How Virginia Uses Collaboration and Coordination to Cease Homelessness Country-Wide

The Commonwealth of Virginia has made significant progress in the work to prevent and end homelessness. We've reduced overall homelessness by 31% and family homelessness by 37.6% from 2010 to 2016. And in November 2015, we became the offset state to effectively end Veteran homelessness. We credit that progress to leadership from successive Governors, potent country agency partnerships, and the dedication of local communities to working collaboratively to embrace the strongest practices.

Laying the Background

In 2010, then-Governor Bob McDonnell convened the Homeless Outcomes Advisory Committee that laid the groundwork for the statewide coordination that has been key to Virginia'southward success. This committee formulated the land's original plan, which included a goal of reducing overall homelessness xv% by 2014. Through the changes begun nether that effort, the Commonwealth was able to exceed the 2014 goal, reducing overall homelessness past xvi%.

The 2010 plan included five specific strategies that were aligned with Opening Doors. Information technology also called for the cosmos of a coordinating torso—the structure of which mirrored the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness—to oversee the implementation of the strategies. The Governor'due south Coordinating Council on Homelessness is currently co-chaired by the Secretary of Commerce and Trade and the Secretarial assistant of Health and Human Resources. Members include the Secretariat of Education and the Section of Veterans Services, among others. The Analogous Council meets quarterly, and our standing committees meet monthly, bi-monthly, or as needed. Some of those committees include:

  • Performance and Touch on: focusing on functioning measures and efforts to create a statewide HMIS, among other things
  • Solutions: focusing on strengthening approaches similar rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing, as well equally our special populations work
  • Interagency Partnership to Prevent and Finish Youth Homelessness: focusing on how we engage all our resources, including mainstream resources, to end homelessness amidst youth ages xiv-24
  • Ending Veteran Homelessness: focusing on continuing to back up communities equally we sustain our constructive finish of Veteran homelessness

Through the Analogous Council, we have been able to align our work with federal goals and strategies and build strong collaboration across secretariats, state agencies, and local service providers. And ultimately, we changed the way in which communities responded to the needs of people experiencing homelessness.

Transforming our State Organization

Considering the 2010 goal of reducing homelessness past 15% did not come with additional funding, we had to focus on getting the most out of existing resources. Fortunately, the Freddie Mac Foundation learned about our work to transition our system and supported usa with funding for a three-yr projection to reduce family homelessness using rapid re-housing approaches. Our strategy was to marshal our policy and funding to emphasize rapid re-housing interventions and to provide intensive training and technical assistance to providers across the state on how to evangelize loftier-quality rapid re-housing services.

Nether the first role of our strategy, Virginia prioritized rapid re-housing equally the primary intervention for families experiencing homelessness. The Virginia Department of Housing and Customs Development created financial incentives for communities to comprehend rapid re-housing past shifting $2.5 million in funding primarily from transitional housing. We also defined and rewarded loftier-performing providers.  Then, we partnered with the National Alliance to Finish Homelessness and the Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness (now the Virginia Housing Alliance) to train local providers. We conducted more than xxx trainings to 172 providers beyond the state to introduce the concept of rapid re-housing and the strategies behind our program. We likewise launched 7 collaborative learning groups around the state so that providers could keep to acquire from each other. And we held a 100-day challenge, which succeeded in housing 545 families in 100 days.

At the same time, we held system pattern clinics to begin looking at how to incorporate coordinated entry and cess beyond the state to ensure all stakeholders were working together more finer. We issued some small challenge grants to encourage communities and providers to examination organizational and systems modify. Ultimately, we redesigned how we laurels our state funding entirely—much like the federal Continuum of Care contest, each Virginia community applies for funding collectively and is held to customs-wide functioning measures. As a state, we have now fully transitioned to an emergency crisis response model at the community level to ensure homelessness is rare, cursory, and non-recurring.

Driving Down our Numbers

With the lessons from the catastrophe family homelessness initiative, we then turned more purposefully to ending Veteran homelessness. We hosted the first Homeless Veteran Summit in 2014, which convened communities with the highest percentage of Veterans to create an in-depth, statewide action plan. In June of the aforementioned year, Governor McAuliffe provided significant leadership by becoming one of the first governors to sign on to the Mayors Challenge to Cease Veteran Homelessness. In the fall of 2014, we kicked off the Homeless Veteran Boot Camp and the 100-day challenge to help communities develop local plans to finish Veteran homelessness.

While continuing to emphasize rapid re-housing, we also established policies encouraging landlord engagement, created a housing search portal, aligned priorities across state agencies that focused on Veterans' needs, and implemented best practices. Nosotros also created a website to serve as a hub where the communities could share information and documents that streamlined and coordinated their efforts. In addition to using federal resources finer, the investment of additional financial resources, the targeting of resources, and other efforts were central to Virginia'south success in effectively catastrophe Veteran homelessness.

We have identified several effective strategies from this work. Some include:

  1. Using a mutual cess tool beyond outreach providers to identify and assess individuals experiencing homelessness;
  2. Increasing coordination amid providers to streamline the processes;
  3. Leveraging boosted community and public housing say-so resource;
  4. Following Housing Starting time principles;
  5. Sharing information amid all community providers; and
  6. Robust communication.

Our piece of work continues to sustain our progress and to end homelessness for all Virginians. Through the Governor's Analogous Council on Homelessness, we proceed to build and deepen our partnerships and collaborations with the systems—like criminal justice, behavioral health, and healthcare—that will aid us end homelessness once and for all.