GH CAN Leadership 10/5/16

GH CAN Leadership Meeting 10/5/16

In Attendance:

1. Welcome and Introductions
2. Zero: 2016 Updates
1. We discussed the number of households who we believe will be verified chronic at some point in the coming y ear, and what next steps we need to take.  
2. One success was that the first household had been housed with the Moving On program, which in turn would open up a PSH unit for a chronically homeless household.
3. One issue identified with the Moving On process was that some programs had been paying landlords the absolute maximum allowable amount, which was in some cases higher than the amount that the Section 8 voucher could cover, meaning that for some folks who were considering Moving On, they would need to relocate to a new apartment in order to utilize their Section 8 voucher.
1. One suggestion to combat this was Crane asked that all leadership from housing agencies go back to their teams and explain the potential negative consequences of paying out the maximum amount.  In addition to the challenges we are seeing with the Moving On process, paying the maximum amount doesn't allow for programs to increase their payment amount each year for the landlord.  
3. Cold Weather Protocol Update - Nate Fox
1. A potential location for the No-Freeze shelter was identified at Holy Trinity Catholic Church on Capitol Ave, which was a great accomplishment.  
2. The city was prepared to release funds for the No-Freeze project soon.
3. Pop-up warming centers had begun to be identified at churches in the Hartford area, to open up when the Governor activates Severe Cold Weather.  
4. Center Church is planning to serve as a fiduciary for the funds for Cold Weather/No-Freeze. 
4. Staffing for CAN Assessments: Mercy Diversion Center 
1. Department of Housing has been meeting with staff from different agencies in the CAN, and we are hoping to have some full-day dedicated diversion staff, to allow our area to have a dedicated team who can case conference and really troubleshoot challenging cases more effectively.  We are hoping to begin this new schedule in the new year, with staff from Mercy, My Sisters' Place, Hands On Hartford, CHR, and Salvation Army Marshall House.
2. Coordinated Entry Dashboard from CCEH
5. Updates with Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Preference
1. Matt shared updates about how many households had been identified for Moving On through the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program.  We identified that though some of the openings were for families, we had a lot of programs that served individuals who were in the process of having households Move On into Section 8 vouchers.  
2. We discussed the need to rapidly be able to match chronically homeless individuals to openings generated by Moving On, but the challenge is that we just didn't have enough folks document-ready for housing openings to match quickly.  
3. We decided to form a small committee to brainstorm solutions to more rapidly getting folks document ready.  Tina Ortiz, Crane Cesario, Theresa Nicholson, Steve MacHattie, and Mollie Greenwood offered to discuss this prior to next week's housing matching meeting.
6. Subcommittee Reports
1. Coordinated Exit: Individuals - Tenesha Grant
2. Coordinated Exit: Families - Lisa Quach
3. Outreach - Janet Bermudez
1. The Outreach Card was distributed to and approved by the Leadership Committee.
7. Announcements:
1. There is currently $15,069.66 available in the Be Homeful fund.  $156 is still available for the general fund, and $14,913.29 is available for utility-related expenses.
2. There will be a Security Deposit Guarantee Training tomorrow, 10/6 from 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM at CRT’s Lumsden Center, 555 Windsor St., Hartford.
3. Journey Home didn’t receive many edits to the HIC chart we shared last time.  If your program names were inaccurate or other information needed to be modified, please contact mollie.greenwood@journeyhomect.org