Transcript Building Housing First into Your Community’s Homeless System

Building Housing First into Your
Community’s Homeless System
The Lancaster County Pennsylvania
Experience
Kay Moshier McDivitt
Director of Housing Counseling
Tabor Community Services, Inc.
308 East King Street, PO Box 1676
Lancaster, PA 17608-1676
[email protected]
717-397-5182, ext 120
Our Community
• County of 450,000
• City of Lancaster: 60,000 person situated
in the middle of Lancaster County
• Very diversified population (from very rural
Mennonite/Amish communities to a large
concentration of Latino’s in the city)
• Neither the city nor county government
has taken ownership of homelessness,
shelters or ending homelessness
Getting Started in Lancaster
County
• Lancaster Interagency Council on
Homelessness: Network of Service Providers
and City/County Representatives
– Not formally connected to city or county government
– No paid staff/funding
• United Way of Lancaster County
– Affordable Housing and Homelessness were key
initiatives
• Partnership
– ICH approached the UW to take leadership in the 10
year plan to end homelessness
Initial Results
• Conducted a local study on issues
– Participants included representatives from the
private and public sector: engage the
decision makers early on
• Issued the “Impact Report” with 5
recommendations
• United Way hired a staff person to oversee
the development of the 10 year plan
5 Initial Recommendations for the
10 Year Plan
1.
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4.
5.
Develop a permanent housing strategy that would
create an adequate supply of affordable rental housing
Develop a homeless prevention strategy that would
increase the range of available homeless prevention
programs.
Develop a housing first strategy that would
work to shorten the time that people spend
homeless
Develop a transitional and permanent supportive
housing strategy that clearly defines appropriate types
of housing
Develop a homeless employment strategy that would
increase the employment potential and opportunities
for homeless individuals.
Elements to be included when
developing the Plan
• Expand and implement the existing
Housing First programs to rapidly re-house
homeless persons and to target all current
shelter providers. This plan should
encourage shelters to include permanent
housing in every case management plan.
• Develop common key outcomes and
indicators for all shelter providers to track
for success measurement of rapid rehousing
Adopting a Community Wide
Housing First Approach: Our
Experience
• Build a system that can support the
housing first approach
• Engage the Players
• Sell it to the Community at Large
• Develop Common Outcomes and
Indicators to Measure Success
Building the System
• Diversity of Affordable Housing Options
– Shelter Plus Care, Supportive Permanent Housing,
Homeless Section 8 Preference
– Housing units must be incorporated into the overall
housing plan for the community
– Proactive/Creative housing solutions
• Faith Based Community: Homes of Hope
• Transitional Units into permanent units
• Housing First Programs
– Connections to Landlords
– Necessary follow-up Support
Engaging the Players
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Shelter Providers and Staff
Social Service Providers
Policy/Decision Makers
Funders
Community at Large
Engaging the Players
• Engage the key decision makers in the
shelter system
– First Step: homeless shelter and service
providers began to meet to look at how to
share resources/information
– Next Step: we utilized these providers to
determine who should be in planning group
– Step Three: Buy in came when shelter
providers themselves set the measurements
for housing first
Sell it to the Community at Large
• Sheltering the homeless is readily accepted by
the community at large (NIMBY)
• Community needs to accept the shift of housing
homeless persons throughout the community
• Developing and presenting a good PR
presentation
– Church/Faith Based Community
– Service Clubs
– Real Estate/Landlord Organizations
Develop Common Outcomes
• Shelter representatives took on the task of
setting common outcomes to measure
success of moving to permanent housing
• Gathered baseline data from each shelter
and used that as a starting point
• Presented to and approved by the ICH
• Helps funders and others measure
programs on an equal playing field
Issues to consider
• Affordable housing is key: we waited for developers to
come up with ideas, but that doesn’t work
• While we did a lot of work on outcomes, each shelter
was measuring what they saw as important, no way to
see what programs work best to end homelessness
• HMIS may work to measure success of housing first, but
our system has become so cumbersome, the providers
no longer support it.
• Everyone wants a “piece of the pie” so suddenly
everyone is saying they are doing housing first
program…be clear what you define as successful
housing first
• Funding: no magic dollars out there. Housing First is
cost effective compared to shelter costs, but the shift of
funds may take a while
Final Thoughts
• Permanent housing must be seen as
the solution to ending homelessness
from day one
• Everyone deserves a home
• The longer we survive in shelter
environment, the harder it is to leave
the cycle of homelessness
• Each community is unique: make a
program fit your community
• Use what others have done, less work
and more time to deal with the real
issues