Housing Work Group

January 20, 2016

9am-11am

City of Austin, NHCD

Street Jones Building, 4th Floor Conference Room

Co-Chairs: Sandra Chavez (ASA) & Lori Frasco (Caritas of Austin)

Attendance: Katie Rose; Bree Williams; Niki Paul; Preston Petty; Becky Casey; Casey Cork (ECHO Staff); Lauren Avioli (NHCD); Ashlyn Riley (Caritas); Trish Rivera (Council on Recovery); Chris Laguna (ATCIC); Dylan Shubitz (HACA); Greg McCormack (Front Steps); Melissa Wheeler (Caritas); Tasha Ponciek (City of Austin); Whitney Bright (Goodwill); Rick Rivera (The Salvation Army); Jill Smith (Travis County)

Minutes

9:00-9:10Welcome and IntroductionsCo-Chairs

  • General Announcements:
  • PIT Count Reminder-over 500 volunteers

9:10-9:55Task Group UpdatesCo-Chairs

  • Housing Specialist/Landlord Outreach Committee
  • Re-structuring group to accommodate clients accepted through CA:
  • First hour-community planning
  • Second hour-folks who have recently accepted referrals through CA stay and staff; create master list and look at AmRents
  • Keller Williams assisting task group-outreach piece beginning in February
  • Working to pair our clients with their properties
  • Austin Homeless Veterans Initiative
  • Continuing to push towards achieving functional zero
  • Goal to create sustainable system of functional zero
  • Committee continues to meet every Monday morning
  • December 2015 Report: Data-drive benchmarks:
  • Chronic homelessness: Exceptions-any veteran that refuses permanent housing; any new veteran found has 90 days to be re-housed
  • Time to re-housing: re-house all chronically homeless veterans within 90 days; average of all veterans re-housed in 90 days or less-average will be skewed by clients on the streets longer than 90 days but the goal is to house all of our chronically homeless
  • House more veterans each month than new veterans entering the system that month
  • Barriers:
  • Veterans with zero income
  • Each veteran having multiple case managers (bridges, some programs can pay off debts while others can’t)
  • More PSH needed to sustain housing for those with zero income
  • Rapid Re-housing Committee
  • Formalizing, re-creating and consolidating lessons learned from veterans initiative
  • Allowing RRH program managers to speak up about what would be helpful in HMIS
  • Capital Area Food Bank working to have pilot ready in February for food stamps
  • PSH Committee
  • January 25th – First Navigation Day for PSH
  • Will be completing check-in, assessment of documents, and PSH programs will be there to meet with clients

9:55-10:15Healthy Communities Collaborative UpdateChris Laguna, ATCIC

  • Currently hiring jail liaison-focus on connecting those in institutions with services to prevent the revolving door
  • Community First! has moved in 18 people previously with MLF
  • Team of 4 ATCIC members on-site at CF
  • Prioritizing based on CA score
  • Completing bi-monthly tours for prospective residents
  • SOAR Program-has had 1 approval within 7 days; has gotten all approvals thus far (about 8)
  • Takes roughly 4-5 weeks from start to finish to complete application

10:15-10:40Coordinated AssessmentPreston Petty, ECHO

  • New CA Info Sheet-new phone number for ECHO CA hotline
  • New Chronic Homelessness Definition Guidance
  • HUD requires that every provider should watch and go through webinar-ECHO will send out information on accessing the webinar
  • Review documentation changes thoroughly

10:40-11:002016 Housing Work Group Meeting Schedule DiscussionCo-Chairs

  • With ECHO staff growing-what need is there in the community for work groups?
  • Focusing now on re-structure of the community/work groups/task groups
  • Want to ensure each work group and meeting and meaningful and productive
  • Suggestion: possibility to have electronic option for participation (phone call, voting via email)
  • Regardless of when meetings happen, could always arrange pop-up meeting if pressing decision needed to be made
  • Move meetings to bi-monthly
  • Update newsletter from task groups will be sent out in off-month
  • Contact co-chairs for urgent need/pressing issue
  • Decision or sound board