Progress on five key strategies of the Ten-Year Plan
1. Prevent homelessness.
Close the door to homelessness – provide rent, utility assistance and other services to prevent homelessness. Work with other major systems to ensure people are not discharged into homelessness from jails, mental health programs and foster care.
Prevention Response: Provide financial and service supports to keep people housed.
Funding toward eviction prevention has been quadrupled in the last year, including $1.475 million in new funding from the Veterans and Human Service Levy. This will allow more than 1,000 King County households to eviction prevention assistance dollars (as compared to 200 +/- in 2007.)
A prevention task force has spent the past year researching national best practices, identifying risk factors among households who become homeless, and evaluating local responses to prevention needs. Using this information, they’ve developed a prevention strategic plan to fill the gaps, create more systemic linkages between prevention supports. We await word on a $2.5 million grant for a homelessness prevention pilot project. The pilot project that will reduce the number of people who experience homelessness by proactively identifying households experiencing “trigger situations” that are often precursors to homelessness and connecting these households to the community, the mainstream system and local service providers to address these situations.
Discharge Planning: Work with mainstream systems to help them understand (and take responsibility for) their role in creating and responding to homelessness.
Multiple discharge projects are in place coordinating services and efforts between local hospitals, the jails, sobering centers and housing and service providers. Programs are demonstrating high success, with hundreds of people stably housed: 1811 Eastlake (75 enrolled); Begin at Home (20 enrolled), PACT/SHIFTS (200 to be enrolled). Harborview and local housing and service providers are expanding respite bed coverage for people who are well enough to be discharged from the hospital, but who still need a safe and clean environment in which they can fully recuperate.
Youth exiting foster care are benefiting from recent legislation that allows them to retain foster care benefits after age 18 if they enroll in higher education or vocational training programs. These extended benefits provides them with the both the incentive and support needed to pursue higher education and gain employment and self-sufficiency skills. (17 youth from King County are currently benefiting from the program). Additional legislation was approved in 2007 that provides rental subsidies and other services to youth exiting foster care.
Employment / Graduation Response: Increase people’s access to employment and foster an understanding that people who are homeless can, and want to, work. Increase access to other sustainable supports to increase people’s long-term self sufficiency.
Forum held November 1, 2007, attended by over 100 housing and services providers and employment and training providers to increase linkages and coordination between the two systems. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has assumed local leadership in strategic planning efforts to increase access to education and training, and enhance workforce connections, among low-income wage earners.
2. Move people rapidly from homelessness to housing.
Open the door to Housing – move people quickly into permanent housing and stabilize their lives through integrated supportive services.
The Ten Year Plan contemplates the creation of 9,500 units, approximately evenly split between new construction and acquisition/master leasing of existing housing stock. This requires an average of 950 units per year. Current productions rates are constructing/acquiring housing at a rate of approximately 500 units per year, with 1,449 units online, and 1,411 in the pipeline, for a total of 2,860 units to date. While this rate is double the pre-Plan pace, and equal to the housing goals of most Ten Year Plans across the country, it is still less than that needed to reach our region’s goals of 9,500 units. To achieve our housing goals, we need to increase production by about 450 per year. The following chart is taken from A Roof Over Every Bed in King County: Our Community’s Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness.
Get: Data on this effort. (DOC)
Housing First Models / Rapid Re-Housing: Restructure housing systems to move people quickly into housing and stabilize their lives through supportive services.
Evaluation reports recently issued on 1811 Eastlake, Begin at Home and the South King County Pilot Project (see updates on last page.) Projects demonstrating solid success and millions in cost avoidance among high utilizers of expensive systems such as the jails, hospitals, sobering centers.
The Landlord Liaison Project will begin outreach to Landlords in the summer of 2008. This project will help landlords and service providers work together so landlords can relax some of their eligibility criteria in return for assurances by service providers that they will provide case management to residents to help them be successful tenants, and provide other incentives and protections for landlords such as security / move-in deposits, etc.
3. Increase the efficiency of the existing system.
Restructure the system to be more efficient - coordinate services; streamline rules and regulations; identify cost savings and cost avoidance opportunities; make the best use of scarce resources.
Coordinated Entry: Link people to appropriate services for which they are eligible with a minimum of delay between referral and receipt of services.
The CEH coordinated entry effort has been on hold pending resolution of what was understood to be similar efforts by Washington State Community Trade and Economic Development and the Veterans and Human Services Levy so as not to duplicate work and expenses. At this point, it appears that the levy project will serve a narrower constituency than originally anticipated (focuses on high utilizers) or is a different product (CTED’s Access to Services Guide is a document that lists all the various mainstream state services such as DSHS offices, WorkSource, Headstart, and their contact information, but doesn’t provide real-time information on availability.) CEH may need to re-emerge as a leader on this effort.
Best Practices Replication: Research and understand best practice strategies for ending homelessness, and promote local awareness and implementation across the continuum.
CEH and its partners regularly use emerging research to inform policies and direction. Examples of new projects modeled after proven practices that are enrolling clients and showing success are the South King Count Pilot Project (50 enrollees), the PACT/FACT/SHIFTS project for high utilizers (will ultimately have 200 enrollees), 1811 Eastlake and Begin at Home (95 enrollees, showing cost avoidance of approximately $4 million annually), Sound Families supportive service projects, Landlord Liaison Project, the Housing Funders Group, and many, many more.
Sub-Regional Plans: Develop and support specific strategies responsive to local and regional needs and influences.
Both East King County and South King County have drafted strategic plans for ending homelessness in their regions. Both plans highlight the importance of building the political will within their region. Each also has a strong emphasis on prevention and working with local elected officials and property owners to increase the availability of housing. Both plans also call for increasing the availability of interim housing, recognizing the limited availability of housing supports in their region, and seek funding and staffing support for the implementation of their plans.
Case Management Standards: Increase the capacity of local providers to provide high quality services that support people’s ability to obtain and maintain permanent housing.
Case Management Standards workgroup has identified 12 core competencies in which case managers need to be skilled and knowledgeable if they are to be effective in helping people obtain and maintain housing. They will begin working more closely with local educators to support the inclusion of these standards in local certificate and degree training programs, as well as the creation of a low cost / accessible brown bag training series to share knowledge and local best practices as it relates to these core competencies.
Graduation Response: Create a dynamic system that supports people in increasing their self sufficiency and reduces reliance on deep housing subsidies in order to make room for households who are newly becoming homeless.
Projects under the Ten-Year Plan have helped over 150 long-term residents of permanent supportive housing programs graduate to lower-service affordable housing, freeing up those beds for new residents needing intensive services, through projects largely funded by the State of Washington. Currently, the CEH is working on strategies to create shallow subsidies that could help households in public housing or other subsidized units who are close to being able to afford rent on their own transition to market rate housing, thereby freeing up that unit for a household coming from the homeless system. A concurrent employment initiative is also exploring themes of helping people become more self-sufficient.
4. Build the public and political will to end homelessness.
Educate the community on issues of homelessness and proven strategies to end it in order to generate and maintain momentum and funding.
Generate & Align Resources: Generate the resources needed to secure 9,500 units of housing and provide the necessary services, and ensure that funds are distributed through an efficient, equitable process and prioritized towards “best use.”
The Housing Funders Group, a collaborative effort of local public and private funders, continues to coordinate funds through a comprehensive Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) – a streamlined application and funding process which has been recognized as a best practice by the National Alliance to End Homelessness and Corporation for Supportive Housing. In 2007, funders coordinated $31 million through this process, with more than $15 million for homeless housing.
Education & Advocacy: Engage the public in the 10YP to build a commitment to end homelessness. Partner with local officials and policy makers to implement the Ten-Year Plan, including necessary policy changes and resource allocations.
Education
- Speakers Bureau presentations to congregations, service organizations, community councils, etc.
- Five minute video on the 10YP produced in October, 2007 and used in conjunction with the Speakers Bureau.
- Local media ran eleven articles/Op Eds on housing and homelessness during Housing and Hunger Week (November, 2007)
- 10YP endorsed by 16 cities in King County (represents 84% of the county population.)
- Annual Report distributed each summer, coinciding with the anniversary of the adoption of the 10YP to End Homelessness. Our third annual report is due June 2008.
Advocacy
- Passage of two separate document recording fees that generate approximately $7 million annually for our local 10YP;
- Increases in the Housing Trust Fund in 2006, 2007 and projected in 2008;
- Increases in Washington Families Fund and Transitional Housing, Operating and Rental Assistance (THOR)
- Extended supports for youth aging out of foster care; and
- Funding and protocol for prisoner re-entry planning with housing supports.
Race & Social Justice Initiative: Understand the disproportionate impact of homelessness on people of color, and reduce this impact where and how it intersects with the Ten-Year Plan.
Several studies have been funded and/or evaluated to better understand the intersection of race and homelessness (The Color of Homelessness, Dellums Report). CEH works to ensure that each and every initiative under the 10YP actively examines issues of disproportionately as it intersects with that particular initiative, and proactively incorporate strategies to reduce disproportionality within its set of recommendations or action steps. CEH is currently planning for partnerships between housing providers and culturally-focused support service providers. Other recent examples of strategic responses to disproportionality within the Ten-Year Plan include the Landlord Liaison project, intended to reduce barriers to housing among those with criminal history and poor credit, with recognition that people of color often face these added barriers. The Prevention response is intended to close the front door on homelessness, recognizing that a disproportionate number of those who do become homeless are people of color.
5. Measure and Report Outcomes.
Track investments, measure results and provide regular reports on achievements.
Programs are showing incredible success, and we continue to evaluate and learn from these models
Through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Sound Families programs 1,487 families (4,455 individuals) were served and as of June 2007:
- 64% of the families had been homeless before, some four or more times
- Among those successfully completing the transitional stay within their program, 89% were able to secure permanent housing after exit.
- Full time employment tripled from entry to exit.
- After analyzing the data from Sound Families on families who were not successful, we have created new programs to address those families.
DESC’s 1811 Eastlake took 75 of the very hardest to serve, people who on average had been homeless 31of the 36 months prior to moving in.
- Only 16 (21%) of those returned to the streets
- Overall the project showed cost avoidance from reduced medical, jail and other emergency services, of over $2.5 million a year.
- The Metropolitan Improvement District reported a 48% decrease in alcohol related incidents and a 21% decrease in calls for the County sobering van.
Plymouth Housing’s Begin at Home program also addressed high utilizers, in that case 20 people with at least $10,000 annual cost at Harborview or at least 60 visits to the Sobering Center.
- Only one person was evicted in a year
- The program reported acute care service cost avoidance of approximately $1.5 million in the first year
.These are just examples of the uses to which we have put the 1,489 units we have brought on line or the 1,291 units we have in the pipeline, similar successes are shown in the other programs. Results from these programs and their evaluation reports continues to guide planning for new programs coming online under the Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness.
Additional Data Sources include: Safe Harbors (which recently released its first every comprehensive report of data, with analysis of data from the first six months of 2007. They are currently in the process of pulling data from July – December 2007.) The One Night Count Point-in-time Census, Sound Families Evaluations, Communities Count, local Census information and many other data sources.