Having trouble viewing this email? View it as a Web page.

Oct.19, 2016

Please forward to your subgrantees and contact your CHG program manager if you have questions!

Myths and Facts

Myth:  We shouldn’t provide rapid re-housing assistance to a household that doesn’t seem like they will be able to take over the rent on their own in three months.

Fact: Here’s what we know: rapid re-housing is an effective intervention for most homeless households. The Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP) demonstrated 82 percent of households receiving rapid re-housing assistance exited to permanent housing. The Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Rapid Re-housing Demonstration Project showed only 10 percent of families helped with rapid re-housing returned to homelessness. Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) has shown similar results. Rent subsidies in these rapid re-housing programs ranged from 3-12 months. Consolidated Housing Grant (CHG) funding allows up to 24 months of rent assistance and does not eliminate housing status eligibility for permanent supportive housing programs.

Here’s what we don’t know: how much rent assistance a homeless household will take to stabilize, and whether or not they will ever be homeless again.

Progressive engagement works by starting out with a small amount of assistance and increasing as needed.

Submit your proposals!

The 2017 Washington Low Income Housing Alliance Ending Homelessness conference will take place May 10-11 in Tacoma, WA. Have an idea for a workshop? Submission proposals are due no later than Friday, Nov. 4. The conference is a great opportunity for you to share your expertise. Contact your CHG program manager if you want to bounce around some ideas.

Coming Up! Contracting for 2017-2019

Commerce will release a funding application and updated CHG Guidelines to all current county/local governments and all non-CHG funded county governments in January 2017.  Non-CHG funded county governments will have 10 business days to opt in or out. 

If a county opts-out of the application, Commerce will release a competitive application to all eligible service providers to compete for the Lead Grantee contract.

Report Card Feedback

We’d love to hear your feedback on the County Report Card. What was helpful? What is missing? Help shape the January 2017 Report Card! Here are our ideas so far:

Keep:
• Beds by Program Type
• 2015 and 2016 Point-In-Time (PIT) Count
• Number of People Entered into Homeless Housing Rent Assistance or Facilities
• Percent of People Homeless for the First Time
• Median Length of Stay (LOS) of people
• Percent of Exits that are to Permanent Housing
• Percent of Returns to Homelessness
Add:
• Housing Status of people entered by project type
• Percent of people served who were unsheltered in the past two years
• Supplemental PIT Data for January 2015 and January 2016
• Cost per housed person by project type

U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) Releases Housing First Checklist

“Housing First is a proven, evidence-based approach to ending homelessness that yields higher housing retention rates and helps people achieve better health and social outcomes.

Use our recently updated Housing First Checklist to help you make a quick assessment of whether and to what degree housing programs - and entire systems - in your community are employing a Housing First approach.”  

Rapid Rehousing Works!

In September, the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) convened nearly 100 rapid re-housing champions from around the country to develop a common vision about how we can advance rapid re-housing and discuss emerging knowledge, research and practice on the model. Rapid re-housing continues to be a primary solution for ending homelessness, and the intervention effectively gets households into permanent housing and keeps them there.

The NAEH is launching Rapid Re-Housing Works, a campaign to help communities focus on the fundamentals of rapid re-housing and think about new ways to adopt and implement the intervention. Each week they will release dozens of exciting new tools, resources and thought pieces for use in our community. Let them know about the most important things needed to ramp up rapid re-housing through a survey.

We encourage you to forward this newsletter to your sub grantees. Visit the Consolidated Homeless Grant pages on our website for more information, and please feel free to contact your CHG program manager at any time if you have any questions.

• Emily Burgess, (306) 725-2942
• Julie Montgomery, (360) 725-2963
• Stephanie Reinauer, (360) 725-2920
• Jeff Spring, (360) 725-2991
• Jessica Simon, (360) 725-2955