1. Update on Heading Home: Minnesota's Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness
Minnesota Office to Prevent and End Homelessness
Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless Conference
October 11, 2016, 1:45 - 3:00pm
Rochester, MN

2. Today’s session Summarize Heading Home plan and its implementation
Review progress on population goals:
Veterans
People experiencing chronic homelessness
Youth
Families
Highlight the role of "mainstream" systems
Get your thoughts about key challenges

3. The Minnesota Interagency Council on Homelessness
Corrections
Education
Employment and Economic Development
Governor’s Office
Health
Higher Education
Housing
Human Rights
Human Services
Metropolitan Council
Public Safety
Transportation
Veterans Affairs

4. The Minnesota Interagency Council on Homelessness
Groups
Role
Meetings
Commissioners
Set vision and direction. Address any barriers to success.
3 per year
Senior Leadership Team
Develop and guide plan objectives, strategies, and actions.
5-6 per year
Implementation Team
Programmatic experts establishing work plans to implement actions.
7-8 per year
We’ve structured the Council in 3 tiers…
The plan is intended to identify the concrete actions state agencies will take together over two years and very much intended to align with and support work at the local level.

5. Our Vision: Housing Stability for All Minnesotans
Stable housing results in better educational outcomes for our children, a stronger workforce now and in the future, increased public safety, better health, reduced health care costs, and reduced disparities among communities.
Governor Dayton

6. Cross-cutting Strategies
Strategies that help end homelessness for all populations
Strategies focused on each population goal
Families with Children
Youth
Veterans
Chronic

7. Episodes of homelessness
Prevent homelessness whenever possible, and otherwise making it rare, brief, and non-recurring
PREVENT
RARE
BRIEF
Episodes of homelessness
New
incidents
Housing outcomes
NON-RECURRING
Recidivism

8. Measures of Progress and Implementation

9. Minnesotans Experiencing Homelessness
An overall 2.75% decrease in ALL people experiencing homelessness between 2015 and 2016
Between 2014 and 2016, there has been an almost 13% decrease in ALL people experiencing homelessness
SMAC, Northeast, and St. Louis* CoC’s all saw overall increases in homelessness between last year and this year.
SMAC: 7% increase (driven by transitional housing and unsheltered)
Northeast: 13% increase (driven by increase in emergency shelter)
St. Louis: 8% increase (driven by increase in emergency shelter **New emergency shelter opened on Boise Forte (New Moon) – this added people to sheltered count)
All 3 metro CoC’s increased in the numbers of unsheltered persons between 2015 and 2016,(SMAC 15%, Hennepin 38% and Ramsey 64% change) with 33% of SMAC’s total homeless being unsheltered.
Almost all of Greater MN saw decreases in the unsheltered population. (All Greater MN CoC’s saw decreases in unsheltered except for West Central)

10. Veteran Homelessness
FFI: Attend Eric’s session tomorrow afternoon at 2:00 pm

11. Chronic Homelessness

12. Youth without Parents or Guardians
FFI: Attend Andrea’s session TODAY from 3:15-4:30pm

13. People in Families

14. All Population Goals

15. Implementation Dashboard: August 2016

16. Mainstream Systems

17. What do we mean by “mainstream systems”?
Any program, service, benefit or resources that is not designed exclusively to address the needs of people experiencing homelessness.
Examples:
Food support
MFIP
Most mental health services
Early learning scholarships

18. Why do we care about engaging mainstream systems?
Homelessness often = failure in existing safety nets
Homeless-dedicated funding alone is not enough
Addressing homelessness is integral to the broader missions of mainstream systems
People experiencing homelessness deserve to benefit from the same services and resources as others

19. What are we doing?
Helping to make mainstream systems work better for people experiencing homelessness
Connecting with health care
Embedding housing-related best practices and promising approaches in mainstream systems
Assisting with access to federal benefits
Improving access to transportation

20. Helping to make mainstream systems work better for people experiencing homelessness
“What’s hard for people who are housed is impossible for people who are homeless.”
Example: DB101/HB101 Vault
A key theme we heard during our External Opinion Research:
Many intakes, applications, or appointments assume that a person has an address, has a car, has an appointment book, has paperwork at hand or attainable. For individuals and families who are homeless, these assumptions are principally not true.

22. Connecting with health care
Potential proposal for a Medicaid-funded housing support services benefit
Includes both Transition and Tenancy Sustaining services
Target population: people whose disability or disabling condition(s) limits their ability to obtain and/or maintain stable housing

23. Connecting with health care
Build capacity among homeless and housing providers in Minnesota to:
Connect people experiencing homelessness to Medicaid and assist with maintaining benefits
Identify people who may be eligible for Medicaid services and connect them to those services, and
Build agency capacity and partnerships to access Medicaid funding for health care services provided to their clients.

24. Stable, integrated, affordable housing with community supports
Homelessness and Olmstead
Street
Nursing facility
Homeless shelter
Hospital
Group home
Jail
Often a person with a disability can be caught in a cycle of instability
Barriers to stability
Housing affordability
Rental barriers (e.g., criminal history, credit problems)
Lack of community services
Navigating complex systems
Goal
Stable, integrated, affordable housing with community supports

25. Discussion

26. Small group discussions
TOPICS
Landlord engagement
Partnerships with workforce development systems
Ending senior homelessness
Engaging the child welfare system
The role of schools in ending youth & family homelessness
The role of mainstream economic assistance and human service programs
Affordable housing development
Improving outcomes for people disproportionately impacted by homelessness
Connections with health care

27. What is working well for you locally?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What is working well for you locally?
What could the State do to support your local efforts?
What opportunities seem most promising or energizing?

28. Thank you! Cathy ten Broeke, Director
Minnesota Office to Prevent and End Homelessness