Greater Hartford Coordinated Access
Network
Sub-COC and CAN Leadership Committee Agenda
Wednesday,
April 17th, 2018
In Attendance:
Brian Baker - South Park Inn
Sonia Brown - CRT
Kara Capobianco - Dept of Jousing
Crane Cesario - DMHAS, CRMHC
Stephanie Corbin - Mercy Housing and Shelter
Sarah DiMaio - Salvation Army Marshall House
Fred Faulkner - The Open Hearth
Louis Gilbert - ImmaCare
Mollie Greenwood - Journey Home
Lauren Fair - Salvation Army
Tina Ortiz - CRT
Diane Paige-Blondette - My Sisters' Place
Diane Paige-Blondette - My Sisters' Place
Amy Robinson - US Dept of Veteran Affairs
Iris Ruiz - Interval House
Barbara Shaw - Hands On Hartford
Rebekah Lyas - ImmaCare
Steve MacHattie - Mercy Housing and Shelter
Niya Solomon - Journey Home
Daniel Langless - Beacon Health Options
Janette Hernandez - Catholic Charities
Zoe Schwartz - CRT
CT BOS COC Items – most of what we
cover here is what was discussed in the CT BOS meeting.
1. NOFA Timeline Per SNAPS Quarterly
Calls
• HUD
is hoping to have the NOFA ready for release in May 2018.
·
HUD has always said May or September, and the
NOFA often actually comes months and months after. They put out a registration for COCs. It impacts folks because any folks who get
HUD funds, even through ESG and not the COC.
2. State of Connecticut, 2017-18
Action Plan for Housing and Community Development http://www.ct.gov/doh/lib/doh/draft_ap_17-18.pdf
• Please see CT
BOS minutes for more information
3. HMIS Updates
a) System
Performance Measures – see p. 3
·
This includes things like time to data entry,
and data quality.
·
There’s a deadline of May 18th. There are some details on page 3 of the
agenda. Some of these data areas we are
performing better than the national average, in others we aren’t. Our application has always scored very
high. Because CT BOS standards are often
higher than HUD’s standards, some of our programs have suffered because
evaluation metrics don’t always fit well with the programs being scored.
4. HIC / PIT Data -Nearly
complete, to be submitted on time. In
the summer we should discuss this in the summer.
Agencies that have programs
outside of the City of Hartford need to be doing the PIT outside of Hartford.
5. Previously discussed CT BOS
Topic:
1. CT
BOS representation
2. Reaching
Home Structure – Reaching Home is the campaign to end homelessness in CT. It’s led by PSC, and is largely funded by
Melville Charitable Trust. They are
trying to help guide the full array of activities working towards ending
homelessness. In the past it was like
there were two parts, and now CT BOS falls under the umbrella of Reaching
Home. As we talk about that structure,
when folks are talking about the Reaching Home campaign, the campaign sometimes gets
disconnected from the campaign activities.
This year’s advocacy days was a little bit more in line.
3. Renewal
Evaluations, Reallocations and New Funding application
a. We
discussed this last time. All of the
grants that we have receive scores, and sometimes the scoring is weird. In the past, sometimes when providers ran
APRs it didn’t match the APRs the consultants were pulling. We’re working on improving that process. If you have HUD money, you should pay
attention to the appeals process. The
minutes are very thorough. If you need
the minutes and want them, let Crane know and she’ll forward them.
b. Reallocations
– this year, if there is new money, BOS COC will accept applications for PSH,
RRH, and Services Only. If there’s a big
application for additional funds, some SSO funds may be attached to support
legacy S+C programs, which did not have services historically. Services only could supplement these
programs.
i. Another
thing we talked about was with the innovation of having Sarah’s PSH case manger
has shown some gaps in the system. It’s
another thing they’re looking at.
ii. Some
of the older RRH programs were not funded at the same services level. Another thing that’s being looked at is if
there are some RRH programs that could benefit from other service provision for
RRH.
iii. Is
there a dollar amount at this point? We
don’t know of one.
iv. The
other thing to consider is reallocation, which can be a very frightening
prospect to a grantee. They’re trying to
look at it in a moderate way.
1. Crane
thinks of it in two ways. There are
under performers who are sending folks back to HUD.
2. There
are other programs that are small units, there are issues with property
management. There are also sometimes administrative management of grants
issue.
4. New
CT BOS email process – register your email at www.ctbos.org
– CT BOS is changing their email process.
5. Under
Reaching Home there are a lot of workgroups, one is a Data Needs Assessment
Sugroup. There’s also a RRH group. There’s also a family group. We’re trying to figure out how to get
everyone on the same page with so many working parts. If CT BOS says you need to move folks out of
RRH after 6 months, we are being vocal about the challenge with that.
Greater Hartford CAN Leadership Items
1.
Cold Weather
Planning for 2018-2019
a.
Two hours ago the
City contacted Salvation Army to see if they were willing to continue.
b.
Salvation Army is
surprised the city asked again.
i. The census of the homeless reflects everyone in a warming center as being
unsheltered, not sheltered.
ii. For next year, we need to have a place for people to sleep.
c.
The building we had
this year couldn’t accommodate where people could sleep.
d.
The city has asked
for a list of needs from the Salvation Army to figure out what would be needed to
keep things going.
i. Does it make sense to have it in the same location?
ii. Triage didn’t seem as effective as in past years and there was a lot of
replication of activities between triage and the warming center. There were too many steps in the process for
clients.
e.
The Warming Center
was extremely busy, and there were many nights that they were over capacity and
had to turn folks away.
i. The Warming Center tried to refer out to other warming centers, but other
cities were not pleased with that.
ii. If we were over capacity, we would place the first folks who showed up at
the warming center. This was in an effort to eliminate incentives for showing
up late.
iii. We need to look at if the motel nights were higher this year than in
years past.
iv. The Warming Capacity went over, and the overflow went to 130%
utilization, and many folks were staying in the lobby at the Marshall
House.
v. In addition there was consistent and strong communication between the CAN
and the Salvation Army.
vi. It would be great to have a subcommittee to go on planning together.
vii. Crane asked what the capacity was for air mattresses in that
building. It was 9 people in air
mattresses.
viii.
A lot of folks
showed up, thinking there was a bed option, and would self-resolve once there
was an option for beds.
ix. HUD says they’re unsheltered if they aren’t in beds.
x. Brian Baker indicated that from South Park Inn’s perspective, Salvation Army went above and beyond this
year. This year seemed to be one of the
smoothest winters. Sarah would be
interested in seeing the change in shelter capacity from last winter.
xii. The program itself, Sarah loved.
It’s extremely hard to have really good staff in low-paying temporary position. Staffing was one of the
biggest challenges.
1.
The program wouldn’t
be workable without a coordinator at Rikka’s skill level. It would also be impossible without having a
highly skilled case manager in that position.
xiii.
Barbara noted that
from the view of Hands On Hartford's soup kitchen, the option to better serve women was
tremendous.
xiv. We need to be able to open earlier and close later. The work starts on it now. The City needs to be able to provide staffing
to focus on this earlier.
xv. If we did it the same way with chairs, it would be great to be able to track
how many people came to Diversion and compare the number of people who just
stayed.
xvi. If we go to these goals, year round utilization was up, women had a place
to go. If we nix triage in the future we
could open earlier.
1.
Sarah requested a
small committee to work on this.
a.
South Park Inn,
Hands On Hartford both volunteered to assist, we’ll ask at Operations too.
2.
Shelters Accepting
Adult Couples – Sarah DiMaio
a.
With the Emergency Shelter Learning Collaborative that
all shelters have been involved in, SAMH has looked at ways to be lower barrier
to accept people. In the warmer months,
SAMH has had a large number of vacancies in the warmer months. At the warming center we had many adult
couples who were opting to stay outside rather than separate in year-round
shelters. It would need to change the
shelter priority list a little.
b.
Is anyone else
looking to serve adult couples?
c.
Sarah wanted to put
it on the radar of everyone. SAMH is
also looking to add a pet-friendly room.
d.
Diversion center is
already screening by couple, individuals, families with children.
e.
Journey Home needs to
add the checkbox options of individual shelter, family shelter. Couples could be added as a family. A lot of the family serving shelters get
caught up with “our mission is serving families with children”. As a CAN we could make a determination.
i. Any families with children who were unsheltered would be a higher
priority for openings than all-adult households, or families where only the
head of household is unsheltered.
3.
Housing Matching
Update: Prioritization after CH, Inter-CAN Referrals – Mollie Greenwood
a.
Lisa has a process
to identify vacancies, will identify if there are folks who aren’t eligible in
Hartford, she’ll notify the other CANs.
She’ll hear back from other areas.
b.
Ethically we want to
have folks who are most CH into buildings.
PSH always needs to go to folks who have that most significant
disability.
c.
Please reiterate
with staff – disabling conditions will always be required for PSH. Staff need to be comfortable having those
frank conversations. If they are
disabled that’s a different conversation.
d.
If need be, we could
pull other subsidies for other folks.
Kara could work at her level to pull state subsidies to help folks who
are not willing to get documentation of a disability.
e.
Property Management
has been a challenge, as sometimes the only eligible households have been
denied by property management companies.
Diane Paige-Blondette said that she could assist if this was happening
in MSP buildings.
4.
City of Hartford ESG
Allocations – Lionel Rigler
a.
We did this a few
weeks ago, but needed to revise because of CRT’s overflow beds being reflected,
and we determined not to include any overflow beds.
b.
Lionel would like to
try and move this along, because we’re trying to get this to city council
within a couple of weeks.
c.
We don’t know what
the ESG Allocation is. We’re assuming a
slight reduction, which may or may not be the case.
d.
The only further
discussion would be it would be nice to move a little towards more performance
measures rather than just beds or bed utilization. The only exit we’re using is Permanent
Exits.
i. Cathy mentioned that most shelters are participating in the Emergency Shelter Learning Collaborative. Collectively we might come up with some
outcomes. It would be good to revisit it after we’ve gone through that
process.
5.
HOME Funding for
Security Deposits – Mollie Greenwood
a.
Security Deposit Guarantee Program is now opened up to anyone entering PSH. Folks
need to be literally homeless going into PSH.
b.
Make sure if you’re
housing folks who aren’t the first target population that you get that letter in the file,
Journey Home can prepare a letter documenting that there were no eligible
members of the target population to fill a vacancy.
6.
Statewide CAN
Leadership/ Progressive Engagement – Crane Cesario
a.
Progressive
Engagement is the reinvigorated DyPri group.
We’re working to manage what our resources are. How do we anticipate how much RRH and PSH we
have, and how to we work to help folks become resilient and see what their
options are.
b.
Crane’s very
concerned about making progress when there’s a lot of push and a lot of
pull.
c.
There’s some
pressure around CT HMIS, and Steering Committee is being pushed to look at
strategy, rather than being the traditionally operational entity it has been.
7. GH CAN
Shelter and Housing Data – Mollie Greenwood
i. See p.2
1.
To see that there are 32 families reporting to
be unsheltered is extremely low. We want
to make sure that we’re only marking folks as unsheltered if they’ve identified
a lobby stay. Kara wants us to make sure
we’re cleaningup the shelter waitlist.
2.
Is there a way to distinguish between
sheltered vs. unsheltered children if the HOH is unsheltered. If the families are adding folks to WL, if
they’re seomeone who’s literally homeless, there should be an immediate
enrollment to shelter. Nobody is coming
in with homelessness from last night.
a.
We’ve been directing folks to go to Marshall
House.
i. We need to
identify a new mechanism for the families on the list. Mollie, follow up with Kara and Stephanie and
Sarah. We need to get the WL eliminated
for families. Be ready to talk next
week.
ii. Households
with Income
8. Future
Agenda Items?
9. PIT and
HIC should be discussed in the summer at a sub-COC meeting.
10. Announcements
a.
CCEH’s Annual Training Institute will be held
on May 17, 2018 at the CT Convention Center.
Register at www.cceh.org
b.
Next Semi-Annual Meeting for CT BOS will be held
June 15, 2018
c.
John Ferrucci retired after 36 years. SPI’s new interim ED will join us next time.
d.
CDBG Small Cities – funding – Enfield submitted
a LOI.
e.
Interval House flooded – they may be reaching
out to try and manage this process because there’s a ton of folks who need to
identify a safe place to stay and may need shelter beds.
11. 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
|
32
|
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
|
524
|
|
Verified Chronic
Matched
|
34
|
|
Verified
Chronic Not Yet Matched
|
0
|
We
currently have 0 chronic verified clients who have not yet been matched to
housing.
|
Potentially
Chronic Refusers
|
2
|
|
Verified
Chronic Refusers
|
1
|
|
Potentially
Chronic Matched
|
11
|
These households
did not disclose a disabling condition, and are matched to various programs.
|
Not
Chronic Matched
|
31
|
|
Potentially
Chronic Not Yet Matched
|
27
|
Right now
we believe 27 households have the chronic length of homeless history, but
none of these individuals have their homeless and disability
verifications completed.
|
Individuals
- Active – Not Matched
|
470
|
This is
Enrolled in CAN
|
Families –
Active – Not Matched
|
23
|
This is
Enrolled in CAN
|
12.
13. SmartSheet Shelter Priority List Data
Individual Men
|
Individual Women
|
Families
|
201 Unsheltered or in Cold
Weather Placement
|
62 Unsheltered or in Cold Weather
Placement
|
31 Unsheltered or in Cold Weather
Placement
|
274 Total
|
100 Total
|
55 Total
|
System Performance Measures
• SPM are due to HUD 5/31/18 via HUD HDX
• It was noted that it is very important that reps are
bringing data back and getting SPM on sub-CoC agendas to review the data.
• HUD is suggesting that CoCs resubmit last year’s SPM as
additional guidance and updates were provided on how to ensure those data are
accurate.
• BOS performance on draft 2017 SPMs compared to national
data reported by HUD at the recent NAEH conference is as follows:
o Length of time homeless –
National median: 40 days; average: 100.
BOS median – 51 days and average 123 days.
o Exits to permanent housing
from ES, TH, and RRH – National: 44% and BOS: 33% o Median Increase in income
for Stayers – National: 20% and BOS 35% o Median Increase in income for leavers
– National: 36% and BOS 48% • Total annual number of persons homeless in CT BOS
has gone down over the last year.
• It
was reported that 1000 people in CT BOS PSH have never shown up in HMIS
before. It was noted that these people
should have shown up in HMIS prior to PSH through outreach or ES programs.
f/u: CCEH will provide information on the 1000 people so
that the CoC and agencies can better understand the situation.
f/u: HI to send providers CCEH instructions on how to
improve data quality.
•
Longitudinal System Analysis (LSA) will be
replacing the AHAR. HUD will be
providing more information by September.
•
CCEH provided tips on how to ensure that the CoC
has the most accurate data possible:
·
Street outreach needs to exit people
·
Run and review shelter utilization report
·
Run Data Quality reports
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