GH CAN Leadership 7/26/17

Greater Hartford Coordinated Access Network

Leadership Agenda

Wednesday, July 26^th, 2017

1.      In Attendance

Mollie Greenwood – Journey Home

Kara Capobianco – Department of Housing

Dave Martineau – Mercy Housing and Shelter Corp

Matt Morgan – Journey Home

Kathy Shaw – My Sisters’ Place

Justine Couvares – The Chrysalis Center

Cathy Zeiner – YWCA

Fred Faulkner – The Open Hearth

Rosemary Flowers – My Sisters’ Place

Barbara Shaw – Hands On Hartford

Brian Baker – South Park Inn

Cat Damato – CRT

Crane Cesario – CRMHC, DMHAS

Tina Ortiz – CRT

Lou Gilbert – ImmaCare

John Lawlor – The Connection

Andrea Hakian – CHR

Lauren Fair – Salvation Army

Sarah DiMaio – Salvation Army Marshall House

2.      Rapid ReHousing Fund Exception Requests – Sonia Brown

a.      For any COC-funded RRH programs, Balance of State has put some guidelines in place for allowable amounts of rental assistance for all participants.  If a COC-funded RRH program wants to extend the length of time in which they provide a higher level of rental assistance, they must complete this exemption form to keep in the client file.

                                                    i.     Sonia Brown of CRT drafted a form to assist our CAN in keeping track of these exemptions.

                                                   ii.     Kara of Department of Housing told us that at this time there are 3 different kinds of exemption forms for RRH, one for VI-SPDAT score ranges, this form, and one for households who require more than 12 months of financial assistance.

b.      Rental Assistance Exception Request Form

                                                    i.     CT RRP does not have a form like this at this time, and has different standards for providing financial assistance. 

                                                   ii.     A couple of changes to the form were proposed.  The first change was to indicate that the sub recipient of COC funding, rather than the CAN committee, must re-evaluate participants every 90 days.  The second change was to indicate that the housing matching committee would be the committee to review and determine approvals for this process.  The third change was to eliminate repetitive language at the bottom of the form indicating that the households would be re-evaluated in 90 days. 

1.      With these changes in place, we adopted this form for our community.

2.      This form would be signed off on by the Coordinated Exit Coordinator, CAN Manager, or Sarah DiMaio, as a representative from the Leadership Committee at the RRH meetings.

3.      Potentially Chronically Homeless Households in GH CAN – Mollie Greenwood

a.      In our community we have been tracking data differently than in other parts of the state.  One thing we try to do to ensure that no long-term homeless individuals are falling through the cracks is we track households who are potentially chronic.  In order to be designated as potentially chronic, a household needs to have the chronic homeless history of either 12 continuous months of homelessness or 4 occasions of homelessness within the last 3 years that total to 12 months. 

                                                    i.     In our community, we still have about 30 individuals who appear to meet this homeless history criteria, but who are not yet matched to a housing resource because there is no homeless verification form and/or disabling condition verification form completed.

                                                   ii.     Each time someone is marked as “potentially chronic” on our By-Name List, Journey Home staff is reaching out to whatever case manager or navigator is currently engaging with this household to let them know what homeless history is available.

b.      CT BNL Weekly Status Report – Matt Morgan

                                                    i.     Matt shared the CT BNL Weekly Status Report that Beau of the Department of Housing prepares on a weekly basis.  In this chart you can see in the GH CAN, we have an average length of time of 289 days where households have an unverified chronic status. 

1.      Part of this is because folks are sometimes marked as potentially chronic for long periods of time with no updates regarding their chronic status.

2.      Crane reminded us that in other parts of the state, nobody is doing the data exploration that Journey Home is doing, so it’s not feasible for them to keep track of who may be chronically homeless.  There are capacity gaps to devote this much time and resources in most other parts of CT.  Although this 289 figure seems high, she pointed out that in other places since they don’t have capacity to do any of this tracking, folks just go immediately from being marked as “not chronic” to “chronic verified” without any period of time having been designated as “potentially chronic”

3.      Andrea from CHR said it was still concerning, though, if after someone’s 12^th month of homelessness it was still taking an average of 289 days to verify chronic status.  An average indicates that there are a large number of people taking a very long time to obtain this verification, not that there are one or two outliers.

4.      Sarah DiMaio mentioned that one way they try to proactively identify households who may meet the chronic criteria is by handing out a resident document checklist to all households who are staying in the shelter.  Households who are actively engaged with services for a disabling condition are encouraged to provide evidence of this disabling condition to the shelter case manager so that she can add it to their client file.  Sarah offered to share this checklist with CAN Leadership.

5.      Dave Martineau reminded us that at one point we had a handful of LCSWs identified in the GH CAN who could help with the completion of Disabling Condition verification forms. 

6.      Kara cautioned us to make sure we are really trying to hone in on not just which clients are able to get the form completed, but to also make sure that folks who are getting verified as chronically homeless are the ones who really need the most serious, ongoing supportive services. 

a.      Andrea expressed that when CHR is doing the disabling condition verification form, they aren’t just doing a quick sign-off, they are first doing a mental health status assessment.  Andrea offered to share that form with others in the CAN.

b.       

4.      Coordinated Entry Data – see handout

a.      Our rates of successful shelter diversion have increased for both individuals and families since the Diversion Center got the infusion of committed staff in January of last year. 

b.      Additionally, while we continue to have a few outstanding Data Quality cases, we now have about a dozen cases on our plate, the smallest amount we have ever had in GH CAN.

5.      GH CAN Housing Data – see p.2

6.      Announcements

a.      Hands On Hartford is working on planning the Day of Sharing and Caring and needs lots of help planning and pulling off the event.  The event is currently scheduled for 11/2 from 11:00AM – 2:00PM If you’re interested, please contact swalker@handsonhartford.org

b.      Salvation Army is offering an Anti Human Trafficking Training at Capitol Region Mental Health Center Tuesday, 9/26 from 1-4 PM

c.      Matt Morgan announced that he and Amanda Girardin of Journey Home recently met with Liz Issacs of Housing Innovations.  Following some recent housing program audits, Housing Innovations has advised that only programs that are included on the Housing Inventory Chart as emergency shelter be designated as emergency shelter for the purposes of verifying chronic homelessness.  In recent months, we in the GH CAN have been treating some short-term programs, like respite programs, as emergency shelter.  Housing Innovations guidance is that if they are not included in the HIC, they should either be added to the HIC (and must indicate a preference for serving homeless households) or they need to be treated as institutions.

                                                    i.     One concern that Crane raised is that our HIC is really intended only to list programs that are limited to serving folks experiencing homelessness.  Although folks who are homeless often utilize other settings, like respite, to have a safe place to stay, these programs don’t use HMIS and are not dedicated specifically to the homeless. 

                                                   ii.     Dave Martineau indicated that it will be important for us to look at the length of time folks are being served in these programs.  Longer term programs really aren’t similar to emergency shelters, they are more like transitional living programs. 

                                                  iii.     Kara updated us on some things going on with Department of Housing, shelter contract revisions have been written.  As Brenda Earle announced via email, she will be leaving the department soon for a new position. 

GH CAN Housing Data

Data Element	Number	Notes
Chronically homeless households housed in 2015	102	This includes clients housed through GH CAN programs as well as through other subsidies or independent housing
Chronically homeless households housed in 2016	211	This includes clients housed through GH CAN programs as well as through other subsidies or independent housing
Chronically homeless households housed in 2017	120	This includes clients housed through GH CAN programs as well as through other subsidies or independent housing
Total Chronically homeless households housed in GH CAN	433
Verified Chronic Matched	36
Verified Chronic Not Yet Matched	17	We currently have 17 chronic verified clients who have not yet been matched to housing.
Potentially Chronic Matched	5	These households did not disclose a disabling condition, and are matched to various programs.
Potentially Chronic Not Yet Matched	38	Right now we believe 38 households have the chronic length of homeless history, but none of these individuals have their homeless and disability verifications completed.