GH CAN Leadership / GH Sub-COC Meeting 10/16/17

Below are the notes for the GH CAN Leadership Meeting, Sub-COC notes will be added as they are received.

1.      Welcome and Introductions

a.      Mollie Greenwood, Journey Home

b.      Matt Morgan, Journey Home

c.      Sarah DiMaio, Salvation Army Marshall House

d.      Stephanie Corbin, Mercy

e.      Lisa Quach, Journey Home

f.       Sonia Brown, CRT

g.      Crane Cesario, DMHAS

h.      Justine Couvares, Chrysalis

i.       Louis Gilbert, ImmaCare

j.       Andrea Hakian, CHR Manchester

k.      John Lawlor, The Connection

l.       Lauren Fair, Salvation Army

m.    Kyren McCrorey, The Open Hearth

n.      Tina Ortiz, CRT

o.      Cat Damato, CRT

p.      Diane Paige-Blondette, My Sisters’ Place

q.      Amy Robinson, VA

r.       Marilyn Rosetti, The Open Hearth

s.      Kathy Shaw, My Sisters’ Place

t.       Barbara Shaw, Hands on Hartford

u.      Cathy Zeiner, YWCA

v.      Ymonne Wilson, CRT

2.      COC and ESG Integration – Sarah DiMaio

a.      Meeting in New Haven about New HUD CPD-17 rule, has to abide by January 23, 2018.

                                                    i.     ESG programs are now receiving guidance to update policies to mirror and integrate with COC policies on Coordinated Entry. When ESG grants are offered to sub recipients, the recipients can no longer restrict who they serve based on municipalities so that we truly don’t have a wrong door in our CAN systems. For many ESG recipients, this means they have to expand their current service area.

                                                   ii.     HUD has contracted with someone named Alice for 16 hours of assistance and will set up calls for ESG and COC recipients. All policy reviews are to be submitted to Alice.

                                                  iii.     The ESG group would like to meet every two weeks in New Haven. No date has been set yet. It is more for ESG recipients to get on board with everything that the COC is doing.

                                                  iv.     Opening Doors Fairfield County is already utilizing ESG funding to cover their entire region from Bridgeport so the ESG group has asked them to submit their policies as a template. It will really be on Lionel to coordinate with BOS for Greater Hartford’s local municipal ESG funding.

3.      Local Housing Priorities – Mollie Greenwood and Crane Cesario

a.      The Reaching Home committees have started talking about implementing DynamicPrioritization (Dy-Pri) statewide, which raises a lot of questions. How do we bridge folks out of RRH to PSH when necessary? How do we get to a place where we offer RRH as the housing intervention to most folks? Right now, in GH CAN, we only have a handful of chronic verified households in our community. Now is the time to look at local housing priorities in GH CAN. We are currently prioritizing people using all the guidance we got from DOH and HUD and serving folks in the community who are most vulnerable the best we can.

b.      PSH programs need to be able to manage their grants and make sure they’re operating in a way where they won’t get funds recaptured. What do our local priorities look like and how do we get them to work for us in all of our housing matching meetings? How do we move folks to PSH when we have openings to not harm grants? How do we manage that? Sometimes, a PSH program needs to take somebody right in to avoid harming their program’s performance measures.  A PSH program can take folks who are in RRH and need bridging or someone who is chronically homeless.

c.      The statewide Dy-Pri group is continuing to work and the next meeting is Monday in New Haven. Iain De Jong was talking about automatic matching and not having case conferences in his recent training. One reason we aren’t currently implementing more automaticity is that we can’t have automaticity if we don’t trust our data. It still would be unfair because it goes back to who is our most effective staff. We need to have some local policies set to decide who is in first among this group? Some factors can be VI-SPDAT score or length of homeless history.

d.      GH CAN Leadership suggested a small group convene to set a standard of prioritization. We also need DOH to change rapid rehousing measures since they are constrained to different rules. There’s a handful of people who can work on it and then bring it back to the group. It is better to work with something than nothing. Sonia, Crane, Amy, Mollie, Lisa, Andrea will be in the small group.

4.      Puerto Rican Crisis: FEMA Updates – Matt Morgan

a.      In Hartford, Capital Region Education Council has convened a group of about 100 stakeholders. Agencies and school systems have been involved as well as funders such as United way, Red Cross, Salvation Army Disaster Relief. The goal is to prepare for a lot of victims that may be coming to Hartford specifically because of so many families/friends that live here. This planning group expects a lot of people to be coming. The process for registration with FEMA went live a week ago. Within the first 2 days, 145 individuals registered with a new address in CT from Puerto Rico. Emergency disaster people expect 22,000 people to come through Bradley airport on Mondays and Fridays and many of those households won’t know where to go for assistance.

b.      We have already had people in the CAN who came from Puerto Rico. The family came in and had a place to go but no transportation to get there. Sarah and Lauren wondered if the right people are at the welcome center. All frontline staff who know how to navigate the system are already stretched thin so we are throwing in staff who are available but may not know the homeless services system into these support centers. The planning group would like to have a relief center at CREC as a triage location to get information and referrals in addition to 211. They will also have coats/supplies and other donations.

c.      What about folks who were doubled up and then will need housing after? In order to not burden the shelters or CAN system, all staff should direct them to register with FEMA first. They have a lot of programs based on eligibility. Hotels may be a reimbursement model and has to be a specific hotel that FEMA has approved. None are in Hartford, closest may be in Manchester. No transportation is available. Also, staff can refer to the Housing Resource Education Center if they get rental assistance from FEMA. If there are additional resources that are made available, then we would refer them to that. Salvation Army may be hiring an emergency disaster case manager. You can get 2 months of rental assistance if you were displaced in Texas but FEMA has not provided information about rental assistance for Puerto Rico.

d.      211 put up hotel money for a family of 6 and then called Marshall House for rapid rehousing. Sarah told them it didn’t work that way and referred them back to United Way. We need to know if they are hoteling people and how long have they been there? Does that change our priority because of their hotel stay? We need to figure out prioritization on shelter waitlists. There were concerns about beds for single women if there are higher needs for families to access beds as a result of this influx of folks. Camp Jewel has offered up their space for them to stay but it’s not local. Camp Jewel did mention they will also provide transportation.

e.      How do we know who has access to FEMA money and who Mercy needs to provide money to? Emergency disaster staff had access to FEMA funds and what funds have been dispersed in past crises and we expect the same process this time around. The FEMA system tells households their eligibility and will show whether they have accessed it or not. 211 is referring to FEMA. Stephanie reported that clients have been using the hurricane as an excuse to receive services. It can be hard to prove your address was in the hurricane area when you lost documents. Education liaisons have been instructed to take in students right away. The intended audience for the rough draft sheet was for CREC staff. Journey Home will send it out to CAN staff once it has been finalized.  Crane also suggested adding a title and effective date.

5.      GH CAN Housing Data – see p. 2

6.      Future Agenda Items

7.      Announcements

a.      There will be a Service Summit (on volunteer involvement and creating meaningful service projects) that HOH and Prudential are sponsoring on Wednesday 11/8 from 8:30 am – 1:30 pm at the Lyceum.

b.      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

c.      CT Department of Housing has an RFP out for HOPWA funding for the following locations: Litchfield County, Middlesex County, New London County, and Tolland County.  The RFP is available in electronic format on the State Contracting Portal at http://www.biznet.ct.gov/SCP_Search/Default.aspx?AccLast=2 or from the Department’s Official Contact, Steve DiLella.