Monday, April 16, 2018

GH CAN Leadership Committee 1/3/18


Greater Hartford Coordinated Access Network
Leadership Committee Agenda
Wednesday, January 3rd, 2018



1.      In Attendance:
      Steve Bigler – CRT
      Kara Capobianco – Department of Housing
      Crane Cesario – DMHAS
      Stephanie Corbin – Mercy Housing
      Justine Couvares – Chrysalis Cente
       Sarah DiMaio – Salvation Army
      Fred Faulkner – The Open Hearth
      Rosemary Flowers – My Sisters’ Place
       Lou Gilbert – ImmaCare
       Andrea Hakian – CHR
      John Lawlor – The Connection
       Matt Morgan – Journey Home
    Lisa Quach – Journey Home
      Lionel Rigler – City of Hartford
      Kathy Shaw – My Sisters’ Place
      Barbara Shaw – Hands On Hartford
      Cathy Zeiner - YWCA
2.      Next GH CAN Leadership Meeting: Conflict with HIV/AIDS Provider Meeting – Mollie Greenwood

3.      Point In Time Count – Cat Damato, Crane Cesario

a.      Still looking for volunteers for the PIT count.  Training will be Tuesday date 10-12 and 1-3 time for all homeless programs (shelters and housing providers). 
b.      National Homeless Information report today- PIT Counts are really varied across geographic locations.  We got some guidance to make sure there are no unsheltered families and are working to keep families from being unsheltered.  There is a lot of pressure to ensure families stay sheltered. 
c.      Literally Homeless Families: Guidance from Department of Housing (handout) – Sarah DiMaio
                                                    i.     Sarah highlighted that we should call any families currently on the waitlist listed as unsheltered in advance of the Point In Time count.  We haven’t identified a process around this.  Stephanie thinks this is something the Diversion Center can be responsible for this in advance of the Point In Time Count.  Diversion will take on calling the 19 currently unsheltered families, and will work with Journey Home to develop some protocols for consistency around this. 
                                                   ii.     The triage center is generally not adding any other new folks to the list- the dramatic majority of folks they place back onto the waitlist are folks who don’t have phones.
4.      Cold Weather Updates- Willie Ware Rec Center will be open through January 8th 24 hours (through the end of the Cold Weather Protocol).  Any individual should be immediately directed to the Willie Ware Rec Center.  Any family should be directed to call Salvation Army Marshall House immediately.  Since 12/30 we’ve had 178 unique individuals come through the warming center.  The Warming Center HMIS just got set up.  It took all day to get intakes added to the system.  If anyone needs homeless verifications, they should reach out to Sarah DiMaio or Rikka Racelis.  In general people are staying a long time and there are a number of folks who are adamantly disinterested in shelter options.  The Warming Center space has also forced some self-resolutions.  In general the space has been full, and even over capacity, going over 60 people in the space.  Even for the first of the month, there were almost 50 people last night.  5-6 women have stayed there each night.  Individuals have begun transferring from Salvation Army’s overflow into the Warming Center to free up space for families in the overflow.  Every shelter should be full every single night.  Marshall House has added emergency cots to reduce hotel stays for individuals.  They’ve accommodated every person who has shelter. 
a.      Last week CT Transit had helped transport folks between the Willie Ware Rec Center and the soup kitchens/triage.  This was too much coordination, so the Rec Center will be open.
b.      Enfield Warming Center will be opening mid January.  They had hoped to open earlier but don’t have capacity to do this.  They do have transportation funding, and so may send people to Hartford. 

5.      Housing Matching Prioritization After Chronic Homelessness – Lisa Quach and Crane Cesario
a.      We are near the end of chronic homelessness.  If we run out of folks who are chronically homeless, we will transition to then housing folks who need to exit PSH.   In an effort to prevent vacancy losses, there was a proposal to match people who are CH, then RRH exits, and if nobody from these pools exist, we would like to start matching folks who are potentially chronically homeless.
                                                    i.     There were concerns from providers that folks may not become chronically homeless (verified).  We have a suggestion to match people and provide 30 days for folks to pull together documentation.
                                                   ii.     Kara- the way she understands, if someone goes into RRH without a DxVer, you may get it during the RRH program, and then they become chronically homeless.  
b.      Timelines for Referring/Returning Potentially Chronically Homeless Households – Lisa Quach
                                                    i.     If you think that you need to make someone CH to put them into RRH, it’s more like we need to try and house everyone.  If it turns out they get a DxVer, we treat them as going into RRH.
                                                   ii.     If we go through all the folks who are Verified, and the Rapid Exit folks, should PSH programs be taking potentially chronically homeless referrals. 
                                                  iii.     HUD guidance is there is up to 45 days to verify Disabling Conditions.
                                                  iv.     Andrea stated that several months into RRH a disabling condition sometimes becomes much more evident.
                                                   v.     What we discovered yesterday was we had 9 PSH openings, we had 4 CH verified people, 4 people in RRH who needed to exit.  Two of the openings were specific to folks with HIV/AIDS.  We didn’t know if any of the potentially CH folks met the HIV/AIDS.  Now, when we have PSH openings but no CH, then we take RRH exits.  But as we continue to move forward, if we don’t get more CH verified, we will be moving towards housing the potentially chronically homeless folks. 
                                                  vi.     Case managers who are serving the potentially chronically homeless folks, we need these households to be prioritized for determining whether or not they meet the chronically homeless criteria. 
                                                vii.     The remaining chronically homeless individual who was not matched yesterday was just not eligible for any of the openings that were available yesterday. 
                                               viii.     Scattered site RAPs came on board for yesterday’s matching meeting.
                                                  ix.     Chrysalis and DMHAS are working on helping to open up efficiencies by allowing them to “graduate” to 1BR units. 

6.      Statewide ReTooling Group Reorganization, Family Leaders Needed – Matt Morgan
a.      Part of the Reaching Home Campaign has been the Retooling the Crisis Response System.  Sarah DiMaio and Cathy Zeiner will be stepping up to assist with this.  Crane will follow up with the Retooling team.

7.      Dynamic Prioritization Update – Crane Cesario
a.      Rapid Exit is a new style of housing intervention to assist folks who may have gotten into shelter and need a very light touch boost to get out of shelter.  It’s a new concept still.  There will probably be some statewide advocacy around this. 
b.      Crane’s subcommittee around prioritization has done a lot of work on how to start implementing prioritization.  Some people feel strongly that we’re undermining our capacity to justify the need for permanent supportive housing.  We’re trying to set up more refined prioritization tiers based on HUD guidance.  We’re also considering how we manage Rapid ReHousing exits.  The best way to do RRH exits to PSH is to really allow for a very long time in RRH to allow opportunities to succeed before transferring RRH households into PSH.  We’re going to look at Length of Homelessness and Severity of Needs, but we’ll be prioritizing folks who need to exit RRH first of all.  Determining who the top priority is a challenge.  In Hartford we’ve been examining what we are doing.  There will always be an exception for folks who present with such significant service needs who are the most vulnerable. 
c.      Iain DeJong is coming to do a shared housing training soon because affordability is going to be a constant challenge for our community. 

8.      Youth Count Update – Mollie Greenwood

9.      GH CAN Shelter and Housing Data – Mollie Greenwood
                                                    i.     See p.2
                                                   ii.     Statewide Monthly Chronic Housing Report - Individuals

10.   Future Agenda Items?

11.   Announcements

a.      Journey Home will be opening the Family and Youth Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Preferences on Friday of this week. 
b.      CT Department of Housing has made Capital Funding available for shelter improvements.  See DOH website for more information.
c.      Beginning in January this committee’s meeting schedule will be changing to meet on the first and third week of each month, and on the third week the meeting will also cover any sub-COC related items.





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
179
This includes clients housed through GH CAN programs as well as through other subsidies or independent housing
Chronically homeless households housed in 2018
1
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
493

Verified Chronic Matched
34

Verified Chronic Not Yet Matched
1
We currently have 1 chronic verified clients who have not yet been matched to housing.
VI-SPDAT score = 9
Potentially Chronic Refusers
3

Verified Chronic Refusers
0

Potentially Chronic Matched
1
These households did not disclose a disabling condition, and are matched to various programs.
Potentially Chronic Not Yet Matched
25
Right now we believe 25 households have the chronic length of homeless history, but none of these individuals have their homeless and disability verifications completed.
Individuals - Active – Not Matched
549
This includes Active – Enrolled in CAN, Enrolled in TH & In an Institution
Families – Active – Not Matched
29
This includes Active – Enrolled in CAN, Enrolled in TH & In an Institution

SmartSheet Shelter Priority List Data
Individual Men
Individual Women
Families
Unsheltered: 168
Unsheltered: 121
Unsheltered: 19
Total: 244
Total: 172
Total: 45

 


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