I went through the plan to see what Governor Evers saying he’d fully fund the recommendation of the Interagency Council on Homelessness really means. Here’s what I found. This is no longer a report, its an actual action plan!
Here’s the report of the Interagency Council on Homelessness.
And here’s the recommendations that Evers said he’s fully funding. Methinks they should have asked for more!
RECOMMENDATIONS REQUIRING MONEY
Focus on the Continuum
Strategy 1.1: Increase Prevention Funding
Recommendation: Increase Homeless Prevention Program by $500,000 annually.
Strategy 1.2: Begin State Diversion Programming
Recommendation: Increase HPP funding by $300,000 annually, specifically for diversion.
Strategy 1.3: Increase State Shelter Subsidy Grant
Recommendation: Increase the State Shelter Subsidy Grant funding by $500,000 annually.
Strategy 1.6: Increase Housing Assistance Program (HAP) Funding
Recommendation: Increase Housing Assistance Program funding by $900,000 annually
Case Management Makes the Difference
Strategy 2.2: Increase Funding for Wisconsin Homeless Case Management Services Grant Program
Recommendation: Increase funding for the HCMS Grant program by $500,000 annually.
Housing and Work
Strategy 3.4: Increase funding for Skills Enhancement Program
Recommendation: Increase Skills Enhancement Grant funding by $250,000 annually.
Housing and Access and Affordability
Strategy 4.1: Create Grant for Housing Navigation
Recommendation: Create a state grant within DEHCR, funded at $300,000 annually, to allow for COCs to hire housing navigators throughout the state.
Strategy 4.3: Create Grant for Minor Repairs for Affordable Housing
Recommendations: Create a state-funded program, initially funded at $500,000, within DEHCR to make small forgivable loans to landlords to address HQS deficiencies. By accepting this grant, each funded unit must pass HQS inspection in each year of the award period. Those who rent to low and moderate income would, after a certain time period, have the loan forgiven.
Silo Breaking
none
A Community Response
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RECOMMENDATIONS NOT REQUIRING MONEY
Focus on the Continuum
Strategy 1.2: Begin State Diversion Programming
Recommendation: Amend §16.303, Wis. Stats., and ch. Adm 89, Wis. adm. code, to identify diversion as a distinct application item in the Homelessness Prevention Program (HPP).
Strategy 1.4: Create Performance Metrics for Certain State Shelter Subsidy Grant Applications
Recommendation: Create additional performance metrics when considering SSSG applications. These could include successful housing placements, provision of trained case management, length of stay reductions, low return rates, or connection with employment and/or increased hours worked or wages earned.
Strategy 1.5: Eliminate Discrepancy within SSSG
Recommendations: Eliminate language within ADM 86.05(2) creating an inconsistency with its underlying statute
Strategy 1.7: Encourage Homeless Preferences for Housing Choice Vouchers
Recommendations: All Public Housing Agencies that administer Public Housing and/or Housing Choice Voucher programs should work with their local Continuum of Care to adopt a homeless preference for a portion of their vouchers.
Strategy 1.8: Encourage Landlords to Accept Housing Choice Vouchers
Case Management Makes the Difference
Strategy 2.1: Submit Medicaid Waiver and Pursue Other Medicaid Initiatives
Recommendations:
• The Council strongly supports efforts by DHS to submit the Medicaid waiver request and encourages CMS and DHHS to approve it rapidly. The Council should be the standard-bearer for this proposal and should work to seamlessly implement the reforms this wavier could bring.
• Explore other Medicaid initiatives to address homelessness and health.
Strategy 2.3: Expand Eligibility and Timing of Case Management
Recommendation: Evaluate the level of case management provided from the moment one becomes precariously housed through the goal of financial and housing independence. When case management is difficult to find, grant programs should be created through legislation to make it available.
Strategy 2.4: Support Professional Development of Case Managers
Recommendation: Examine current state grants to determine whether they are flexible enough to be used for such purposes. If no such programs exist, the state should create new grants to support professional development services.
Strategy 2.5: Support Efforts to Increase Numbers of Mental Health/Addiction Professionals
Housing and Work
Strategy 3.1: Collect Uniform Data on Employment Needs of Homeless Individuals
Recommendation: The four COCs should adopt uniform requirements on questions HMIS providers must ask related to employment. These may include questions about: employment status, wages earned, hours worked, type of work, employment services already received, employment interests, length of employment, job satisfaction, and proximity to housing.
Strategy 3.2: Require Representation of COC Boards on Workforce Development Boards and Vice-Versa
Each Continuum of Care, through its bylaws, can select its Board of Directors. The Wisconsin DWD authorizes 11 Workforce Development boards, geographically distributed throughout the state. Representation would improve collaboration among housing networks, job agencies, and employers.
Recommendations:
• Each COC should require that a member of its Board of Directors be an appropriate regional Workforce Development Board member.
• Each Workforce Development Board should require that it contain a representative from an appropriate COC. If this requires a change in statute or administrative rule, the Council endorses legislation to accomplish this goal.
Strategy 3.3: Emphasize Identification of Homeless Youth (18-24) and Homeless Adults as Targeted Populations within Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) Strategic Plans
Recommendation:
• Throughout that planning process, the following questions should be asked and satisfactorily included:
o Are homeless job seekers specifically and adequately represented in the State Plan’s workforce development efforts?
o Will the State Plan provide an extensive approach to employment services which involves cooperation with partner programs and agencies? Will the plan specifically encourage coordination with homeless services?
o Will the proposed employer services help potential employers to understand and reap the benefits of hiring homeless job seekers?
o Will workforce systems, under the proposed Plan updates, offer opportunities for homeless job seekers to increase their wages or advance their careers by emphasizing competitive employment with opportunities for development?
o Does the plan address improving employment services for youth, specifically homeless youth?
Strategy 3.5: Use Existing Grants for Supportive Employment
Recommendation: Examine workforce development programs to determine whether they are written with enough flexibility to authorize homeless individuals as a target population. Where that is available, a larger emphasis should be placed on meeting the needs of these individuals.
Housing and Access and Affordability
Strategy 4.2: Allow 16- and 17-year-olds to Enter into Housing Contracts
Recommendation: Adopt legislation similar to that enacted in California, Hawaii, Indiana, Missouri, Oregon, Texas, and Wyoming to allow for minors to consent for housing and related services.
Strategy 4.4: Align and Deploy Resources of Existing State Programming for Construction/Rehabilitation of Affordable Housing Units
Strategy 4.5: Explore Host Home Programs for Unaccompanied Homeless Youth
Recommendations:
• Examine state law to determine whether there are any barriers to implementing host homes.
• Where barriers exist, Wisconsin should adopt legislation to remove them.
• Local communities should determine whether this solution could satisfy a need.
Silo Breaking
Strategy 5.1: Begin Data Sharing between Department of Public Instruction and HMIS
Recommendation Execute a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to begin this partnership.
Strategy 5.2: Build Better Relationships between Department of Corrections and COCs
Recommendation: Further the partnership between the DOC and COCs, and examine whether a change in funding priorities, and therefore new legislation, is needed.
Strategy 5.3: Examine Referral between State Programs and COCs
Recommendations:
• Evaluate state programs to determine which already ask about housing status, and which programs need to build in that capacity.
• Examine whether legislation is needed to require those who self-identify as “homeless” or provide information that would reasonably lead an employee to suspect that person is homeless to be referred to their local homeless response system.
Strategy 5.4: Evaluate Local Knowledge and Performance of State Programs
Recommendation: Create a framework for periodic review of these state programs. The review should focus on each program’s degree of participation in their local homeless response.
A Community Response
Strategy 6.1: Develop Model Policies for Community Meetings and Community Responses
Recommendations:
• Develop model policies for community response.
• Design and designate an award of recognition for communities that have this type of system in place.
• Work with the legislature to codify these requirements in statute.
• Determine whether to pursue legislation that gives grant preferences for communities that operate under this type of collaborative model.
Strategy 6.2: Better Link Existing Sober Living with Housing
Strategy 6.3: Work with Health Systems to Identify and Serve Homeless Populations
Strategy 6.4: Encourage counties to pursue Pay for Success programming
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
Starts on page 25 if you want to see the details
1) Transportation
2) Childcare for Homeless Families
3) Domestic Violence and Homelessness
4) Social Mobility
5) Access to Benefits
6) Dual Generational Solution
7) Education outside K-12
8) Partnerships with Faith Community
PERFORMANCE METRICS
Not all strategies have performance metrics, but some do, and here they are:
Strategy 1.1: Increase Prevention Funding
− Reduction in evictions (Eviction Lab Data)
− Decrease in the number of persons entering
Emergency Shelter (ES), Safe Haven (SH), and Transitional Housing (TH) projects with no prior enrollment in HMIS
− Decrease in the number of persons entering ES, SH, TH, and Permanent Housing (PH) projects with no prior enrollment in HMIS
− Individual success for prevention recipients, where appropriate
Strategy 1.2: Begin State Diversion Programming
− Decrease in the number of persons entering ES, SH, and TH projects with no prior enrollment in HMIS
− Decrease in the number of persons entering ES, SH, TH, and PH projects with no prior enrollment in HMIS
− Individual success for diversion recipients, where appropriate
Strategy 1.3: State Shelter Subsidy Grant Increase
− Reduction in length of time persons remain homeless
− Reduction in PIT counts of unsheltered homeless persons
Strategy 1.4: Create Performance Metrics for Certain State Shelter Subsidy Grant Applications
− Reduction in length of time persons remain homeless
− Reduction in extent to which persons who exit homelessness to permanent housing destinations return to homelessness within 6 to 12 months and 24 months
− Increase in exits to permanent housing destinations
Strategy 1.6: Increase Housing Assistance Program (HAP) Funding
− Decrease in PIT counts of sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons
− Decrease in annual counts of sheltered homeless persons in HMIS
− Increase in exit to or retention of permanent housing
Strategy 2.2: Increase Funding for Wisconsin Homeless Case Management Services Grant Program
− Decrease in length of time persons remain homeless
− Decrease in extent to which persons who exit homelessness to permanent housing destinations return to homelessness within 6 to 12 months and 24 months
− Increase in {earned income, non- employment cash income, total income} for {adult system stayers during the reporting period, adult system leavers}
Strategy 3.4: Increase funding for Skills Enhancement Program
− Increase in earned income for {adult system stayers during the reporting period, adult system leavers}, for providers that partner with Skills Enhancement Program
Strategy 4.1: Create Grant for Housing Navigation
− Reduction in length of time persons remain homeless
− Increase in exits to permanent housing destinations
− Increase in exit to or retention of permanent housing
Strategy 4.3: Create Grant for minor repairs for affordable housing
− Reduction in PIT counts of sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons
− Reduction in annual counts of sheltered homeless persons in HMIS
My thoughts
Well, its a start. Remember, this funding is statewide, and we could use it all here in Madison. Typically they divide the money up by formulas between Milwaukee, Metro CoCs (Madison, Racine) and Balance of State.
I hope this is just the beginning and the non-financial items also get serious attention.
Since Republicans and Democrats seem to be both pushing for this to happen, looks like it will. Who knew this day would ever come!
