf
Another approach to allocating your resources is a Triage approach. Under a triage approach, a person receives an assessment of their housing barriers. The assessment focuses on things that will directly impact their ability to quickly obtain housing, such as income, credit history, and other factors that a landlord would likely consider when deciding whether to rent to somebody. Based on this assessment, which happens when a person first becomes homeless, a referral is made to an intervention. People with fewer barriers are referred to relatively “light” interventions such as the RRH 1, while people with multiple barriers are referred to more intensive interventions like RRH 2 and 3 or perhaps permanent supportive housing.
This slide is an example of how your system would look different if focused much more on diversion and rapid re-housing. We’re going to take a simple forecasting model and build it out. Keep in mind that this is only an example. You should look at your community’s data and circumstances. The numbers used here, are roughly based on national data regarding patterns of homelessness. There are many assumptions used in this model, and we won’t discuss them all today. The Alliance is happy to work with your community if you are interested in doing a more involved version of this kind of forecasting. We’ll start by looking at an example of data about a fictional community. The first thing we have to decide is what data is going to be relevant. For the purpose of this discussion, we won’t separate families from individuals (we’ll just call them households), but when you do this in your community, you should do separate analyses for individuals and families. One of the most helpful data sources to use to design your system is the patterns of homelessness, particularly the length of time people are homeless. So at the left side of the chart, you can see an example of patterns of homelessness for a typical community. We’re looking at the entries over the course of a year. If you were to look at it at a point in time, the system would look much different, much more heavily weighted to the longer term stayers. In this community, nearly a third of homeless people are homeless for less than a week, while similar numbers are homeless between a week and a month and between one month and three months. A smaller number are homeless for more than six months or they experience multiple episodes of homelessness. Now we’ll forecast how people would flow through a rapid re-housing system similar to the one we described in our progressive engagement example earlier. To make the math easier, we’ll assume that we’re looking at what happens to 100 people who enter the system over the course of a year. The first group of 30 people would have been homeless for less than 7 days, and a robust diversion program could divert about half of them, while the other half would receive our lightest rapid re-housing intervention, which we’re calling RRH 1. Under the old system those 30 people would account for about 120 shelter nights over the course of a year, while under the new system, they would account for about half that. The next group, 1 week to 1 month, accounts for 25 people. A few of them (5) can be diverted, while most receive either the light or moderate version of rapid re-housing. You can see that the number of shelter nights for this group declines because rapid re-housing programs are helping them move out of homelessness quicker. The third group 1-6 months, are people for whom diversion is unlikely to be successful. RRH 1 may help a few exit homelessness, but most will be served by RRH 2 and some with RRH 3, which will involve longer term subsidies. This is the group for which rapid re-housing starts to create larger reductions in the number of shelter nights. At the same time, it’s also the group for which you are starting to invest a lot of rapid re-housing resources. Last is the group of people who get stuck in the system. They are homeless 6 months or more, or have multiple episodes. These are the major beneficiaries of a rapid re-housing focused system. For this group, diversion is still possible but unlikely. Most of the work is done by the moderate and intensive rapid re-housing approaches. This is also the group in which you will find some people for whom rapid re-housing doesn’t succeed, and for whom you will need permanent supportive housing. In general, you will probably find a higher percentage of your singles population needing Permanent Supportive Housing than of your families. The results of this approach are to reduce entries into homelessness by 20 percent (that’s the group we were able to divert), and to reduce the average length of episodes from 78 days to 28 days.
So what we’ve described here is a very basic homelessness assistance system. But what about all the other stuff that’s part of homelessness assistance? Transitional housing programs, employment programs, substance use treatment, health clinics, etc. As your community works on implementing the HEARTH Act, you may want to evaluate which of these programs are valuable and which you may want to consider converting or restructuring. Let’s take an example of one type of program, transitional housing, and look at some of the options.
Transitional housing comes in many forms. The key to evaluating your transitional housing is to look at the assets in your transitional housing programs and evaluate whether those programs fit into how you want to design your community’s homelessness assistance and if not, how you can put those assets to work in your new system. For example, if you have a transitional housing program with a fixed building, you probably don’t want to give up that building. Options for utilizing that building include converting the program into a shorter term program, such as a shelter, that helps people exit homelessness quickly, or converting to permanent supportive housing that serves chronically homeless individuals and families. Similarly, the program may have services such as case management, assistance with locating housing, employment, mental health, substance use counseling, etc. Can those same services be delivered in a home-based setting, consistent with the housing first approach? Another option for transitional housing is a transition in place approach. Transition in place involves a transitional housing program leasing scattered site units, moving in homeless households who co-lease or sublease, providing short or medium-term subsidies and services, and then at some point, the household completely takes over the unit, while the transitional housing program finds a new unit to lease. Interim housing is another model that’s used in Chicago. It combines elements of shelter and rapid re-housing. Communities may also consider using transitional housing programs for special populations.
The change process is challenging, but it offers a great opportunity to improve homelessness assistance in your community for homeless people and other stakeholders. This slide outlines the steps you will be going through to improve your homelessness assistance. As you get ready to embark on this transition, we hope we’ve given you some tools to make it easier and more productive, and we’ll be producing more tools in the weeks and months to come. We’ve described how to analyze your data, focusing on key data elements like lengths of homeless episodes. We’ve also covered several concepts for analyzing your programs and how they should fit together. This information will help you identify the gaps and underserved populations in your community, particularly the ones who get stuck in your homelessness system. One of the big challenges going forward will be to prioritize and act on decisions. There are always numerous changes that would make your system function better, and far too few resources to make them all happen. You will have to work with other stakeholders in the community to develop a shared vision and priorities for moving forward and to generate enough enthusiasm and shared sense of responsibility to make that happen.
To help with the process, we will post a sample tool we used in one community to help them prioritize and organize their transformation of their family homelessness assistance. You can see screen shots of that document here. The document will be posted, along with numerous other materials, at our HEARTH Academy page: http://www.endhomelessness.org/section/training/hearthacademy
The HEARTH Academy has three major components: A 1.5 day clinic where 6-10 leaders from each of several communities will come together to assess their communities performance and create an action plan to implement cost effective strategies that will help their communities reduce homelessness and better meet the goals of the HEARTH Act A series of preparation and implementation webinars and tools covering a range of topics: An overview of the HEARTH Act and its implications Using performance measures to improve outcomes Designing a cost effective homelessness assistance system Individualized consulting for communities interested in receiving customized assistance
If you want more information about the HEARTH Academy, you can visit the link on our website. http://www.endhomelessness.org/section/training/hearthacademy The HEARTH Academy is not sponsored by or affiliated with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) or any other federal agency. The HEARTH Academy is a project of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.