Virginia Learning
Collaboratives
Reducing Family Homelessness in
Virginia: A Rapid Re-Housing Approach
Agenda
1. Welcome and Introductions
2. Rapid Re-Housing Role Play
3. Rapid Re-Housing Overview
4. Learning Collaborative Goals
5. Organizational Work (Review current programs)
6. Organizational Goal Setting
7. Debrief
8. Next Steps
Welcome
1. Name, Organization and Role
2. Complete this sentence:
“To improve rapid re-housing, we need to…”
Rapid Re-Housing
Role Play Game
Best Practices
RAPID RE-HOUSING OVERVIEW
…provision of housing relocation and
stabilization services and shortand/or medium-term rental
assistance as necessary to help a
homeless individual or family move
as quickly as possible into
permanent housing and achieve
stability in that housing.
ESG Interim Rule, December 2011
to establish a Federal goal of
ensuring that individuals and
families who become homeless
return to permanent housing
within 30 days
HEARTH Act Purposes – Sec.
1002(b)
Standards for Rapid Re-Housing
RAPID RE-HOUSING BEST PRACTICE
Rapid Re-Housing Program
Components
1. Housing Barrier Assessment Tool
2. Landlord Recruitment and Housing Search
3. Financial Assistance
4. Home-based Case Management with
Voluntary Services
Rapid Re-Housing Program
Outcomes and Data
1. Length of time it takes to re-house participants, from
homeless episode (entry into shelter system) to exit to
permanent housing
2. Permanent Housing Exits – percent of households
who remain in permanent housing at exit date from the
rapid re-housing program
3. Housing Stability – percent of households in
permanent housing at exit who return to homelessness
in 12 months of exit
4. Efficiency – Program cost (including all program costs)
per household served
Rapid Re-Housing Program
Orientation
1. Quickly re-housing homeless households
2. Strength-based approach focusing on client
identified services
3. Service needs addressed based on client’s
desire to address those needs
Rapid Re-Housing Program
Policies
1. Services in a rapid re-housing program are
voluntary. Rapid re-housing providers cannot
require that program participants engage in
services unless required to do so by their
funding source
2. Leases that program participants obtain are
the same as leases that renters in the
community obtain.
Looking at our programs
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
Is Rapid Re-Housing for Everyone?
Why to try rapid re-housing for everyone:
• Hard to tell who will and won’t be successful
• No assessment for client resiliency
• Not a “one size fits all”
• Program needs to be flexible
• Progressive engagement
Goal of Learning Collaboratives
1. Reduce length shelter/homeless stay
(LOS) for families and move more
families from shelter to permanent
housing
2. Rapid Re-housing Program that is
inclusive and can serve anyone
Our Purpose Today
1. Develop organizational change to meet
the Learning Collaborative goals
2. Establish aggressive organizational
benchmarks
Establishing our Learning
Collaborative Benchmarks
Small Group Collaborative Work:
“What specific benchmarks should our
Learning Collaborative set to reach our goal
of reducing homelessness and length of
time families experience homelessness?”
Debrief
• List all the benchmarks
• Determine as a Collaborative which
benchmarks will be used
Looking at our programs
REVIEW OF ORGANIZATIONAL MATERIALS
AND CURRENT PRACTICE
Rapid Re-Housing Policies
and Procedures
• What do your policies and procedures say?
• Are they clear, objective, and developed to
help all families be rapidly rehoused?
• What do we need to add, change, clarify or
delete to meet the collaborative goals?
Rapid Re-Housing Program
Eligibility
1. Do eligibility standards screen people out or screen
people in?
2. Is eligibility subjective?
3. Who decides who can get in the program?
4. What should be the eligibility requirements?
•
Does the household meet the HUD definition of
homeless? (category 1 and 4)
•
Do they need assistance locating and accessing
housing?
Rapid Re-Housing Program
Housing Barrier Assessment
•
Ask: How is this directly preventing
somebody from moving into housing?
•
Does the assessment separate housing
barriers from stability barriers?
•
Is the barrier assessment subjective to
the assessors perceptions or very
definitive?
•
Are the guidelines clear for identifying
high housing barriers?
Rapid Re-Housing Program
Housing Search & Landlord Recruitment
1. Do our staff have the skills to relate to and
understand landlords needs?
2. How do we market and recruit landlords? Do we
have written contacts and information on landlord
partners? What marketing tools do we use?
3. What creative ideas can we initiate to leverage more
landlords
4. What kind of housing are we looking for? What does
permanent housing mean?
ACTIVITY
Each Team:
1. Identify 5 marketing strategies that you will
can implement to recruit landlords
2. Identify 5 incentives that you can offer to
landlords to engage them as partners
Debrief
Master List identifying all the techniques
Each organization identifies something from the
master list to add to their list
Financial Assistance
1. What are our written policy and procedures for administering
financial assistance
•
When does assistance end?; Who decides if financial assistance can
be extended?
2. What limits our financial assistance? Are the policies in the best
interest of effectively rapidly re-housing families?
3. How might our current policies affect the long-term success?
What can we change to help more families?
4. How can we be more effective with the resources we have?
5. What additional resources can we leverage?
Financial Assistance
• Assistance is short- to medium-term
• Don’t forget about consumer resiliency
• Remember, the subsidy is to pay for
housing, not alleviate poverty
• Don’t count on client receiving a
permanent subsidy afterwards
Rapid Re-Housing Program
Home Based Case Management
1. Do our current policies indicate that clients must
participate in certain services?
2. What does “client driven” mean?
3. How can we ensure effective home-based case
management?
4. Who can we partner with?
5. Is financial assistance contingent on participation in
certain services?
Services
• Focused on Housing barriers
• Voluntary
• Home-based
• Client driven
Rapid Re-Housing Program
Outcomes and Data
• Are we measuring the right stuff?
• Do we measure often enough to tell the “story?”
• What do we need to change to get the right data?
1.
How quickly are households moving into housing?
2.
How many households remain in their housing for a year after
moving in, and 6 and 12 months after assistance ends?
3.
How many are returning to shelter?
Rapid Re-Housing Program
Other Program Elements
Terminations
1.
When is someone closed? What is a successful vs. unsuccessful closure?
2.
How is someone terminated? What is (if any) your appeal process?
Job Description(s)
1. Does the case manager job description effectively match the role for home
based case management; is it housing focused?
2. Does the housing locator description identify the skills for landlord
recruitment?
Based on Program Review, What Goals Do We Set?
ACTION PLANNING
Based on Review of
Current Program
What changes do we need to make?
Where are we now? (review pre-work metrics) What do
we need to do to get better?
Look at Learning Collaborative goals. What do we need
to do to shorten length of stay? How can we move more
families to permanent housing quickly?
Now, set clear benchmarks that you will meet and the
steps you need to take to get to those benchmarks
Developing the
Organizational Rapid ReHousing Action Plan
Identify aggressive organizational goals
• Set clear benchmarks to implement the changes
• Identify the steps you need to take to get to those
benchmarks
• Identify 30, 60, and 90 day targets
Debrief
What are your 30 day organizational
benchmarks to meet the LC goals?
Technical Assistance
1. Share documents online (Google docs or
Dropbox)
2. Webinar topics
3. Useful materials
4. Peer/site visits
Next Steps
1. Schedule the first call with team leaders
2. Have teams schedule their next team
meeting at their organization
Resources
 Organizational Change; Adopting a Housing
First Approach
 Rapid Re-Housing: Successfully Ending
Family Homelessness
 Rapid Rehousing: Creating Programs that
Work