1. Partnering to end homelessness
North Carolina Coalition to End Homelessness
securing resources encouraging public dialogue advocating for public policy change
North Carolina Coalition to End Homelessness
NC Coalition to End Homelessness

2. We know how to end homelessness.
Affordable Housing
Appropriate Services
Adequate Income
What is so exciting is that we know how to end homelessness. We know in order to end homelessness as we know it that individuals and families need these things. They need an affordable place to live. PHAs have this great resource that is not being tapped into for people experiencing homelessness in many communities. They need the right services to help them maintain their homes. They need access to basic needs like food, behavioral health supports for mental health and substance abuse issues, and help with tenancy issues. And to maintain their new homes long-term, people need adequate income, both earned through employment or unearned income like SSI/SSDI.

3. Because we’ve been focusing on moving people into housing, we’ve seen our overall homeless numbers decrease in the state. We know how to do this. Communities have been especially focused on decreasing chronic and veteran homelessness and the partnerships with PHAs has been a driving force in these decreases in certain communities where PHAs and providers have strong relationships. Vets: partnership on HUD VASH (Forsyth and Cumberland). Chronic: homeless preferences in Asheville and Guilford Counties. Real opportunities to affect these numbers even more with expansion of these partnerships with PHAs. With your help we can do this even faster.

4. Three Key Performance Measures
Rare
Prevent or divert new episodes of homelessness
Access resources without a shelter stay
Brief
Reduce length of time while homeless
Reduce program length of stays
Increase exits to permanent housing
Non-recurring
Reduce returns to homelessness
Focus on housing stability
Create access to resources without another shelter stay
For communities across the country, HUD is measuring our performance in a new way. They are really looking at some key measures. Talk through “rare, brief, and non-recurring.” With more PHAs partnering with homeless providers in their communities, we can have a real effect on these. By providing an avenue for affordable housing for homeless individuals and families, we can increase our exits to PH and reduce the length of time people remain homeless.

5. Focusing on barriers to housing at the household level.
Barriers to Getting Housing
Barriers to Keeping Housing
Criminal History
Credit History
Housing History
Financial Resources
Financial Barriers
income & budgeting
Behavioral Barriers
mental health
substance use
tenancy skills
Over the last few years, our thinking about access to housing has changed. It used to be that people had to work on their barriers to housing before they thought about moving into a permanent place. They needed to: sobriety, work on getting a job or benefits, take to repair their credit history Etc. Now we are more focused on the barriers to keeping housing. People don’t need to wait until they have met some arbitrary set of milestones to access PH. We now work with landlords to look past these barriers to housing so we can get to the real work of keeping people in housing. Partners like PHAs can help us by getting to the place where folks can start working on these issues. As you can imagine, working on your mental health or substance abuse issues are hard to do when you simply try to survive living on the streets. We’ve all heard of the hierarchy of needs – safety first. It’s hard to focus on these really difficult issues when you have to have the basics everyday – food, shelter, safety. By placing people into their own homes where they don’t have to worry about these things, they can start working on these barriers to keep housing. PHAs have an opportunity to overlook these things. Example: Theoretical – School vs. practical on the job approach. As an example

6. Focus on Permanent Housing to end housing crises.
Prevention/Diversion
Emergency Shelter
Transitional Housing
Rapid Re-Housing
Permanent Supportive Housing
These are the types of programs that are necessary to help us end homelessness in our community. The blue ones are the important ones because they focus on permanent housing. We need ES and TH as a temporary place for folks but we want to minimize the time folks have to stay in these types of programs. Define each one of the housing types.
RRH (newest) – for literally homeless; housing + case management/connection to other services; getting folks housed ASAP by advocating with landlords; helping with housing search; providing financial assistance for deposits, utility payments; average of 3-6 months of assistance to stabilize; is successful because focuses on outcome we want – permanent housing; mostly/historically response to homelessness is shelter; folks need stability of housing not temporary shelter  trying to change the intervention/solution, getting people into PH; RRH does just this; is less expensive than shelter and TH; get better outcomes and cheaper
PSH – for folks with disabilities, much longer program; housing + case management/connection to other services / funded by CoC
These are the PH interventions that they can become part of. These all have a combination of housing and services. Important for those to be together.
NC Coalition to End Homelessness

7. Rapid Rehousing creates flow by getting households back into housing.
Programs that quickly place families experiencing homelessness in permanent housing. These programs help locate housing in the community, negotiate with landlords, provide time-limited rental assistance, and provide home- based case management to promote housing retention and link families with needed services within their community.
Core components include:
Housing Identification
Rent and Move In Assistance
Case Management and services with a focus on connecting to mainstream service systems.
What does this mean to PHAs?

8. Permanent Supportive Housing is the intervention for high need households.
Long-term community-based housing and supportive services for homeless persons with disabilities. The intent of this type of supportive housing is to enable this population to live as independently as possible in a permanent setting.
Provides households who have disabilities and high barriers to getting and keeping housing with the necessary supports to stabilize in housing.
Benefits to PHAs – many of these folks will be coming to your housing authority anyway. What we found in Asheville is that this population can succeed in public housing with consistent, sustained support.

9. Communities struggle to find affordable housing
Low vacancy rates in communities
Programs have tenant-based rental assistance that goes unspent
Despite efforts, private landlords refuse to work with programs helping homeless people
Need for more affordable housing units and property owners and management companies willing to partner with providers

10. Continuums of Care form the backbone of the homeless service system.
A Continuum of Care (CoC) is a regional or local planning body that coordinates housing and services funding for homeless families and individuals
Wide range of agencies and organizations represented
Promotes community-wide commitment to ending homelessness
Required group for applying for HUD Homeless funding
Explain the difference between CoC planning body and CoC funding. Make clear that HUD does not fund services with the CoC. HUD funding for services goes to the nonprofits.
Administrative functions include governance, staffing of committees and workgroups and a few new components outlined in HEARTH designed to make CoCs more efficient and effective
Coordinate Intake/aka Coordinated Assessment – one stop shopping; easier for clients, more efficient in the long run for providers
Written Standards – promotes transparency and accountability of the system
Performance Expectations & monitoring – Buy the best outcome for our money, shift resources to those doing the best job of ending homelessness
HMIS – Homeless Management Information System required by HUD, reported in AHAR each year to Congress
Planning for future – constant improvement and growth until we reach our goal. Then: new careers for everyone!

11. HUD has given CoCs increased responsibility.
COC Functions
CoC Management
System Planning
Data Collection
Governance
System operations
Coordinated Assessment
Written standards
Performance Expectations and Monitoring
Funding priorities
Identifying Gaps in system and addressing
Funding Priorities
Connecting to mainstream service systems
Data Collection for HEARTH measures
Designating an HMIS Lead Agency
Administrative functions include governance, staffing of committees and workgroups and a few new components outlined in HEARTH designed to make CoCs more efficient and effective
Coordinate Intake/aka Coordinated Assessment – one stop shopping; easier for clients, more efficient in the long run for providers
Written Standards – promotes transparency and accountability of the system
Performance Expectations & monitoring – Buy the best outcome for our money, shift resources to those doing the best job of ending homelessness
HMIS – Homeless Management Information System required by HUD, reported in AHAR each year to Congress
Planning for future – constant improvement and growth until we reach our goal. Then: new careers for everyone!
North Carolina Coalition to End Homelessness

12. Coordinated Assessment means lots of changes for communities.
Move away from agency/program-centric decision making
Should we accept this household?
Agency specific assessments
Ad hoc referrals
Move toward system and client-centric decisions
How can our system best serve this household?
Standard forms, assessments
Agreed upon, coordinated referral system
North Carolina Coalition to End Homelessness

13. There are 12 CoCs in North Carolina.
Currently, there are 12 CoCs in NC. Before the Balance of State was created, there were more than 30 CoCs.
Explain the map

14. The NC Balance of State CoC covers 79 rural counties.
Balance of State area is quite large; it includes 79 mostly rural counties.
30 regional committees within BoS –
Organic shapes and sizes
BoS structure has bottom up and top down elements
Bottom up – groundswell of activity needed to start a RC, size and shape up to community
Top down – consistency of policies and procedures from SC provide consistency across CoC – we are judged/evaluated/etc. on the CoC level not the RC or program level
NC Coalition to End Homelessness

15. Focus on best practices for specific populations has been effective.
From 2015 to 2016
Chronic homelessness decreased 27%
Veteran homelessness decreased 19%
Family homelessness decreased 11%
Creating a coordinated system of care and housing first makes a huge impact

16. Let us know how we can support your partnerships with the homeless system.
Brian K. Alexander Project Specialist (919)
NCCEH Webpage:
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