6.7 thomas barnett
TRANSCRIPT
Advanced Rapid Re-Housing StrategiesAdvanced Rapid Re-Housing Strategies
National Conference on Ending Homelessness
July 15, 2011
Tom Barnett, Program Manager
Fairfax County Office to Prevent and End Homelessness
formerly the
Coordinator of the Fairfax Falls-Church Housing Locator Network
at Good Shepherd Housing and Family Services
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• Demographics
– Over 1M people
– Area Median Income (AMI) for a family of 4 = $103,000 per year
– Over 50k people living in poverty and 1,549 homeless
CONTEXTCONTEXT
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High Rent:
Avg. 1 BR = $1,216
4 BR = $1,783
CHALLENGESCHALLENGES
Low Vacancy:
Avg. 1 BR = 7.1%
4 BR = 0.6%
We were new to rapid re-housing
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Major increase in collaboration and partnership via the creation of a Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness
Political commitment to end homelessness and to create 2,650 new affordable housing opportunities
Arrival of the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program
(HPRP)
STRENGTHSSTRENGTHS
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- Direct financial assistance for prevention and rapid re-housing activities
- Community Case
Management
- Housing Locator Coordination and Support
HPRP AS JUMPSTARTHPRP AS JUMPSTART
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Assessed staff time dedicated to housing search and placement services in FTEs (full-time equivalent)
Created memoranda of understanding MoU between the various organizations providing these services
Saw very little time actually
being dedicated to housing
search and placement
activities
THINKING SYSTEMATICALLYTHINKING SYSTEMATICALLY
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STRATEGYSTRATEGY
Draft 2011-04
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Created webpage
and online forum
Hosted monthly
roundtable
and a
12-week training
BUILDING A COMMUNITYBUILDING A COMMUNITY
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“I wanted to take a minute to thank everyone for their participation on this list serve. I think that this is one of the best, if not THE best, collaborative settings that we have in homeless services. I consistently get several quick and very helpful responses to requests that I post, and this makes my job so much easier in securing housing for families in need.
Thank you all for being so dedicated to the work!”
A COMMUNITY THAT WORKSA COMMUNITY THAT WORKS
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Solve problems for natural partners, such as…
HOUSING AUTHORITIES / COMMUNITY SERVICES BOARD / TRANSITIONAL HOUSING / PROPERTY OWNERS & MANAGEMENT / FAITH COMMUNITIES
Allow nonprofits to have influence & push innovation
Make the job easier for staff, System as Platform
FINDING GAPS, FINDING GAPS, OPPORTUNITIESOPPORTUNITIES
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• Community requires constant nurturing
• How do we direct more housing location to the front-end of the system, i.e. do more homeless diversion?
• The work is hard, resources scarce
• It is difficult to clearly link capacity building efforts to outcomes. A 14% reduction in the number of homeless people is attributed to many efforts.
STILL WORKING ON ITSTILL WORKING ON IT