DOVER, DELAWARE. Delaware Governor Ruth Ann Minner has signed Senate Bill 310 into law, making the Delaware Interagency Council on Homelessness (DICH) a permanent state entity. Originally created in March 2005 by Executive Order 65, the DICH was established to help solve chronic homelessness in Delaware with a goal to connect the approximately 300 people who are chronically homeless to permanent supportive housing. Senate Bill 310 garnered broad legislative and community support. Pictured here is Governor Minner signing Senate Bill 310, with Delaware State Housing Authority Director Sandy Johnson and Representative Dan Short, who co-sponsored the Bill.

"Chronic homelessness is a problem across our nation and one that also affects us here in Delaware," said Governor Minner. "We want to combat this problem by providing permanent supportive housing to 300 chronically homeless individuals, and by reducing the number for some 1,500 who are permanently homeless each night."

In February 2007, Governor Minner received the 10 Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness by 2017 that had been developed by the Council. DICH identified five major strategies to end chronic homeless in Delaware: develop new housing; remove barriers to accessing existing affordable housing; improve discharge and transition planning; improve supportive services for persons who are homeless; and enhance data collection and the use of technology.

"We must create a continuum of housing, which includes a well-coordinated system for helping individuals connect to permanent supportive housing. This system mandates we pool human and financial resources," said Sandy Johnson, Delaware State Housing Authority Director and current Council Chair. "No one in this prosperous state should be relegated to a life on the street."

The Interagency Council includes a broad representation of stakeholders, community leaders, state and federal government agencies, supportive housing developers, homeless service providers and formerly homeless individuals. Catherine DeVaney McKay, CEO of Connections CSP, Inc. is the Co-Chair of the Council. Twenty-five members will be appointed to serve at the pleasure of the Governor.

Delaware's Ten Year Plan calls for implementing a range of prevention and service-delivery strategies that have demonstrated successes. The Plan requires Delaware to examine the assumptions under which the state has approached issues in the past, assess its activities and initiatives objectively, redirect existing resources, and secure commitments for additional funding.

"The Delaware Interagency Council on Homelessness has made tremendous strides in developing and beginning to implement a plan that will end homelessness for the 7,000 Delaware citizens - half of whom have mental health and substance use conditions - who experience it each year. This bill will ensure that our work will continue into the future and will focus our elected and appointed officials on addressing this problem," remarked Ms. McKay.

The Delaware Interagency Council on Homelessness was created in March 2005 by Executive Order of Governor Minner. United States Interagency Council on Homelessness Executive Director Philip Mangano addressed the inaugural meeting of the Council in May 2005 in New Castle. The Council was tasked with the responsibility to adopt and oversee implementation of a plan to reduce homelessness and end chronic homelessness in Delaware. Director Mangano is pictured here (center) with Gov. Minner (left) and DSHA Director Johnson on a visit to the state.

Thanks to Kathi McCoy, Public Information Officer, Delaware State Housing Authority for keeping the Council up to date on Delaware's progress in its 10 Year Plan.

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PHOENIX, ARIZONA. Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano has announced Housing Arizona, a new multi-faceted strategy that includes $6.9 million in housing resources targeted to people who are homeless, chronically homeless, homeless and at risk veterans, homeless youth, and those at risk as they leave prison.

Housing Arizona is supported with funds from the State Housing Trust Fund and includes $6.1 million to expand existing programs and $7.5 million in new resources to tackle homelessness and mortgage foreclosure. The Housing Trust Fund was created by the state legislature in 1988 to address the growing need for affordable housing across Arizona, and is the only source of flexible funding available for housing and community development, especially in rural Arizona.

"Recognizing that real action needed to be taken to address homelessness, I created the Interagency and Community Council on Homelessness (ICCH) to bring together state agencies and community leaders to identify collaborative solutions to this complex problem," Governor Napolitano added. "The Housing Arizona initiative will make it possible to move our efforts to the next level and establish lasting solutions which can help bring an end to this tragedy." Fred Karnas, director of the Arizona Department of Housing (ADOH), made the announcement at the Arizona Housing Conference.

The targeted homelessness resources include:

• $2 million for a partnership between DOH and the Department of Health Services, to fund a new approach for developing housing for persons experiencing serious mental illness that would ultimately expand the number of available affordable units for this population.
• $1,000,000 for a partnership with the Department of Corrections to target those ex-offenders who would otherwise be homelessness upon the completion of their sentence. Resources will be targeted to provide a short term bridge for ex-offenders to find safe, decent, affordable housing in the community reducing the likelihood of recidivism significantly.
• $1 million for a partnership between ADOH and the Department of Economic Security to address the housing needs of homeless youth. Homeless youth often seek to improve their situations by participating in day programs, employment, and counseling only to have to sleep on the streets for lack of affordable housing options that will take young renters.
• $750,000 for a partnership between ADOH and the Department of Veterans' Services to assist the growing number of veterans who, because of a variety of health and mental health issues, find themselves homeless. A goal of this partnership is to engage the federal Department of Veterans Affairs as an additional partner to expand the reach of this effort.
• $2 million dollars will be made available by ADOH through a competitive process for the development of permanent housing for homeless persons, some of which will include social services.
• $150,000 will be used as match in an effort draw down additional federal funding for rural homeless families, and $275,000 will continue existing ADOH homelessness assistance efforts across the state.

The Governor also announced resources to help those residents facing foreclosure by targeting:

• $3.5 million in eviction and foreclosure prevention funding to help prevent homelessness and provide short-term relief for homeowners seeking solutions to foreclosure problems. This effort is administered locally by non-profits and local governments across the state.
• $500,000 to ensure local communities can adequately draw down, administer and implement new federal neighborhood stabilization funding coming to the state to address neighborhoods severely impacted by mortgage foreclosures.
• $300,000 to support the continuation of the mortgage foreclosure mitigation counseling being supported by the department and the federal government. Through this program, including a state-funded foreclosure toll-free hotline, homeowners are matched with foreclosure counselors who guide them through the complexities of negotiating positive outcomes with lenders and servicers. These services are provided at no charge to the homeowner.
• $2 million for first-time homebuyers' down payment assistance to help families take advantage of the affordable housing stock that does exist.

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has announced an $8 million competition through the Massachusetts Interagency Council on Housing and Homelessness (ICHH) to invest in performance-based contracts with six new Regional Network Innovations to End Homelessness across the state. According to the Request for Responses (RFR), Regional Networks - which at a minimum must reflect a public-private partnership and involve jurisdictional leaders - will test evidence-based hypotheses and best practices through flexible housing resources and innovative services. The new Networks will pilot comprehensive, coordinated, regional partnership approaches to preventing homelessness by diverting households towards supportive housing and services and away from shelter. Lessons learned from these Regional Network demonstrations will inform statewide systems re-design.

The goals of the new initiative, launched as an action step of the new statewide plan unveiled in January 2008, are to decrease the need for shelter, achieve housing placement outcomes, collect data and measure impacts, create opportunities for broad- based discussion with diverse stakeholders, implement a regional system that is a model for accountability and transparency to consumers and the public, and build systems change to create sustainability. A 100% match requirement is part of the competition, and every regional network must be in a local geographic area covered by a plan to end homelessness.

Robert Pulster is Executive Director of the Interagency Council. The goal of systems change to end homelessness in Massachusetts is heavily dependent upon the creation of these Regional Networks that will be responsible, in their geographic areas, for implementing an effective system of early warning, uniform assessment and decision making, as well as targeting of resources.

The Regional Networks are not centralized physical structures or a new bureaucracy but coordinated systems of assessment, decision making and referral services that should, through the use of strong inter- organizational collaborations and technology: eliminate access barriers to housing and services, including duplicative assessments and services; streamline families' and individuals' immediate access to resources needed for their economic and housing stability; and be accountable for the effective implementation of the new tiered model for addressing family and individual homelessness in a defined geographic area of the state.

"The right resources to the right people at the right time." With those words last winter, the Massachusetts Commission to End Homelessness characterized its new strategy for ending homelessness in the Commonwealth through its new statewide plan. Massachusetts Lt. Governor Tim Murray, who chairs the Interagency Council on Homelessness and Housing, State Representative Byron Rushing who led legislative advocacy for the joint legislative- executive commission that developed the plan and was its co-chair, and United States Interagency Council on Homelessness Executive Director Philip Mangano briefed private sector partners on the recommendations of the Commission in February. The Commission was co-chaired by Tina Brooks, Undersecretary of the Commonwealth's Department of Housing and Community Development and included members of the Senate, Mayors, and other State Commissioners.

The Commission stated that ending the pervasive social and economic problem of homelessness is possible and is a moral imperative: " . . . Ending homelessness will not be easy and will require a dramatic transformation of the Commonwealth's system for responding to homeless individuals and families. The Commission generated a broadly- accepted vision for a new system, where shelters are used only for emergency transitions and every family and individual has a permanent place to live. " The planners set a new housing goal of 200 units annually for five years of Single Person Occupancy (SPO) housing and 800 new family units annually over the same 5-year period - 500 in private developments and 300 in new public housing.

The Commission proposed to reduce dramatically reliance on shelters, recommending adoption of the goal of reducing the number of family shelter units and individual beds by 20% and notes that a key task for the Massachusetts Interagency Council will be to develop effective measuring tools to assess progress. Before the old system of shelters could be abandoned, the Commission realized that the Commonwealth needed to invest new resources into rebuilding the infrastructure to stabilize, divert, and re- house families and individuals who would otherwise be in or enter the shelter system.

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TUCSON, ARIZONA. "A life term on the installment plan" is how Tucson Magistrate Michael Lex characterized the ricocheting of homeless people through the Tucson jail over and over again. Magistrate Lex was reporting recently to the Tucson Planning Council on the success and savings evidenced by Tucson's Homeless Court created in 2000.

According to the Magistrate, who acts as an arraignment judge and trial judge, the city court's homeless program, which addresses misdemeanors with sentences of up to six months, has resulted in almost 32,000 charges dismissed since the program began in 2000. Those charges represent over 13,360 court dockets and nearly 6,000 individuals whose charges were dismissed after they completed an individual diversion program. Magistrate Lex estimates the savings to the system at $3.8 million.

The city court's homeless program has reduced the number of jail days for this nonviolent population by over 89,560 since 2000, Lex said. "It is cheaper to do it this way," he noted. Lex said some of these individuals "may have had 100 or more arrests on similar charges" before they were diverted to the homeless court program.

The innovation of special courts was the focus on one episode of the Council's 20 in 20 series in June 2008. All sectors of the community benefit from the solution offered by the court. Unresolved legal issues can pose numerous barriers to applying for benefits and identification, seeking housing and employment, and more. Individuals benefit by resolving past issues with the court system and presenting their progress report from their agency sponsor regarding program participation and self-sufficiency. The judicial system benefits by providing a more accessible venue for individuals to use the courts, clearing old cases and creating greater efficiency by resolving multiple hearings for the same individuals, thus contributing to reduced demand in the court. Community based programs benefit by having consumers with fewer barriers to a positive path and stability, due to risk of incarceration or re-arrest. The community at large benefits from having individuals working to resolve judicial issues while engaging needed resources for housing, employment, treatment, and more.

The Tucson/Pima County Plan was completed in 2006 and unveiled in a public event where Mayor Walkup welcomed United States Interagency Council on Homelessness Executive Director Philip Mangano (pictured here). The Plan endorses a strategy of rapid rehousing that strives to quickly place homeless individuals and families in permanent housing with wraparound services determined by "the needs and desires of the homeless household." The Plan includes a special focus on housing for the elderly, recommending the creation of 50 new affordable housing units a year for seniors. Other recommendations include creating additional respite care beds, increasing detoxification capacity, improving access to transit services to include identifying a dedicated source of funding for bus passes, and creating incentives for mergers and other levels of coordination among service agencies that reduce administrative costs and increase money for direct services. The Pima/Tucson Plan was coordinated with the State of Arizona 10 Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness.

TORONTO, ONTARIO. Street to Home and Housing First engagement innovations have been shown to work. Now Toronto is piloting a new initiative that makes shelters a partner to rapid and successful housing placements, creating a "Shelter to Home" trajectory for single adults and youth who are frequent users of shelter. The new initiative has an 88% housing stability rate one year after its launch.

Toronto's pilot is part of a provincial initiative that - while not a rent subsidy - has assembled the engagement resources and stabilizing supports to make the move to housing from shelter - or "Hostel to Home," as the Canadians put it - the end to homelessness. Stated one now- housed individual who had been homeless for 11 months: " . . . the apartment was truly mine. I stood there with keys in my hands, and at that moment I experienced a new day, of sunlight, hope, trust, and great serenity and security in my heart. Finding within me the patience to work with three different agencies and my sobriety in hand. Knowing that I had great front line workers protecting and backing me each step of the way."

Launched in June 2007 by Phil Brown, General Manager of the City of Toronto's Shelter, Support and Housing Administration Division, in partnership with Social Services Division, the "Emergency Redirection Pilot Initiative" was initially targeted to over 300 individuals who have been in shelter for 30 days or more, are eligible for Ontario's welfare program (Ontario Works) and both motivated to participate and likely to sustain housing. Many are eligible for subsidies under the Housing Allowance Program. Twelve shelter providers created the pipeline of referrals into the initiative, with 8 operated by community agencies and 4 directly operated by the City. All 300 were placed by September 2007, and the initiative was expanded to 30 multi-member households in the fall of 2007. Mr. Brown is pictured here with U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness Executive Director Philip Mangano during a briefing on the initiative.

Participants must agree to have a Housing Support Worker provide intensive follow up supports for up to 18 months, including support to tenancy, life and social skill development, income, economic, employment and training, coordinated case management and access to services, health and self- care, housing stabilization, and informal counseling and crisis support. To enhance the affordability and concentration of existing housing support services as well as to provide added incentives to clients, Toronto's pilot leverages both new and existing funding streams. Leverage includes flexible per diem funding and existing City funding in addition to housing allowances offered through the Canada-Ontario- Toronto Affordable Housing Program to help make market rental units more affordable to participants. 104 participants were approved for HAP as of the June 2008 application submission deadline.

Engagement with participants focuses on benefits including: help finding a place to live, going with the individual to look at apartments, and help filling out any paperwork; help with difficulties with the landlord or other tenants; showing the resources in a new neighborhood, such as where to get furniture or food, and services like libraries, health centers and drop- ins; connecting with volunteer opportunities; providing support and help to get into employment training in conjunction with Toronto Social Services caseworkers; going with the individual to the Ontario Works office; helping resolve any issues at work or at a volunteer placement; and help with immigration or the justice system.

Some emerging issues and lessons learned include examining the approach to individuals to participate before they move out of the shelter, not after they are in housing when they seem less inclined to see the benefits of participation and the restriction to welfare eligible persons. While the Province is currently evaluating the program the response has been sufficiently enthusiastic to have secured a second phase for the initiative.

SPOKANE, WASHINGTON. Some 80 community stakeholders gathered last month in Spokane City Hall as part of the process of re- calibrating the Spokane Regional 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness. This gathering featured local and regional experts, as well as elected champions reviewing the progress of the past two years' of plan implementation and changes that would be made in the current update process of the plan. Pictured are (left to right): City of Spokane Human Services Director Jerrie Allard, Spokane Valley City Council Member Bill Goffman, Spokane Valley City Council Member Rose Dempsey, Spokane Homeless Task Force Chair Christine McCabe, Council Regional Coordinator Paul Carlson, and Spokane County Commissioner Mark Richard.

Spokane Mayor Mary Verner told the assembly, "The costs of homelessness are high, particularly for those with chronic illnesses. Our goal is to insure a speedy transition to stable permanent housing." The four- hour community work session included panels discussing new approaches to coordinated regional planning, housing for homeless veterans, rapid re- housing and central intake, and re-entry for persons leaving state and local institutions. United States Interagency Council on Homelessness Regional Coordinator Paul Carlson served as moderator for this community event. Mayor Verner and Commissioner Richard both spoke of the connection of the local plan with plans across the country through their commitment to the America's Road Home Statement of Principles and Actions. Mayor Verner is pictured here.

State Representative Timm Ormsby, a champion for housing in the state legislature, concluded with proceedings with a call to commitment to gain new resources for the plan. "The best way to help us get new resources is to show results." The leader of the 10 Year Plan and architect of the re-calibration process is Jerrie Allard, the City of Spokane Director of Human Services.

Key to the context for the revision process is that, in the face of adversity, the local plan achieved results: a 14% reduction in homelessness in the city, county, and suburban communities that make up this regional plan. This was extraordinary news in light of the City losing over 300 permanent supportive housing units in the downtown area after the sudden and unexpected sale of apartment buildings that housed formerly homeless persons. The community, under the leadership of new Mayor Verner and Spokane City Commissioner Mark Richard, pulled together in an extraordinary effort to re-house this displaced, vulnerable population in a very short period of time, as well as to continue to house homeless persons directly from the streets and shelters.

Faced with what the community was sure would be an increase in street homelessness, the decrease in the homeless count clearly demonstrated to all the effectiveness of local agencies working closely together using national best practices, especially Housing First.

WASHINGTON, DC. CQ Weekly turned its attention this week to the Administration's record in ending chronic homelessness and encouraging the adoption of the innovation of Housing First as a key strategy for results. Reporter Shawn Zeller provides a comprehensive picture that includes the role of cost benefit analysis and the challenges and results from the innovation of Housing First all within the context of the national 10 Year Plan strategy championed by the Bush Administration. United States Interagency Council on Homelessness Executive Director Philip Mangano is featured. Below are excerpts from Zeller's report.

"It may not be the kind of policy success story to put front and center in an economy convulsed by housing woes. But the numbers are in, the Bush administration says, proving it has presided over the first decline in homelessness ever recorded by the government.

"The changes are especially notable given that they coincided with the onset of the major slowdown in the housing market and also appear to vindicate the approach adopted by the administration's Interagency Council on Homelessness.

[Mangano says] " . . . Ending chronic homelessness is Step 1 in a broader effort to address the core economic issues that contribute to homelessness. And he said the recent successes were mostly attributable to the 500 cities and counties that have embraced the administration's housing-first view. The main selling point has been a fiscal one: It's less expensive to find apartments for people with severe drug and mental health problems - and more successful as a rehabilitation strategy - than it is to try to treat them while they're in shelters."

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