Transcript Building Intentional Partnerships to Reach Marginalized

W8-Building Intentional
Partnerships to Reach
Marginalized Communities
Presented by:
Homeless Prevention
Programs
Background
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Since 1974, Solid Ground has helped our most vulnerable community
members overcome economic crises and develop the skills and
resources they need to overcome poverty.
Solid Ground’s Homeless Prevention Programs work to educate and
empower people with tools to solve problems that jeopardize housing.
As the scope and severity of homelessness have increased over the
years, so too has our reach to our greater community as well as our
range of services.
Solid Ground is committed to ending poverty, but to end poverty, we
must undo racism. To inform our anti-racism work within the
Homeless Prevention Programs, we have developed Anti-Racism
Initiative (ARI) Guiding Principles which highlights strategic
collaboration with community agencies so as to identify, address, and
improve systems and policies that perpetuate housing problems and
housing loss amongst marginalized populations in our community
Tenant Services Program
Est. 1979
website: http://www.solid-ground.org/tenant
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Initially provided services for tenants and landlords.
Shifted focus and began serving only tenants in eviction
prevention and to ensure housing stability.
2003 City of Seattle housing tax levy allocated for funding of
rental assistance programs. Tenant Services assisted clients
with rental assistance.
2003 Established a structured Tenant Services Hotline with
hours of operation and designated tasks for Tenant Counselors
to spend time in answering calls from tenants.
Began using the Rent Smart model to provide workshops and
educational sessions in the community.
Partnered with agencies serving homeless and at risk
individuals such as: Fare Start, Drug Court, Low Income
Housing Providers.
Currently the Tenant Services Hotline operates from 10:30AM4:30PM on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday taking calls
statewide
Tenant Services Program
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2004 Began offering rental assistance to tenants accessing the hotline.
2004-2005 Legislative Advocacy began by organizing with Tenants Union to
gain grievance hearing rights for section 8 tenants in termination hearings and
push for regulations within City of Seattle 3rd party utility billing ordinance to
pass.
2005 Noticeable shift in type of callers experiencing housing needs due to
housing cost increase and income remaining flat. Also dramatic increase of
clients appearing to be experiencing mental health issues accessing the hotline.
2006 Hotline became overwhelmed by rental assistance requests.
2007 Created distinct collaborations with agencies that screened rental
assistance clients; increasing efficiency of TS to focus on LLT issues and
decreased work load for partnering agencies to have a referral system in place.
2009 Discontinued rental assistance through Tenant Services due to client
needs, increase in workshops and limited capacity of the hotline. Began
providing services in Spanish and using interpretation services for other nonEnglish speakers.
Obstacles and Achievements
Tenant Services Hotline is a triage crisis model focused on education and
prevention
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Challenge: Tracking outcomes and following up with clients to
reassure that they were connected to resources and that
housing needs were met.
Success: Changing how outcomes are tracked. Reassuring that
clients understand the next steps to take after each call and the
self reliance nature of Landlord-Tenant relations. Empowering
clients to access resources and assert their rights under the
law.
Challenge: Very high volume of callers-especially tenants
facing severe economic hardships and at immediate risk of
loosing their housing well beyond the educational step.
Success: Providing workshops throughout the community to
educate tenants with the intent to prevent housing issues and
provide them with access to information before it is needed.
Challenge: Limited nature of our services. Triage-crisis model
does not allow for follow up and long term case management
for clients with high needs.
Success: Connecting clients with case management and other
long term services in the community.
Obstacles and Achievements
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Challenge: Language barriers for non-English speakers accessing the hotline.
Success: Tenant Services Spanish Hotline created and contracting with
interpretation services to provide information to tenants in their home language.
Success: Intentional partnerships with agencies serving immigrant/refugees and
other vulnerable populations.
Challenge: Difficulties in building strong and reliable partnerships with other
agencies that may not have the same organizational structure and understanding
of how distinct collaborations reduce work loads and increase efficiencies.
Success: Providing workshops to fit specific client needs and building
partnerships to include satellite offices to bring services to clients;
Challenge: Perceived notion by the provider community that collaboration equal
‘advertising’ services that results in more clients.
Success: Development of website content. Offering provider workshops and
continuing to address the importance of intentional collaboration not as outreach
and advertisement but as a developed form of partnership with other service
providers in the community to reach marginalized communities, share resources
and reduce work loads.
In 2010 Tenant Services served 1,712 tenants in eviction prevention and
housing rights through hotline and workshops.
In the last ten years the number of clients served has reached nearly
20,000 statewide.
King County Housing
Stability Project
Background
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The King County Housing Stability Project has
been a program of Solid Ground serving King
County residents since 1994.
Anti-Racism Initiative (ARI) Guiding
Principles of KCHSP highlights using strategic
outreach to seek out communities with a high risk
of housing loss, limited access to community
resources and multiple barriers to housing. We
also utilize our client surveys to not only gather
outcome information, but to ensure that clients
are receiving culturally relevant and respectful
services.
King County Housing Stability
Project
website: www.solid-ground.org/Programs/Housing/Stability
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HSP began as a ‘drive-thru’ one time rental
assistance program.
In early 2000’s client needs increased with a
higher number of risk factors and a greater need
for additional case management.
Partnerships with the Housing Justice Project and
the Legal Action Center were developed to help
clients that were farther along in the eviction
process.
Access to program is through Community
Information Line (211) and community partners.
Intentional Partnerships
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Subcontracting Partnerships
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6 agencies serving the North and East King County.
5 agencies serving South King County.
4 agencies serving the Seattle area.
4 agencies throughout King County take direct referrals
from Veterans Affairs and the King County Veterans
Program.
Intentional Outreach
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Outreach is no longer just getting program information out
to the community at large, it is intentional partnerships and
reaching under-served communities.
Develop relationships with agencies specializing in specific
populations, such as Veterans, where clients and case
managers already have developed trust.
Obstacles and Achievements
Veterans Groups
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Challenge: Difficult to develop relationships with
community groups when we are not members of that
community.
Success: There is a pre-existing trust between
Veterans and the agencies that have many Veterans on
staff.
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Challenge: Difficult to sync systems without a binding
contract or work agreement.
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Success: Veterans groups such as the VA and KCVP
can offer wrap-around services for clients.
Clients
658
Veterans Groups
Referrals
66 (10%)
211
Referrals
447 (68%)
Partnerships and
Internal Referrals
145 (22%)
Clients are referred
to one of four
agencies that
take direct Veteran
referrals.
Clients are referred, based on
location, to one of our 15 partner
sites.
Partner sites take walk-in clients
and programs at Solid Ground
can refer clients, mainly Veterans,
to HSP staff.
King County Housing
Stabilization
Services
King County Housing Stabilization Services
website: www.solid-ground.org/Programs/Housing/Stabilization-KC
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Implemented at the beginning of 2010 as part of the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009.
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Provides homelessness prevention services as part of HUD’s Homelessness
Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP).
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Assistance to families and individuals living in King County, outside of Seattle,
who are at risk of becoming homeless to stabilize their housing through the
provision of stabilization services.
Access to program is through Community Information Line (211) and
intentional community partnerships.
In 2010, the Program served 120 households at imminent risk of losing their
housing. This program filled a gap in our community by offering a prevention
program that could work with people for 3-6 months rather than just one-time
rental assistance.
From July-December of 2010, over 3000 eligible households were turned away
from the program because of limited program resources. In the same time
period, more than 7000 households were seeking assistance.
Intentional Partnerships
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Subcontracting Partnerships
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Two major partnerships with agencies serving the
North, East and South ends of King County.
Provide the case management and supportive
services in accordance with subcontracting
agreement.
Referring Partnerships
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Targeting agencies who serve marginalized
populations including immigrants, refugees, limitedEnglish speakers, persons with mental and/or
physical disabilities and households in precarious
housing situations.
Particularly serving populations who have barriers to
the primary access point of 211.
Obstacles and Achievements
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Challenge: Using the 211 system for the primary access point to the
program creates barriers for clients who have disabilities, are non-english
speaking and whose housing situation changes on a daily basis.
Success: Created intentional referral partnerships with agencies in the
community who work directly with people experiencing these barriers to 211.
Challenge: The large number of calls to 211 for housing-related needs
created challenges for the staff and the phone system as well as frustration
for the callers seeking assistance.
Success: Changes were made to the phone system providing some relief to
help clear the phone lines for those seeking non-housing related resources
and referrals. This change also made the process easier for clients by
providing direct referrals at the time of the first call rather than asking the
client to call back and compete with hundreds of other callers at the same
time.
Challenge: The level of need in the community is much greater than what
the program can support. This brings up the question of whether we even
need “outreach” to notify more clients of the program.
Success: The outreach is designed not to increase the number of clients
seeking assistance but rather to identify and target clients most in need at
the same time as reducing the barriers to access the program to ensure
equal opportunity to all those in need of services.
Obstacles and Achievements
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Challenge: “Prevention” has historically meant some type of one-time
financial assistance and we were transitioning to a program with an
emphasis on case management support.
Success: Messaging became very important at all levels of the
program. Program staff worked closely with 211 to implement
messaging tools to help emphasize the housing stabilization services
rather than financial assistance. This also helped clients access
programming that fit their needs most appropriately.
Challenge: Multiple agencies providing services for one program
became a challenge because of the differences in agency culture and
philosophies on case management best practices.
Success: Solid Ground Program staff created case management
standards and provided regular training and support to improve the
housing stabilization services and ensure that services were consistent
from one agency to the next.
Success: Solid Ground began to provide case management in-house to
fully participate in the provision of services and promote consistent case
management standards.
Seattle Housing
Stabilization
Services
Seattle Housing Stabilization Services
website: http://www.solid-ground.org/Programs/Housing/Stabilization-Sea
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Established in early 2010 as a part of American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009.
Provides homelessness prevention services in City of Seattle as part of
HUD’s Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program
(HPRP).
Assistance to families and individuals with low income who are at risk
of becoming homeless to stabilize their housing through housing
stabilization services.
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Access to program is through Community Information Line (CIL/211)
and intentional community partners.
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Early 2010 partnerships were derived from previous partnerships
established by Tenant Services for their rental assistance program.
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In 2010 the program served 64 households at imminent risk of
housing loss.
Partnerships in 2010
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Approx 65% referrals through
partnering agency and 35% through
2-1-1.
Target
Population
Agencies
People with low
income and
multiple barriers
CPC, Housing
Justice Project,
Seattle Jobs
Initiative, Access
to Success, CAMP,
FareStart
Targeting outreach to those who
have limited access to services
through 2-1-1 because of the
impacts of oppression and other
barriers to housing stability.
Tenants in
substandard or
doubled up housing
Seattle Public
School,
Neighborcare
health, Childhaven
People with
Disabilities
Alliance of people
with disabilities
Investing in one-on-one relationship
building with partnering agencies.
LGBTQ renters
Northwest Network
Survivors of
domestic violence
Chaya, Northwest
Network
Public Housing and
Section 8
CHHIP, PHG
New model for intentional
partnerships based on increased
capacity of the program to provide
case management services .
“Called 2-1-1, directed to Solid Ground, they were
full. Later, faced with eviction, connected to Solid
Ground through the Housing Justice Program.”
Seattle HSS Client
Statistics
Of the 64 Families and
Individuals served in 2010:
73% of Immigrant and Refugee
households were referred from
partnering agencies. All East
African households and limited
English speaking households
came through partnering
agencies.
90% of referrals for households
living with family or friends
were made by partnering
agencies.
Of the 5 households at final
stages of eviction 4 were
referred through partnering
agencies and 1 through CIL
Barriers to
access 2-1-1
•Language
Barriers
•Limited
capacity to
assess
changing
household
situation
IMMIGRANTS &
REFUGEES
27%
CIL
Parter Agencies
73%
DOUBLEDUP
10%
CIL
Partner Agencies
90%
Eviction
20%
•Limited
capacity to
assess
imminent risk of
housing loss
CIL
Partner
Agencies
80%
“Challenge
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Obstacles and Achievements
will help you grow-you can’t fear anymore. We’re living today to get to tomorrow, because it’s
only going to get better and better.”
Seattle HSS Client
Challenge: Multiple barriers to access the program for marginalized
households using CIL.
Success: Being able to reach communities that may not have had access to
the program through 2-1-1.
Challenge: Navigating community agency structures to explore partnerships
for example no response from some community agencies that were approached
to explore partnership, information about the program not percolating to all
partnering agencies staff members etc.
Success: Building strong partnerships to enhance coordination of services and
specialized knowledge sharing to provide more holistic services for clients.
Navigating cultural differences and organizing multiple meetings to percolate
information to direct service staff.
Challenge: Identifying agencies and systems that people at risk of losing their
housing with multiple barriers maybe accessing.
Success: Creation of evaluation standards and tools to evaluate agencies
partnerships through an anti-oppression lens to reach marginalized
communities.
Partnerships in 2011
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Continued efforts to increase
outreach to marginalized
communities for example
immigrants and refugees.
Growth in case management
capacity by providing bilingual
case management and further
opportunities to case
conference.
Persistent efforts to gather
feedback from Advisory Council,
former clients and partnering
agencies to continue to
strengthen partnerships.
Target
Population
Agencies
People with low
income and multiple
barriers
CPC, HJP, FareStart,
Harborview, CAMP,
Career Connections,
Seattle Jobs
Initiative, Access to
Success
Tenants in
substandard or
doubled up housing
Seattle Public School,
Neighborcare health
People with
Disabilities
Alliance of people
with disabilities
LGBTQ renters
Northwest Network
Survivors of domestic
violence
Chaya, Northwest
Network
Immigrants and
Refugees
Horn of Africa,
Muslim Housing
Services
For more information please
contact:
Solid Ground
Homeless Prevention Programs
1501 N 45th St
Seattle WA 98103
206-694-6700
www.solid-ground.org