 June 2023
Our Vision: We work together to create a community where homelessness is rare, brief, and nonrecurring, where we eliminate racial disparities, and everyone is housed.
The 2023 state Legislative Session ended on Monday, May 22 and we are happy to share that Heading Home Ramsey’s request for funding to continue providing emergency shelter and services was included in one of the last pieces of legislation that was passed. The legislature approved more than $11.4 million in fiscal year 2024 for the following HHR priorities:
- $2,286,000 to Catholic Charities for adult shelter and other services.
- $1,498,000 to Minnesota One-Stop for Communities for adult shelter.
- $1,734,000 to Interfaith Action Project Home for family shelter.
- $493,000 to The Listening House for adult-focused day shelter.
- $512,000 to Face to Face for youth-focused day shelter.
- $689,000 to Radias Health for outreach and navigation.
- $2,248,000 to Ramsey County for single point of entry to shelter, winter warming centers, and other services.
- $1,972,000 to the City of St. Paul for Familiar Faces.
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It is important to note that Heading Home Ramsey partners who applied this spring for funds from the state Department of Human Services Office of Economic Opportunity may also receive additional funding, as the legislature approved over $70 million in the next two years for the Emergency Services Program, Homeless Youth Act, Transitional Housing and Safe Harbor Shelter and housing programs.
While the direct funding for Heading Home Ramsey committed by the legislature was less than what we had asked for, it provides significant funds to continue operating key pieces of our homeless response system, which otherwise would have ended this summer. We will be working over the next several months to develop a new request for the legislature next year to continue to fill these gaps and ensure we can achieve the HHR vision of making homelessness in Ramsey County rare, brief, and non-recurring.
The primary purpose of the Fast Track funds is to help prevent families from being evicted and to help them achieve housing stability. The following subgrantees will receive funds to support residents through their existing FHPAP prevention projects:
With further funding for these projects, additional support will be provided to individuals in Housing Court. Providers will have additional capacity to reduce reliance on bundling with other funding sources. FHPAP anticipates serving an estimated 375 households.
Ramsey County requested $13.6 million in FHPAP funds on behalf of provider partners through the collaborative application for the next biennium and expect the final award amount from Minnesota Housing soon.
 We’re excited to begin the 2023 HUD CoC Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) process. This year, in addition to the standard Annual Renewal Demand of about $7 million provided to us by HUD, Heading Home Ramsey will be applying for both the CoC and the Domestic Violence Bonus funds. While the final amounts of the bonus funds have not been released yet, we expect them to be similar to amounts available to us last year, which were around $356,000 and $682,000 respectively.
After reviewing the data available to us, trends within our system and existing and emerging best practices across the state and county, Ramsey County Housing Stability staff have identified the following gaps and needs in the system that should be funding priorities for this year’s NOFO. Once the HUD CoC Program NOFO is released, we will work with the HHR Governing Board to adopt a final set of priorities, which will include a mix of HUD’s priorities and our locally determined needs.
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Priorities for all projects and program types
Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) capacity: we encourage all projects, especially those facing data quality challenges, to increase the amount of staff and/or staff time dedicated to ensuring the data entered into HMIS is done so in a timely and complete manner. |
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Priorities for Projects Serving Single Adults
Site-based transitional housing with intensive case management, navigation and property/landlord engagement services. We believe the Highway2Housing program had a positive impact on the number of single adults that were able to move into housing and are interested in duplicating these efforts in a way that is eligible under the HUD-CoC program.
Rapid Rehousing focused on medically fragile adults that can get these individuals connected to resources such as the Community Access for Disability Inclusion Waiver or Elderly Waiver and can help get them housed in assisted living/nursing facilities or in community with medical services.
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Priorities for Projects Serving Families
Projects with supportive services especially relevant to families. |
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Priorities for Youth
Transitional Housing (TR) and Rapid Re-Housing (RRH) projects that can begin working with child only households, which saw a significant uptick in the 2023 PIT and then support them in moving into permanent housing as they become old enough to sign a lease. |
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Priorities for DV Bonus Funding
Domestic Violence Coordinated Entry grant to work to make coordinated entry safe and effective for households fleeing or attempting to flee domestic violence. |
Finally, due to the limited amount of CoC bonus funds and our desire to spread that across household types, we will be prioritizing expansion projects over new projects. For the DV bonus funds, we encourage new and expansion project applications.
Interested in applying for funding through the NOFO? The first step in the process is for all agencies is to submit a pre-application. The form will not allow you to save and return, so it is advisable that projects use this PDF version of the survey to prepare their answers in an external document before beginning the survey and then enter those answers into the online form.
Agencies should submit one survey per project and all information entered into the survey should be relevant only to that individual project. The pre-application deadline is June 9, 2023. Email Alyssa Keil with questions about the pre-application.
 Data from Ramsey County's 2023 Point In Time Count (PIT) and Housing Inventory Count (HIC) were submitted to HUD at the end of April. Here is a summary of 2023 PIT data compared with 2022:
- Overall, Ramsey County PIT count was down by 33 people or 1.93%.
- The only household type that saw a reduction was adult-only households (primarily single adults), which had a count 164 persons fewer or 13.23% less than the 2022 count for this household type.
- Adult and child households (families) saw an increase of 126 persons or 27.69%.
- Child only households saw an increase of 5 persons or 27.78%.
- Veteran households also saw an increase of 34 persons or 46.58%.
View PIT data table and additional data points.
The HIC is an annual report that shows us the number of available housing resources reserved for people experiencing homelessness in Ramsey County. Emergency shelter, TH, RRH, permanent supportive housing (PSH) and other permanent housing (OPH), which includes permanent housing that does not meet HUD's definition of PSH, are included in this report.
This year, Ramsey County providers reported a total of 6022 beds, with PSH accounting for over one third of these beds. The HIC uses the number of people reported by each project to have stayed in the program on PIT night to calculate the project’s utilization rate. PSH and OPH had the highest utilization rates across all bed types.
View full HIC data table by organization and additional summary data points.
Minnesota Community Care received a vaccination grant from the CDC/CDC Foundation and is offering vaccinations against mpox in June. They are prioritizing people at high risk and have $100 gift cards for people who complete the series of two shots separated by one month.
Do you have clients who would benefit from this vaccine series? Email Morgan Weinert at mweinert@mncare.org to schedule a vaccination at their downtown clinic, at your site, or elsewhere in the community.
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