NAEH 2013 Conference Takeaways Notes by Amber Killinger of OC Partnership, Orange County, CA

Contents NAEH 2013 Conference Takeaways .............................................................................................................. 1

Quotes to Think About .............................................................................................................................. 2

Interesting Data from Other Communities ............................................................................................... 3

Rapid Re-Housing .................................................................................................................................. 3

Jail Population ....................................................................................................................................... 4

Coordinated Assessment Info ................................................................................................................... 5

Shelter Diversion ................................................................................................................................... 6

Takeaways – Possibly Implement in Our Community ............................................................................... 7

Insights from HUD ..................................................................................................................................... 9

Marketing – from Other Communities ................................................................................................... 11

Resources ................................................................................................................................................ 11

Quotes to Think About

“I’m anti-sleeping bag distribution. Our goal is not to make people on the street comfortable, it’s to get them into housing and housing stability.” - Kelly King Horn – Homeward

“HEARTH was written to house the hardest to house. It’s very important to reach these people and help them. “ – Jonathan Harwitz, HUD rep

“To help your community get where they need to be, help programs remove barriers. Keep going back to the bigger picture to see why we can’t serve a particular person.” – Brett Gagnon, HUD rep

“Don’t force everyone from Emergency Shelter to Transitional Housing to Permanent Housing. Some people may be able to go from Emergency Shelters to Permanent Housing” – Brett Gagnon, HUD rep

“Screen people in instead of screening people out. Get the community to understand they should screen people to go to Yes not screen out, leading to No. Create a more positive process to allow people to get into the housing they need.” – Jamie Ewing, CSH Chicago, IL

“Planning is critical. If you have a lot of chronically homeless on the streets, you may need more Permanent Supportive Housing. If you have lots of people with long shelter stays, you probably need more Rapid Re-housing.” - Kay Moshier McDivitt, National Alliance to End Homelessness

“Just know that many poor people pay more than 30% of their income on housing, and only 10% of them will ever become homeless. So know that many people in poverty stay housed.” - Kay Moshier McDivitt, National Alliance to End Homelessness

“Consider going from Transitional Housing model to Harm Reduction model. It used to be that if the client was found using drugs x number of times, they’d get kicked out. Now there’s no drug testing, no alcohol testing. If you go home under the influence, do you get kicked out? No. So why do that to your clients? There is no more “discharging” there is eviction with a regular eviction process. “ – Andrea Hachey, Columbus House , inc, New Haven, CT “I see Coordinated Intake like an emergency room. Multiple people help the client to try to help them get back into permanent housing. We’re trying to see if they can be treated and released (diversion), and not seeing how long we can keep them there in a suite (Transitional Housing)” - Ed Boyte, Assistant Director and Trainer, Cleveland Mediation Center, Cleveland, OH Regarding shelter diversion, “We don’t require people to prove that they’ll be able to make next month’s rent, we just ask. If we pay this month, will you be able to pay the next? If the person feels they can, we trust that and help them with the 1 month’s rent. ” - Ed Boyte, Assistant Director and Trainer, Cleveland Mediation Center, Cleveland, OH

Interesting Data from Other Communities

Rapid Re-Housing • Katherine Gayle, United States Interagency Council on Homelessness:

o RRH: 80-90% exits to PH. Looks a lot better than other interventions we’ve tried so far. It’s also less costly than TH and in some communities less than ES.

• Brett Gagnon with HUD: o Research has shown that RRH is very effective in ending homelessness for families o They’re finding that even just 90 days of assistance is often enough

• Jonathan with HUD: o RRH successes: Patterns hold across different types of housing markets, rural and

city/expensive housing • Brett Gagnon with HUD:

o Is HUD saying get rid of Transitional Housing (TH)? No. TH works for some populations like DV and youth. But don’t make people go through TH if someone really needs to get into permanent housing.

• Katrina Pratt-Roebuck, Office of Supportive Housing, City of Philadelphia: o Provided 12 months of rental assistance. This provided 1 year of relationship with

landlords. o Housed 1385 households o Provided $11.2M in RRH assistance o Recidivism rate of re-entering shelter 13% (a year after end of HPRP program) o Average amount of assistance per HH is $6000 per 12 month period o Screened out chronically homeless because they didn’t want clients that would require

case management o Case managers focused their check-ins on is the client paying rent on time, is the client

paying utilities on time, maintaining their housing o By year 3 they found that people that had multiple episodes of homelessness did not do

as well with RRH and were more likely to return to homelessness • Jamie Vanasse Taylor, Cloudburst Consulting Group:

o Did a case study using 1169 RRH Treatment Households, 1286 Non-RRH comparison households

o Found that the odds of returning to homelessness were 40% higher for HH that did not receive RRH

o For those that did return to homelessness, the only factor they found were the number of times the household had been in shelter

o Findings show that every month of RRH results in an average increase of $15/mo in income

o Further analysis showed that 0-3 months of RRH was not long enough to see income increase at exit

• Jason Rodriguez, GA Dept of Community Affairs (information for entire Georgia HMIS implementation)

o Case study measurements: Started with being homeless, end result no longer homeless. Less than 2 years later person experienced homelessness again.

o Found that RRH programs were more successful than ES and TH. Recurrence to homelessness: ES about 33, TH 30, RRH 7

o Most Significant Predictors of returning to homelessness 1. Was not in a RRH program 2. Had history of homelessness 3. Went to a temporary destination

• Tom Byrne o SSVF (similar to HPRP) program outcomes: RRH recidivism 15.7% singles 10.1% families

in 1 year • Tiffani Moore, HUD

o Communities may prioritize People with higher barriers to housing, higher service needs and are waiting to

be placed in PSH. People with lower barriers to housing and less service needs who can stabilize in

PSH. • Kimberly Tucker. St. Joseph’s Villa, Richmond, VA

o Staff may not buy into Rapid Re-housing until they try it. You don’t have to see the whole staircase before you take the first step. Staff had concerns about setting people up for failure. She is now one of the biggest proponents for this model.

o Costs used to be $45k per year per client in Transitional Housing. Now with RRH average financial assistance cost is $1500. Plus case management around $4000 per family. That’s an average of 2 months of rental assistance. She never believed it could be so low and work.

o 3 years ago they rapidly re-housed 30 families. 97% have remained housed after 3 years. This was after discharge from all services.

• Kay Moshier McDivitt, National Alliance to End Homelessness o They see Rapid Re-housing working in high cost areas like Alexandria where a 1BR is

$1500 and there are bidding wars. o When you’re in housing your focus is much more on how to keep your housing (like job

searching) vs. non-housed people because the housing is already paid for. o Shared housing can be successful for PH. Everyone doesn’t have to be in their own apt.

especially in high cost areas.

Jail Population • Homeward: did a data matching of HMIS data with Jail data.

o Found 1/3 of homeless adults had been incarcerated in this one jail in the past 12 months.

o The pattern held true for 4-5 years. o 7% of the overcrowded jail population had been homeless o Kelly dropped out of re-entry work because she saw that the overlap was in jails, not in

prisons.

Coordinated Assessment Info • Cincinnati – Kevin Finn

o Average shelter contribution to CAP (Coordinated Assessment Program) was $8000 o Employee cost at provider agencies: $20k-$45k/year freed up o The CAP allowed families to make one phone call and only go through intake one time. o Participation in a Coordinated Assessment system allows housing placement to happen

more easily, not be more difficult. o Helps with systemic gaps analysis, identify “creaming” etc.

• Brett Gagnon, HUD o Why written standards? Written standards needed for administering assistance so there

is consistency. One family goes to one program and gets turned away, goes to another and is accepted. This is not acceptable. Family should know what eligibility criteria is. It’s hard to say no to people in need but there is a need to say no since we can’t assist everyone. There needs to be clear guidelines as to why you’re saying yes or no to a client.

o We don’t want people to go to places that they don’t qualify for, knocking from door to door trying to get into a program.

o Agencies should not have conflicting policies with the CoC. If the CoC says max rent a HH can pay is $50, then the agency can’t say $70. Or if ESG is targeted for families, it shouldn’t be used for individuals.

o Assessment should not be an entire psycho-social. We’re not trying to fix everything that’s wrong with them. We’re trying to help them with their immediate housing crisis and stabilize them, and do this as quickly as possible. If people need supportive services, is there some other program that can provide those services (not HUD funded) – use those funding streams first.

o HUD is encouraging communities to eventually get to a point of no side doors. • Tiffani Moore, HUD

o Must have policies and procedures for evaluating eligibility for assistance and determining and prioritizing which individuals and families will receive assistance. (same slides were used in Seattle conference so you can pull them down from there).

o Written standards should: be specific and detailed address unique eligibility requirements for assistance. reflect the homeless population and subpopulations within the CoC reflect the housing and service resources available within the CoC reflect local and national targeting priorities

o Prioritize those with longest histories of homelessness. Can also prioritize based on several disabilities or high service needs even if they don’t meet the definition of chronically homeless.

Shelter Diversion • Ed Boyte, Assistant Director and Trainer, Cleveland Mediation Center (CMC), Cleveland, OH

Focus on Shelter Diversion: o We don’t require people to prove that they’ll be able to make next month’s rent, we just

ask. If we pay this month, will you be able to pay the next? If the person feels they can, we trust that and help them with the 1 month’s rent.

o I see Coordinated Intake like an emergency room. Multiple people help the client to try to help them get back into permanent housing. We’re trying to see if they can be treated and released (diversion), and not seeing how long we can keep them there in a suite (Transitional Housing)”

o CMC Diversion staff: 2 ½ full time people in each shelter (=5 people) Same hours as Coordinated Intake One FT program manager Assistant director at about 1/3 time Interviewing and hiring the right people is key

o Stats 9 months: Oct 12, 2012 to June 13, 2013 Saw 1047 single men Diverted 203 (19%) 73 received financial assistance Saw 150 single women Diverted 40 (27%) 24 received financial assistance Saw 1758 families Diverted 565 (32%) 233 received financial assistance

o Strength-based approach. Helping clients identify their strengths, successes and resources they’ve used in the past to help them with this bout of homelessness

o Homelessness is a crisis. When not yet homeless, people are better able to come up with solutions and tap into resources.

o Conflict Resolution Approach to those in housing crisis - Based on Transformative Mediation Theory

o We trust that they want to succeed, have done so in the past and have the capacity to do so again in the future.

o Q: How can you talk single men into shared housing when they have an income, in a shelter. Instead they could share housing and be housed but the men are resistant to roommate situations. Ed: You need to say, “This is a crisis, that you’re homeless. What do we need to do to get you out?” The culture should not be that it’s OK to live comfortably in a shelter long term.

Takeaways – Possibly Implement in Our Community • Homeward:

o Richmond is capitol of VA and highest population of homeless. 8 jurisdictions served. Through use of the data, they could show cities that 10% of the homeless had the last housing within their city. They have a map that shows the percentages showing where the last known permanent address was.

o Get to know all of the affordable housing people. The relationships help because some landlords waive credit checks or rental history checks.

o Next steps: Getting a housing broker

• HUD (Brett Gagnon): o Remember that the needs of the community change so our system of care need to

change as well. Compare HIC and PIT, HMIS data. What’s changing? What are the needs? Look at this annually. Once C/A in place this can be a

valuable tool to track what is needed in the community. What are the gaps?

• Jamie Ewing, CSH Chicago, IL:

o Keep screening criteria down to minimum basic funder requirements. Don’t add additional screening requirements. Be in compliance with fair housing laws.

o Prioritizing and Targeting: Identify those with the highest need and match them with the appropriate housing type to fit their need. Relied on the 100k Homes Campaign lessons learned and Vulnerability Index.

o Outreach is essential. If you aren’t funding outreach teams, consider doing so. They can identify the chronically homeless and can collect documentation to help clients receive services. Lack of documentation has been the biggest barrier to getting people into housing; not having documentation ready. This team could collect and keep the documentation team to have the paperwork ready. We need to provide wrap-around services or help connect them to the needed services. Amber’s thought: Implement process in Orange County where all HMIS intake

specialists begin collecting client’s documentation needed for housing immediately (1st contact), scan and upload to HMIS record. This way the scanned documents will always be available, even if the client moves from one agency to another.

o Permanent Supportive Housing may not be appropriate for all clients. Redirect them to somewhere more appropriate. Rules of thumb: Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH)

• Higher Vulnerability Index score most suitable for PSH • Higher barriers to housing • Higher service needs

Permanent Housing with Supportive Services (PHwSS) • Lower Vulnerability Index score more suitable for PHwSS

• Lower barriers to housing • Lower service needs • Expected to stabilize in Permanent Housing

o Doing cross-matching of Coordinated Assessment clients and PSH PHA wait list. Also cross-matching with VA. Giving vet names to VA to get them on their list. Increased percentage of people housed in PSH that were chronically homeless to 68% (up from 50%).

• Kay Moshier McDivitt (NAEH)

o Retooling Options 1. Retool parts of the program (repurposing)

a. Moving from facility based TH to transition in place TH b. Shorten the length of stay c. Moving to a voluntary services model (not so many rules and don’t make all

clients attend the same classes or utilize the same services. Rules should only be about safe housing.)

d. Change in target population (finding serving lower barrier population vs higher barrier people. Screen in people with highest barriers into appropriate programs)

e. Change in number of units/person (10 units, 1 year program, shorten to 6 months to serve 20 people/year instead of 10 people/year)

2. Retooling to a new model (Reallocation) for CoC funding only a. Rapid Re-housing o Permanent Supportive Housing

• Andrea Hachey, Columbus House , inc, New Haven, CT

o Consider going from Transitional Housing model to Harm Reduction model. It used to be that if the client was found using drugs x number of times, they’d get kicked out. Now there’s no drug testing, no alcohol testing. If you go home under the influence, do you get kicked out? No. So why do that to your clients? There is no more “discharging” there is eviction with a regular eviction process. The main issue now is ‘are you paying your rent?’ Now she can talk to clients about enriching their lives since they’re now permanently housed instead of “are you using drugs?”

• Kim Walker, NAEH, Washington DC

o Shelter diversion is important. Someone comes into the system saying “I need shelter, I have nowhere else to go.” This is about helping them find somewhere else to go to prevent them, if possible, from entering our shelter system.

o Shared housing is really important. Set expectations. If you want to live on your own, look at costs and review what client will be responsible for. Then talk about a roommate situation and how it would look if they split rents and shared resources. What are pros and cons?

• Becky, 100k Homes: What are high performing communities doing differently? o Housing first system, system wide (no barriers, even based on mental health) o Continuously updated list of everyone in community based on some kind of

prioritization. With a little more energy at PIT count, get names and photos so you actually know who is homeless.

o Permanent Supportive Housing eligibility standards set by community, not by individual housing providers.

o Data driven decision making and data sharing between agencies. o Concrete plans to leverage Medicaid and CDBG funding.

Insights from HUD • Ann Oliva with HUD: Look at: Do we have the right mix of housing to meet the needs?

1. A community came in to see HUD, doing a day-long session to look at programs. Ann pulled out HIC and PIT. They had more housing resources than they had people in need and beds weren’t full. Program types need to be looked at because people are on the street and beds available – why aren’t people in the beds? Programs need to be re-worked.

2. HUD has been going into various communities. One said their TH is only about 70% full and they thought this was OK. Ann said no, this is not OK. Look at these programs and find out why the beds aren’t filled. Look at the barriers we’re putting into place. We must remove these barriers. We can’t expect people to be at a level they aren’t.

• Ann Oliva with HUD: CoC’s need to build relationships like with housing assistance or services

that could meet the need of the homeless population.

Building Partnerships: • HOME • CDBG • HOPWA (HUD will be putting out guidance on using the affordable care act to assist with

funding. HUD is engaging HOPWA. Look at this funding stream (Affordable Care Act).) • HUD Multifamily Housing

Engage these partners at the local level. HUD has been engaging them at the national level so they should be ready to work with and partner with us.

• Ann Oliva with HUD: “Funders Together” a group of foundations working on homelessness issue. Looking at national goals. Seek them out to find out about possible resources in our area.

• Brett Gagnon with HUD: HUD money should be used for housing. Other funding sources should be used for services. ONLY use HUD money for services if funding cannot be found anywhere else for services.

• Brett Gagnon with HUD: How to end chronic homelessness?

o Create new beds o Prioritize existing beds (maybe 50% targeted to chronically homeless) o Ann Oliva, expanding on Brett’s comment:

This is very important for any housing type. HUD is asking us to serve chronically homeless people first.

Prioritize the beds to serve chronically homeless. As long as you are serving your same target population, you don’t need a grant

amendment to prioritize chronically homeless first. o Jonathan expanding on Ann’s comment:

If a program says they can’t serve this population, this program needs to be looked at. That’s a red flag.

• Brett Gagnon:

o Don’t make people have to be ready for housing. Put them in PSH first from the get go. If PSH isn’t available, use RRH until PSH is available. People can maintain homeless status while in RRH to qualify for PSH.

• Brett Gagnon:

o The McKinney-Vento Act, as amended by the HEARTH Act sets forth selection criteria that will be used to award funds under the CoC Program, which include: Success at reducing the number of individuals and families who become

homeless Overall reduction in the number of homeless individuals and families The length of time individuals and families remain homeless The extent to which individuals and families who leave homelessness

experience additional spells of homelessness Jobs and income growth for homeless individuals and families The thoroughness of recipients in the geographic area in reaching homeless

individuals and families

Marketing – from Other Communities • Homeward: School System “Homeless” Definition vs. HUD Definition

Always very clear about the definition of homeless. The school system calls her up saying that they’re undercounting because it’s not the same definition as the school system. Marketing, she says PIT numbers are “children living in shelters” not “homeless children” so she doesn’t upset or contradict the school system counts of homeless children.

• How to engage providers: o Focus on the mission and the people we serve o Making hope possible o Dignity of housing o Homelessness affects all members of the community o Agencies are not the primary focus of our efforts to end homelessness

Resources “Rapid Rehousing, creating programs that work” (from endhomelessness.org) “Organizational Change; adopting a housing first approach” (from endhomelessness.org) “Retooling Transitional Housing Toolkit” (from endhomelessness.org)