Leadership Committee Agenda
Wednesday,
May 16th, 2018
In Attendance:
Sonia Brown – CRT
Crane Cesario – DMHAS
Sarah DiMaio – Salvation Army Marshall House
Fred Faulkner – The Open Hearth
Rosemary Flowers – My Sisters’ Place
Louis Gilbert – ImmaCare
Mollie Greenwood – Journey Home
John Lawlor – The Connection
Iris Ruiz – Interval House
Zoe Schwartz – CRT
Barbara Shaw – Hands On Hartford
Jen Greer – CHR
Rebekah Lyas – ImmaCare
Steve MacHattie – Mercy Housing
Letticia Brown-Gambino – Chrysalis Center
Tamara Womack – My Sisters’ Place
CT BOS COC Items
1.
Renewal Evaluation Standards – Crane Cesario
a. The
local renewal evaluation standards for CT BOS are higher than HUD’s standards,
and as a result we are consistently a high-scoring continuum in the federal competition. We have an ongoing work group focusing on
Rapid ReHousing. Some issues are related
to folks getting income, but losing food stamps, and the negative impact that
can have on the scoring of a Rapid ReHousing program.
b. We
no longer have non-DV TLPs that aren’t HUD funded. DV TLPs are holding onto folks longer.
c. We
are hoping to get these settled now, so that we have a few months to know what’s
happening.
d. Consumer
surveys, Crane has asked that we get evaluations 2 months in advance. The numbers aren’t enough to warrant
both.
e. When
we’re looking at renewing this year, the idea is to have a combined grant that
has planning capacity, CAN capacity, and maybe some services for legacy shelter
plus care services or other SSO, with an emphasis on employment.
f. Sonia
had a question about what is going on with scoring for folks who are coming off
the BNL.
i. HUD
should only be looking at new entrants to the grant. We had to push back and say that programs
have been operating before the By-Name List started. This impacts folks coming from DV shelters,
and folks coming from the VA system.
Chrysalis had to explain where they came from as part of their renewal process.
ii. We
also saw some unintended consequences to demonstrate that bridging clients came
into the PSH programs, because it wasn’t always clear that they were coming
through the approved CAN process, because they were coming directly from
homelessness.
GH
CAN Leadership Items
2.
EFSP Funding: Sheltering Families – Mollie
Greenwood, Sarah DiMaio
a.
For the past few years, Journey Home has
applied for hotel funding through the EFSP opportunity through the United Way
to fund hotel placement for families during the Cold Weather Season to ensure
we have enough space to immediately accommodate families. This has posed problems in the past because
there’s an incentive to seek emergency shelter (that of a free, non-shared hotel
room for the family). On the flip side,
there were also challenges this year ensuring that there was adequate food
available to families staying in shelters, because it was not always possible
for them to go to the local shelters for meals.
At the last Cold Weather planning
meeting, Kara Capobianco of the CT Department of Housing suggested shelters all
going after this funding differently, and using it to support staffing and
other needs to let folks stay in living rooms and lobbies.
b.
The Department Of Housing has advised that if there’s a family
saying they’re unsheltered, our shelters need to be able to offer immediate
shelter. This isn’t necessarily beds, Salvation
Army is offering lobby space, living room space, extra mattresses. Salvation Army has been the only shelter
taking folks into overflow spaces on a consistent basis, and needs additional
support from the other shelters in the community.
i. At the
Cold Weather meeting, Kara had suggested utilizing this extra funding to
support this process. Maybe shelters
could split taking folks in a few days a week.
It would also be sending a message that this is the only thing that we
have. It would be logistically
challenging, and we don't yet have a solid plan in place.
c.
The other option besides that is using ESFP
money to hotel families seeking immediate shelter would be to hotel families
who are already in shelter but have a lease date approaching. Then we could place them into hotels, that
would free up bed space for folks reporting they were unsheltered. We tried this last week with a family from
East Hartford, and it went smoothly, but did take a while to get organized.
i. Sarah will
ask for a guideline of when we utilize hotels or overflow capacity from CT Department
of Housing so that there are clearer expectations in place. Diversion is offering to people who say they
will be unsheltered. Even though they’re
only being offered a lobby, they’re gaining access to the shelter. We need to find out exactly what DOH is
expecting, and what their guideline is.
We’ve been erring on the side of caution since Cold Weather ended.
1.
The households that have been verified have been
verified by DCF calling the Diversion Center have been the bulk of the immediate referrals to shelter/lobby space from Diversion. There was also a pregnant
female who was immediately referred who looked very disheveled, and Diversion Center staff believed her to be unsheltered.
2.
Kelly Gonzalez of Journey Home has been doing
some outreach, and has had a very hard time verifying folks. Many folks who are reporting that they will
be unsheltered that night have been impossible to locate, leading us to believe
they figured something out, at least temporarily.
d.
Letticia asked how large the families are who
are in the overflow. Sarah said the
largest has been 5 total. Letticia said
there could be space at the YWCA that could turn into overflow spaces for
families. YWCA could take in pregnant
women, or single parents with one child, they have a maximum of two beds that could be available.
e.
Sonia asked whether we’d had these conversations
at the Emergency Shelter Learning Collaborative meetings. At this point, we
haven’t. We can bring up that this is
the place we should bring it, to see if we’re doing the right housing-first/low
barrier thing. We need a family shelter
group discussion.
i. Sarah
talked to Kara yesterday, because we very much want additional DOH
guidance. Sarah would like something in
writing. The other shelters haven’t
been getting those calls from Diversion.
Crane offered to work on that with Sarah.
f.
It’s important to bring this up here, but we
need probably an email chain of folks who start applying for it. Mollie will send a targeted email out to all
shelter providers to identify need and interest.
3.
Staffing and Capacity for Rapid ReHousing
Programs – Mollie Greenwood
a.
CHR is able to start taking new referrals using funding from another program the operate in a different CAN- CT BOS has approved accessing these funds to assist in Greater Hartford, and it can only be used for a short period of assistance. CHR should have capacity relatively
soon. There will be some limited
openings over the next few weeks.
b.
Shelters need to know that RRH isn’t moving
forward as robustly.
c.
Sonia wanted to bring up a specific
situation. CRT had gotten approval to
bridge a RRH participant to a PSH program.
It’s not clear where communication fell through. Somehow an individual who got bridged from
HPASS to PSH with Chrysalis, the housing program placed her into a whole other
unit. The thing that was more concerning
to Sonia. A third party letter was
submitted to Chrysalis that indicated that she was unsheltered. House of Bread has not been a very active. HPASS paid an additional month of rent.
i. Journey
Home, CRT, and Chrysalis should sit down and debrief and figure out where this
happened to prevent this. Crane’s
understanding was this person had been through many discussions, got approved
for bridging. We didn’t hear in the
meantime that any of this was happening.
Chrysalis assumed it was a new start, CRT believed they were
bridging. There was this silence in the
middle. We definitely need to get this
organized. Mollie need to set this
up.
ii. Crane
suggested her practice of obtaining 3rd party documentation only
after it has been approved by Journey Home staff. Mollie and Lisa, please set this up.
4.
Final ESG Funding Allocations – Lionel Rigler
a.
It has gone out to public comment, and can be viewed online.
5.
Households in Jeopardy of Losing Housing –
Mollie Greenwood, Crane Cesario
a.
Communication to Housing Matching Committee
i. At recent housing matching meetings, we've been finding that sometimes households are returning to shelter, and the housing programs did not notify the CAN matching committee that folks were in jeopardy of losing housing.
ii. In some instances, folks have not actually lost a certificate or lost their unit, but may have received a NTQ and returned to the shelter.
iii. A notice
to quit doesn’t worry Crane as much.
You can still intervene when folks have a notice to quit. Landlords are continuing to take funds from
the program which gives programs the opportunity to negotiate on behalf of the client.
iv. Sarah said
that with Rapid, it could be a quick assistance where folks say they’re fine,
and you stabilize them, but if four months later, RRH programs won’t know about
a negative exit from housing into homelessness until they hit the shelter
again.
v. It would
be good to get a sense of what we’re seeing across the board from different housing programs.
vi. We had someone
at Mary Seymour Place, he got in an altercation with someone, decided he couldn’t
stay there. He left and walked out on
the unit. But he became homeless in the
gap. In this instance his unit was not in immediate jeopardy, but because he was not engaging with services we found out that he left the unit from the shelter providers.
vii. Sarah
asked Tony Mack to come to a home meeting with a client, because.
1.
We need to go to outreach to confirm when
folks are becoming homeless again and returning to homelessness.
viii.
Sonia thinks about this when she’s thinking
about outcomes. How long after folks
leave their program do they truly maintain their housing? Who follows them when they exit? How do you prove that? We follow up with folks who are en route to
transitioning to a higher housing intervention.
But those folks who are independently maintaining, how do we truly know
if they’re successful after that many months?
ix. Letticia
said that most RRH programs used to do a 6 month and a 9 month follow up. The RRH program in Plainville, they do a 6
and 9 month follow up to check in with them on a monthly basis.
1.
The issue with COC case management is
discharging them. If you’re discharging
them but continuing to offer case management, your utilization looks low. Larger organizations have some additional
capacity for this, but in a small program in a smaller agency there isn't often the ability to stretch other resources in this way.
2.
RRH is operating with very small case
management teams. We may be early in
identifying problems with Rapid ReHousing success long term.
3.
Jen brought this up at the last statewide RRH committee. CHR’s staff did an internal survey with folks
who discharged in the last few years. We
have a really high unsuccessful rate, but it isn’t reflected in any data, because although folks are losing housing they aren't returning to homelessness.
4.
Somewhere the statewide data on RRH was showing incredible success rates, but it's often impossible for programs to gauge success after the end of assistance.
x. Another
issue we need to recognize was we were screening for who would be more successful. Now we’re taking folks who
are extremely vulnerable, but haven’t changed the way we operate RRH. The program cannot function serving a
consistently more complex population.
1.
Some of these discussions are happening at the
RRH workgroup. There’s a shift in what’s
happening today compared to the original intent of rolling out RRH. This needs to be considered when we’re
talking about outcomes.
2.
We will hold this as an ongoing agenda item.
b. Payment Delays to Landlords-
i. DMHAS has had some significant delays in paying landlords, but Crane reminded everyone that the landlord cannot require a tenant to pay the program's portion of the rent.
ii. If a
client freaks out and calls you, remind them to call their housing coordinator
to call their housing program and leave
a message. And give the program some
time to get back. A landlord cannot
evict them based on DHMAS nonpayment.
6.
Shelter Curfew Consistency – Fred Faulkner
a.
What has come up at the Learning
Collaborative, we’re talking about having a consistent curfew time. We need to back it up and ask whether there
should be a curfew at all.
b.
At SAMH we still have a curfew, but stopped
enforcing.
c.
YWCA has done the same thing.
d.
Does that make a negative impact on No-Freeze?
e.
Lou mentioned that the reason they stopped enforcing curfew is because there's no good having a rule that can't truly be enforced Once people know that, either staff are lying
to clients (not good), or let’s not have it. It caused some operational issues with our
food groups, but we’re not here to serve the food groups, we’re here to serve
clients.
f.
Our case manager said we won't discharge unless there's a threat to safety of other clients or staff. Then
clients started going off on our intake staff.
SAMH has taken away all rules not related to safety in the building.
h.
Iris said that because of their federal
funding they can’t have a curfew. If you
don’t return past midnight, you lose your space. It’s an expected time of arrival, to get
around curfew, although it operates like a curfew.
i.
In The Open Hearth, they’ve done the same
thing, because we’re worried about leaving folks out in the cold. Open Hearth wants to ensure that if folks aren't presenting for their bed, that they can offer it to someone else seeking shelter.
j.
Would people be comfortable saying if you don’t
show within 24 hours.
k.
ImmaCare and Salvation Army have the same policy, that if clients don't present for two nights in a row, it's considered a self-discharge.
l.
At TOH, if staff are hearing from folks, they
won’t give away the bed. Let’s put this
as a placeholder. We will hold this as an agenda item for ongoing discussion.
7. GH CAN
Shelter and Housing Data – Mollie Greenwood
i. There have
been issues pulling a By Name List the past few days, so this information is
not currently available.
8. Over
Income Clients – we have someone who is on the BNL – over income. Crane put an email out to Kara. This is an anomaly that we need a policy
on. Crane will keep everyone
posted.
9. Future Agenda
Items?
a.
Our first meeting in July is scheduled for
July 4th, which many organizations have off. If there are some critical items, we may set
up a separate meeting.
10. Announcements
a.
Tomorrow CCEH is hosting their Annual Training
Institute at the CT Convention Center
b.
There will be a full SPDAT training offered by
CCEH on June 6th, location TBD.
Register on www.cceh.org. This training is recommended for anyone who
has never been trained in the full SPDAT, or for staff who have not
administered a full SPDAT assessment in over a year. Lunch will be provided for trainees.
c.
Journey Home is in the process of upgrading
SmartSheets to be HIPAA compliant. Be on
the lookout for updated enduser agreements as we make these changes. There will not be immediate changes to the
user interface.
i. Need to
keep things moving, but this is a collaborative. You have authority for your own programs, and so it's important that if CT DOH or the City have a mandate that they are communicating that to grantees, rather than through Journey Home or other intermediary organizations.
d.
Make sure you get onto the CT BOS email list!
e. At a future meeting we need to discuss the cleanup of the family waiting list, and ensure that folks who are doubled-up safe are no longer being added to the family waiting list.
e. At a future meeting we need to discuss the cleanup of the family waiting list, and ensure that folks who are doubled-up safe are no longer being added to the family waiting list.
SmartSheet
Shelter Priority List Data
Individual Men
|
Individual Women
|
Families
|
136 Unsheltered or in Cold Weather Placement
|
85 Unsheltered or in Cold Weather Placement
|
30 Unsheltered or in Cold Weather Placement
|
204 Total
|
135 Total
|
62 Total
|
