I got a little distracted and didn’t get time to give the community the good news! (Of course, you didn’t read it in the newspaper! Or see it on TV or hear it on the radio). There was this article announcing we applied the day we found out we were chosen.
Earlier this week, the City of Madison received this email and shared it with the Homeless Services Consortium.
CONGRATULATIONS– YOU’RE IN!
I couldn’t be happier to welcome you and your community to Zero: 2016! Over the next two years, Community Solutions is excited to stand shoulder to shoulder with you and your local team to help you do whatever it takes to end veteran and chronic homelessness.The selection process was competitive, and not all communities were accepted to participate. Your community stood out for its agreement to leverage real-time data for improvement and to work together across local agencies to get the job done.
Please mark your calendar for an important welcome and orientation web conference on Wednesday, November 19th from 3 – 4pm ET. Be sure to register at: https://commongroundnational.webex.com/commongroundnational/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=737343574
We will announce all Zero: 2016 communities publicly, via press release, on Thursday November 6th at 10:30am ET. We encourage you to notify your local media about your participation anytime between Thursday and Veterans Day and then to go crazy on social media! (Please do not make news of your selection public prior to Thursday. At that time, you can tweet at @cmtysolutions and use the hashtag #readyforzero.) You can use the attached short press release template and press instructions to make your local media outreach as easy as possible. If you’re planning a press conference or planning to work your selection into a Veterans Day press event, let us know by emailing Jake Maguire at jmaguire@cmtysolutions.org. You can also reach out to him for general media questions.
Zero: 2016 will launch formally in January, when the vast majority of you said you would seek to integrate your Common Assessment Tool (CAT) into your Point-In-Time count (PIT). If your community plans to integrate, you will join peer communities across the country in real time in an an unprecedented national event . Attached, you will also find a short one-pager with various training options to help prepare your community for PIT/CAT integration, including an invitation to an in-person training and/or a 4-part live online training series. For questions about CAT/PIT integration, please contact Linda Kaufman at lkaufman@cmtysolutions.org.
The website for Zero: 2016 is still under development. For now, a schedule of upcoming web conferences can be found at www.cmtysolutions.org/zero2016.
A Community Solutions team member will reach out to you soon to begin laying the groundwork for your participation. In the meantime, please notify other members of your local team of your selection. Congratulations again– we can’t wait to work with you!
In Solidarity,
Beth Sandor
Director, Zero: 2016
Community Solutions
So, what does that mean? Other communities have been able to reduce homelessness (instead of seeing it increase), many reduced chronic homelessness by drastic numbers. True Housing First, harm reduction models and other ways of providing services that will be new to our community (but not new at all) are employed. It should mean our community, as a whole, is making a commitment to reduce homelessness. I think Community Solutions will be a little surprised by the reality of what our community really does, or doesn’t do. Any which way, I think people will get a bit of a wake up call, some of our flaws will be confronted and we will be asked to work on them. Starting with, did our community do ANYTHING to announce this good news? I’m guessing not, I was a little busy yesterday, but I didn’t see anything. Here is the press release from Community Solutions.
Community Solutions Announces Selection of 67 Communities to Participate in Zero: 2016
National initiative will help communities end chronic and veteran homelessnessNovember 6, 2014 — Community Solutions announced today that it has selected 67 communities to participate in Zero: 2016, a national campaign to end veteran and chronic homelessness in the next two years. The organization said it would work intensively with these communities to meet the federal goals set by President Obama to end veteran homelessness by Dec. 2015 and chronic homelessness by Dec. 2016. The initiative, made possible by the support of generous sponsors, including Deutsche Bank, Got Your 6, The Home Depot Foundation, and JP Morgan Chase, is a rigorous follow-on to the group’s successful 100,000 Homes Campaign, which announced in June that it had helped communities house 105,000 chronically homeless Americans in under four years. (A full list of Zero: 2016 communities can be found at the end of this release.)
Zero: 2016 will formally launch in January of 2015, when the majority of communities participating say they will walk their streets block by block to survey each of their homeless neighbors during the national 2015 Homeless Point-in-Time Count. Communities will use this information to develop by-name files on each person experiencing homelessness on their streets — a strategy designed to help communities connect people to available subsidies and appropriate housing options as quickly as possible.
Participating communities will seek to accelerate their housing efforts through four key areas of work: closing the research-to-practice gap, real-time data and performance management, local systems redesign and local leadership development. Community Solutions will provide hands-on coaching and data tools, and will curate a national peer-to-peer learning network to accelerate innovation across communities.
“Chronic and Veteran homelessness are urgent, solvable problems,” said Beth Sandor, Director of Zero: 2016 for Community Solutions. “These communities represent a potential tipping point. If they can show that getting to zero is possible, we think it will become untenable for other communities not to follow suit. Zero: 2016 is about bringing shared accountability to this work. Participants are making a public commitment to get to zero on time, and they will use that commitment to drive measurable progress.”
This announcement comes on the heels of the 2014 Homeless Point-in-Time Count, released last week by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which showed that homelessness continues to decline across virtually all major categories. According to the report, communities selected to join Zero: 2016 account for a combined 31,669 chronically homeless Americans and 16,218 homeless veterans. Community Solutions estimates an overlap of 9,000-12,000 between these groups.
The 67 communities selected for Zero: 2016 represent 30 different states and the District of Columbia. Among them are 51 communities who also participated in the 100,000 Homes Campaign and 16 new communities. Combined, the group represents the joint, public commitment of 234 housing authorities, local government entities, non-profit organizations and community agencies. Five states (Connecticut, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Utah and West Virginia) were selected to participate as full states.
Zero: 2016 dovetails with other large-scale initiatives helping communities end homelessness, including the 25 Cities Initiative, led by the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Mayor’s Challenge to End Homelessness, championed by First Lady Michelle Obama. Many communities selected to join Zero: 2016 are also participating in one or both of these initiatives, and Community Solutions has coordinated extensively with the federal government to ensure that these efforts complement each other well.
Selected Communities:
Communities applied by Continuums of Care (CoCs), the 414 local groups set up to administer HUD funding to end homelessness in each region of the country.
Arizona:
Tucson/Pima County CoCCalifornia:
Sacramento City & County CoC
Richmond/Contra Costa County CoC
Watsonville/Santa Cruz City & County CoC
Fresno/Madera County CoC
Los Angeles City & County CoC
San Diego City and County CoC
Santa Maria/Santa Barbara County CoC
Bakersfield/Kern County CoC
Riverside City & County CoCState of Connecticut – Full State:
(Includes Hartford CoC, City of Waterbury CoC, Bridgeport/Fairfield/Stratford CoC, Norwalk/Fairfield County CoC, Stamford Greenwich CoC & Connecticut Balance of State CoC)District of Columbia CoC
Florida:
Big Bend CoC
Jacksonville/Duval/Clay/Nassau Counties CoC
Miami/Dade County CoC
Ft Lauderdale/Broward County CoC
Ft Myers/Cape Coral/Lee County CoC
West Palm Beach/Palm Beach County CoCGeorgia:
Columbus-Muscogee/Russell County CoCHawaii:
Honolulu CoCIllinois:
Rockford/Winnebago, Boone Counties CoC
Waukegan/North Chicago/Lake County CoC
Chicago CoC
Cook County CoCKansas:
Kansas City/Wyandotte County CoC
Wichita/Sedgwick County CoCKentucky:
Louisville/Jefferson County CoCLouisiana:
Shreveport/Bossier/Northwest CoC
New Orleans/Jefferson Parish CoCMassachusetts:
Cape Cod/Islands CoC
Springfield/Chicopee/Holyoke/Westfield/Hampden County CoCMaryland:
Montgomery County CoCMichigan:
Detroit CoC
Pontiac/Royal Oak/Oakland County CoC
Flint/Genesee County CoC
Ann Arbor/Washtenaw County CoCMissouri:
Kansas City/Independence/Lee’s Summit/Jackson County CoCMississippi:
Jackson/Rankin, Madison Counties CoC
Gulf Port/Gulf Coast Regional CoCNorth Carolina:
Winston Salem/Forsyth County CoC
Greensboro/High Point CoC
Charlotte/Mecklenberg CoCNebraska:
Omaha/Council Bluffs CoCNew Jersey:
Bergen County CoCState of New Mexico – Full State:
(Includes Albuquerque CoC & New Mexico Balance of State CoC)Ohio:
Ohio Balance of State CoCOklahoma:
Tulsa City & County/Broken Arrow CoC
Oklahoma City CoC
Norman/Cleveland County CoCPennsylvania:
Lancaster City & County CoCState of Rhode Island – Full State:
(Rhode Island CoC)South Carolina:
Charleston/Low Country CoC
Columbia/Midlands CoCTennessee:
Chattanooga/Southeast Tennessee CoC
Memphis/Shelby County CoC
Nashville/Davidson County CoCTexas:
San Antonio/Bexar County CoC
Dallas City & County/Irving CoC
Fort Worth/Arlington/Tarrant County CoCState of Utah – Full State:
(Includes Salt Lake City & County CoC, Provo/Mountainland CoC & Utah Balance of State CoC)Virginia:
Richmond/Henrico, Chesterfield, Hanover Counties CoC
Roanoke City & County/Salem CoC
Portsmouth CoC
Virginia Balance of State CoC
Arlington County CoC
Wisconsin:
Madison/Dane County CoCState of West Virginia – Full State:
(Includes Huntington/Cabell, Wayne Counties CoC, Charleston/Kanawha, Putnam, Boone, Clay Counties CoC & West Virginia Balance of State CoC)Community Solutions is a national non-profit dedicated to helping communities solve the complex social problems facing their most vulnerable residents. The organization’s work applies design thinking, quality improvement and a host of other cross-sector disciplines to issues like homelessness, unemployment, and public health. Zero: 2016 is a rigorous follow-on to the organization’s successful 100,000 Homes Campaign designed to help a select group of communities end chronic and veteran homelessness in the next two years. The initiative will formally launch in January 2015.
The good news here is that there will be new pressure to do the things we say we do (but don’t) and pressure to have an inclusive, community wide effort to end homelessness. If done right, we will greatly reduce chronic homelessness. If not, it will further expose what many of use know is happening in this community and hopefully force changes. I see this as a very good thing. It is likely to be difficult and challenging to our notions of who we are as a community, and its going to force uncomfortable conversations, which hopefully result in real results, I can’t wait!
