MOMENTUM CONTINUES TO BUILD FOR NATIONAL PROJECT HOMELESS CONNECT WEEK December 4-8, 2006

September 21, 2006. The number of cities and counties committed to participating in National Project Homeless Connect Week December 4-6 continues to grow, including an announcement last week that Los Angeles County will help coordinate events in at least 7 communities.

On Tuesday, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness held its 3rd Peer- to- Peer conference call to continue rapid dissemination of innovations and best practices from experienced PHC cities. This week's call focused on best practices in event planning and execution including venue selection, logistics, consumer focus, and team organization, and featured Sgt Paul Paulos of the St. Paul, Minnesota Police Department and Denver's Road Home Project Director Jamie Van Leeuwen. In June, the City of St. Paul/ Ramsey County became the first jurisdiction in the nation to have two police officers be lead organizers for a Project Homeless Connect event. Sgt Paulos is a founding member of an innovative Police-Provider Forum that has been created in the downtown area that meets quarterly. Denver has hosted two PHC events with a third one scheduled for October 7. A summary of key points from the call can be found below.

The next Peer-to-Peer call will be October 3rd at 1 pm Eastern and will focus on collecting data and reporting results, a key component for generating support of business, the media, and the larger community. As announced in last week's enews, the Council is facilitating a site visit to the October 5 San Francisco Project Homeless Connect . Mayor Gavin Newsom's office has graciously offered to give interested cities an "insiders look" including a pre-event briefing, an opportunity to participate in the morning rally for volunteers led by the Mayor, a guided tour of the event site, and the chance to volunteer or observe throughout the day.

Cities interested in participating in the Peer- to- Peer calls or this event must pre-register by contacting the Interagency Council at usichevents@usich.gov. Cities interested in learning more about National Project Homeless Connect can click here or on the PHC link above under "In the News," where you will find a variety of technical assistance materials including the presentation toolkit from the September 7 National League of Cities Institute for Youth, Education, and Families-U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness webinar - Project Homeless Connect: Using Civic Engagement To Serve the Homeless.

September 19 Peer to Peer Call

As noted above, Sgt. Paul Paulos from St. Paul and Jamie Van Leeuwen from Denver were the faculty members for this week's PHC Peer- to-Peer call which focused on venue selection and logistics.

Venue Selection

• Location should be accessible from major roadways and public transportation and have available parking

• Should allow for controlled access

• Should be “to scale” with enough room for intake and services but not so large as to be intimidating. St. Paul chose to use the National Guard Armory rather than their larger sports complex for this reason.

• Important that people feel at ease entering and leaving and not overwhelmed

Logistics- Event Site

• Walking through the site with a building manager is important to ensure the event is configured with flow in mind; Signage is important to identify service areas as are partitions or other methods of providing privacy for health screenings, legal discussions and job interviews

• If families are expected, creating a supervised child play area allows parent to focus on service needs. In St. Paul, organizers also arranged for offsite day care at transportation pickup/drop off points around the city.

• An area for possession storage and retrieval is also helpful

• Both St. Paul and Denver have adopted a 1 on 1 approach, with a volunteer greeting each individual or family at intake and remaining with them. In Denver, each client is offered an index card and asked to identify the three most important things they would like to accomplish that day.

• Both cities also offer training for the volunteers, going onsite where companies are providing large numbers of volunteers, and also using a sector approach where a lead doctor may volunteer to provide training for other doctors etc. In St. Paul “refresher” training is also offered the morning of the event. In both St. Paul and Denver, the event starts at 10 am.

• Different color t-shirts can help identify staff and volunteers as well as those who are bilingual or who have other special skills.

• Plan your event around making the client feel important and listened to.  While not all cities can have massage therapists on site as Denver did, everyone can relate to Mr. Van Leeuwen’s story of how one client approached him at the end of the day and thanked him for PHC “not being just another government experience but for making it a human event, noting the 5 minute massage he received was the first time he had been touched in two years. “

Logistics- Transportation and Outreach

• St. Paul police officers carried brochures in their cars to give to homeless people they encountered in the three weeks leading up to the event; St Paul officers also distributed brochures at encampments and visited the county jail to ensure that anyone who would have been released by the date of the PHC would know about it.

• St. Paul sought and received cooperation from the School District for school buses and van to be used to provide transportation from designated locations on the hour throughout the event .

• In Denver outreach workers road along with the bus drivers to go into the various facilities where they talked with and encouraged people to get on the bus and go to the event.

Among the points made during the question and answer period:

• Just get started. As Mr. Leeuwen said, “ You can do it and the Interagency Council on Homelessness and your peers in PHC experienced communities  will help you figure it out.”  Commit “legitimate larceny” and use resources posted on the USICH website and on city websites such as Denver’s Road Home.

• PHC events evolve and tend to draw more resources to them over time. This third Denver PHC event is being entirely sponsored by COMCAST including over 700 COMCAST volunteers.

• By providing immediate services, PHC events have a tangible impact on the lives of homeless people

• PHC events are invaluable for educating business, volunteers, the media, and the general  public about the true nature of homelessness and “eradicate stereotypes.”

• Rather than creating “compassion fatigue” among  providers and volunteers, PHC events “offer expression to pent up compassion in the community.”