Balance of State Continuum of Care
Information and resources for the Balance of State Continuum of Care (BoSCoC), a funding source which serves those at risk of or experiencing homelessness in New Hampshire
New Hampshire Continuum of Care Overview
The Continuum of Care Program is designed to assist individuals, youth, and families experiencing homelessness and to provide such services needed to help them move into permanent housing, with the goal of long term-stability. The Continuum of Care promotes community wide planning and strategic use of resources to address homelessness, improves coordination and integration with mainstream resources and other program targeted to people experiencing homelessness, and allows each community to tailor it program to the particular strengths and challenges within that community.
New Hampshire has three Continuums of Care (CoC): Greater Nashua (GNCoC), Manchester (MCoC) and Balance of State (BoSCoC). The Balance of State Continuum of Care covers 223 municipalities in NH.
BoSCoC Mission & Vision
The mission of the Balance of State Continuum of Care (BoSCoC) is to provide a coordinated and sustainable system of care to individuals, youth, and families who are experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness within the BoSCoC geographical area, with the goals of preventing and ending homelessness.
The vision of success for the BoSCoC is of a community where homelessness no longer exists. In this community there would be an ample supply of safe, affordable, permanent housing and the supportive services that each individual and family may need to prevent homelessness and achieve greater self- sufficiency.
The Bureau of Homeless Services (BHS) is the Collaborative Applicant, which submits the CoC Consolidated Application to HUD on behalf of the BOSCOC. When HUD planning funding is available, the Collaborative Applicant will submit an application to HUD for CoC planning resources and if awarded will administer these for the BOSCOC. It will also assist with advising and carrying out other HUD CoC requirements.
BoSCoC Resources
Continuum of Care (CoC) Dashboards
Related Resources
2024 Videos
May 14, 2024
Balance of State Continuum of Care Meeting, May 14, 2024
Balance of State Continuum of Care Meeting, May 14, 2024
Balance of State Continuum of Care Meeting, May 14, 2024
Transcript of video:
oh and it's doing a transcript that's fun okay so if everybody could go ahead
and introduce yours I can't watch the transcript I'm sorry I have to close this like making me a little bit um
anxious so if you could go ahead and introduce yourself in the chat tell us your name in the agency um that you work
for or your um role within the balance of State even if you're just a visitor that would be great um as I said when we
started I don't know about everybody else I do know about some of you it has been a month like things have been kind
of strange they've been chaotic there have been uh seems like fire after fire
to be put out in our space so I'm hoping everybody can kind of take a break
listen to our presentation um and get some some helpful information so with that I'm going to turn it over to
Christina doson who was on my screen and now I don't see her oh there are um
Christina you should be able to share your screen for your presentation I think so yep perfect so Christina is
going to give us sort of a rapid fire mckin vinto 101 um everything that you
need to know about how to work with your homeless Liaisons in your local school district so Christina the floor is yours
awesome okay thank you thanks for inviting me today I am going to work on pulling up my little presentation here
uh I'll introduce myself so I am Christina doson um go by christe so it's fine to call me chrisy um and I work up
at the New Hampshire Department of Education um one of my main roles is as the mckenny vento state
coordinator um and so one of those roles helps me introduce mckenny vento across
the state and I was so happy to be introduced or asked to do this presentation I am going to go into
slideshow mode I won't I won't be able to see chat questions
so as as they go along um if anybody could um you know let me know if
questions come up in the chat we can we can ask questions as it goes see I can uh monitor the chat for
you and and we can let you know questions come up perfect thank you and you guys can see the um first slide okay
okay perfect um so mckenny vento this is my introduction I just wanted to kind of
go through it very quickly um and touch on the definition what students rights
are um transportation is a big issue right now uh what our homeless liaison
in the state are required to do by the law give you some data and then questions and and resources at the
end so mcken vento mcken vento homeless assistant act um um helps provide rights
and services to Children and Youth experiencing homelessness um and just if everybody
could mute as they come in I'm getting a little distracted by some of the noises that are coming through
um so basically we try to remove barriers for students accessing their
education and provide stable space for education for students who are experiencing so much other change and
Trauma in their life and like I said before to provide these Services all schools are required
to designate a homeless liaison and every single School in our state does have one of those um who help students
get what they need transition into school if they need to um and help
facilitate a smooth
education the mcken evento definition of homelessness um is much broader than
Hud's definition we look at students who are living doubled up doubled up is what
we call when they're living with a family or relative um Family relative or
friend due to loss of housing economic hardship or similar problems and this can be a broad rrange of things but
basically if they have no other place to go and they have to live in somebody else's house that can be considered
mckenny vento living in motels hotels trailer parks or campgrounds due to lack of
alternative or in adequate housing um so this is important if they're living in
the hotel because they have no other place to go that is mckenny vento um we
do have campgrounds in New Hampshire and sometimes it is a choice of a family to
live in a campground and then bounce into like maybe an Airbnb for the winter um so it does matter if there's a there
is a choice um so it's lack of alternate adequate housing is the big part there
and then we go into um living in space is not meant for human nighttime
residents so cars parking garages um outside spaces and then um
shelters um and then the big one too that we have to think about is substandard housing which can be you
know they have a house or they rent an apartment but it is inadequate for human habitation so there's um a mold
infestation but they don't have any other choices and they have to stay there or there's um a rodent
infestation same thing um there's not adequate bathroom or kitchen space those
can be considered mckenny vento um and receive
Services the words fixed regular and adequate are really what we use as a filter for for when we look at whether
the situation is mckin vental or eligible or not is is it fixed not
subject to change the student is going to be going there regularly every single night consistently and then
adequate which is basically what I just said about substandard it meets um
physical and psychological needs um so if a student's space is not adequate it
can be affecting their education and mckenny vento can step in to help so can the student go to the same
place every night to sleep in a safe and Su sufficient
space I like to talk about doubled up a little bit too because that can get a little tricky sometimes people say well
they moved in with grandma and Grandma has four bedrooms and you know they have plenty of space um but really it's the
reason why they're moving in sharing of housing due to loss of their housing for
economic hardship or similar reason so questions that we think about to determine eligibility are why did the
parties move in together was it some sort of Crisis um or a plan for a mutual
benefit if it's a plan for a mutual benefit they are deciding you know hey we're we're we're really good friends we
want to share a house together um and you know share that rent burden that's
not necessarily mckenny vento so we look at every situation on a case-by casee
basis um think about how permanent is it intended to be and the big question is
where would that student live if they were not doubled up if they did not have that particular space to go where would
they be so I'm going to pause are there any
questions on that definition of mckenny vento homelessness doesn't look like it
so once a student is determined mckenny vento eligible um then they have certain
rights under mckenny vento um the first is you know fape the free and appropriate public
education a big one is they can enroll in in school immediately even if they don't have documents that are normally
required for school enrollment this can be um birth certificates school records
it can be um vaccination um proof that type of thing
we really just want to get the school the student into school immediately and then we work on getting the paperwork
after um after the students in school on the other hand some students continue to
attend their school of origin um and that educational stability is a is a big
factor in determining educational success for students so we tend to look
at the school of origin as their best interest um and we we try to keep them
in the school of origin if possible some sometimes that means um transporting the
student back and forth and so they are required to receive that Transportation um through District
cost one of the other things that they are eligible for free and reduced lunch I don't have that on this slide um they
are eligible to receive um any educational services this can include
extracurricular activities so we help with sports and music programs and um um
any school type of activity that a student might not be able to participate in due to their living situation um and
Status we as mcken vento Liaisons help remove that barrier for
them I just talked about this a little bit so maintaining School of origin maintaining stability is a big um part
of mckenny vento we want them to remain in the school of origin to the extent feasible
that is what they know they have friends um but sometimes that's not possible and they do have a choice to attend the
school in which they are the enrollment area of where they are
living sometimes when that happens they can have a best interest determination meeting with all districts and um
parties involved to make sure that that is the best interest for the for the student
um age length of time it takes to get to the school um time remaining if it's a
senior usually um even if it's a long distance you know we we work to keep the
student in that particular school to finish out their their
career just you know dialing in on this parents do have the right to choose and
if they choose um the school of origin but the the the districts have a meeting
and say maybe this isn't the best interest for the student the parents can dispute that and so there is a dispute
policy that goes through um for the state to make sure that everybody um understands what is best and we are
following mckenny vento as best
possible I'm running through this pretty quickly so I want to make sure I'm just going to pause again to make sure
there's no more questions okay um unaccompanied youth
uh we get some students who are without a parent or Guardian so they're residing
somewhere where they don't have a parent or Guardian around then they would qualify for an unaccompanied youth
status if they are unaccompanied Youth and also living in a situation that has
is under that mckenny vento definition then they would qualify as an unaccompanied youth under mckenny vento
um District liaison step in to help these unaccompanied youth navigate um and
identify them if they're not necessarily reaching out on their
own um again caseby case basis we enroll the student if someone's if a student
shows up at a school and doesn't have their parent or Guardian with them and and has a situation that is qualifying
for M vento enroll the students and then figure out um paperwork situations all
that kind of thing if a student is qualifies for K through 12 education in
New Hampshire they can be considered mcken vento unaccompanied Youth and that's up through actually this slide says 21 it's actually 22 in New
Hampshire now and I just I like to throw the
flowchart for when you think a student is unaccompanied um just thinking
about what happens if a if if there's it really comes down to if there is some
sort of plan or a choice they're not considered mckenny vento um if there is
a certain emergent situation and they have to leave their home for you know
families evicted um they can't find a house that's all together so they have to send you know the student off to live
with an aunt something like that that student would be considered mckenny vento but if say the family's
transferred for work and they want the student to stay in the school district for a sport and they find a friend to
have that student live with that's not mckenny vento so we do think about what's happening and what the situation
is transportation's really big in mcken vento right now mostly because we are finding ourselves transporting um a lot
of students there's a supply and demand situation happening where we are having a shortage of drivers and um the price
for this Transportation has has gone up exponentially we are looking at you know
I'm getting quotes of $600 a day to transport one student which is financially really tricky for
districts what is in the law we have to transport students if it is needed um
between their school of origin and the school district in which they are living
so if they're if they've moved to a temporary house um they're doubled up you know Hotel whatever in a in a city
or town that's outside the district for their School of origin those two districts work together to provide
transportation and split the
costs if the student is still living in their District of origin that uh um District just you know pays for the cost
provides Transportation it's all set when they're living in another District that's when we're running into these um
cost situations just a little bit more it's
regarding you know we we provide transportation um for any student who
needs it provided for extracurricular activities if that's needed for after school care if that's needed um and
collaboration between all parties involved is really the biggest biggest part of this
piece I wanted to talk a little bit about funds we use for mckenny vento um
and what available to districts to help help provide students what they need the first one is the biggest the biggest one
Title One Part a um every single district is required to have a homeless
set aside every single year in their Grant um they must have consultation with their
homeless liaison and take into account the needs of the district when setting aside this fun this money and it can be
used to pro to remove barriers for students experiencing homelessness common uses are um supplies maybe extra
instruction for students um we can pay for homeless liaison time through this
this this funding source um the second one the mckenny vento grant grant so
there is funding for mckenny vento itself um New Hampshire's allocation is very small it's not a big Grant um and
so we we run a competitive Grant with that runs on a three-year cycle we're currently in year two and have five
District grantees across the state new applications for that will come out in Spring
2025 um and you know who knows what we'll get next year this year we actually got less than 350 for the the
upcoming Grant cycle so I'm crossing my fingers that we get a little bit more because the next piece the ARP education
of homeless children and youth is coming to a close and this was our pandemic fund funding so part of the American
Rescue plan um students experiencing homelessness receive their own pot of money New Hampshire actually received
just over $2 million um as a piece of that and so we were able to um give that
out to districts in two parts one was a competitive Grant which again a very small amount of districts applied for I
only have I think it's the same number five um for that and then the other was
a formula grant and that was a bigger piece of the pot and we were able to get that out to a lot of districts who don't
normally have that mckin funding and it's very flexible funding um for students experiencing homelessness
Transportation supplies um wraparound support we've had districts um come
together with Community um Outreach identification of students was big for
this this pot of funding um and part of it the state was allowed a a set aside
and so we set up contracts with Community organizations um already placed for
wraparound Ser services for these students so Waypoint Grant at YMCA um families in transition and then
we've been working with the U success project very closely with this funding
and I'm sad to see it ending and I really do hope that you know in the future we see something like this come
through because once it ends we just go back to our very small Mento
Grant um I'm not going to read these I just wanted to put them in so people are aware the list of the um job
responsibilities for the local liaison so those District Liaisons is quite large biggest one is identifying um
students in need and students who would fall under the mechan mental
eligibility so providing um parents or Guardians support making sure that
students are receiving the services they need working with Early Education programs um like I said I'm just going
to go through these really quickly um making public notice um part of what
we're doing we post um information about mckenny vento out in the community so districts do
have um posters and information in shelters and food banks and churches and
any any Community organization libraries um where where families might see it and be able to understand what what could be
available to them if they are in the mcken vento situation
um and then the unaccompanied youth just making sure that the um they have a
voice in their academics giving them an opportunity to reive their services and
making sure that they are able to fill out the FAFSA receive that support if they choose um to move on with their
education and they can help them file their status as independent students um through that document
okay so I just I threw in some State data state level data um so one of the
things if you look at 2018 2019 we had about 4,000 students experiencing
homelessness and then through covid it dropped about a thousand students um
this was because students went home we weren't able to communicate with them through their guidance counselors social
workers um and find them as as easily and also people moved around quite a bit
during covid 2022 2023 is my um most recent
data the numbers are starting to climb again and I expect and I hope 23
24 um is higher because we know that there are
definitely students experiencing homelessness in New Hampshire at higher numbers than what is being counted in
the schools and the goal of mckenny vento and the goal of our Liaisons is to find the students so that they can
receive the services they need to actually have success in their educational
career um if you look at the pie chart at the bottom that is where we find most of the
students um what their housing looks like our huge percentage is doubled up
that is where we find most of our students um hotel motel unsheltered and shelter
or traditional transitional housing in there the unsheltered um concerns me quite a
bit um that number is fairly high for what um we've seen and then the hotel
motel is actually also a growing piece um for New
Hampshire then I kind of put in our special special education overlaps with mckenny vento quite a bit um so those
numbers are almost half um of what we see and then unaccompanied Youth and
English language learners have have a good po piece of our population as
well so that's all the information I have kind of a quick overview nice little here's mckenny
vento here's the definition here's some of the things we're doing um my next
slide and I'll share this Melissa I haven't sent you this yet but I will share it with you um a lot of resources
out there if you want to learn more about about mckenny
vento Christine I think what stood out to me was the number of unaccompanied youth that you showed because um
our we're not capturing that number so there's a disconnect somehow and that
just kind of putting it out there for the whole group to consider um that's an opportunity for us to work better with
our school districts to make sure um all of those families who are you
know who have the youth in school experiencing unsheltered homelessness or even the youth themselves have
information about our projects um and we're not going to solve that today but
I think that's something worth uh pursuing in the very near future especially as we're we're coming up on
summer so we're going to lose touch with a lot of these youth very very soon um but perhaps we can get a plan in place
for next year years that we have some better connections across our schools um will I saw you had your hand
up good morning um just a question about the
numbers uh for homeless Youth and um you
know when we hear about homeless numbers we always hear about the point and time count numbers but rarely do we hear here
about um uh homeless youth in k12 and it almost seems that the numbers
are treated differently is there a reason why that that is so why the numbers are
treated differently and why we only talk about point in time count most of the
time um because i' I've always been making the argument that our homeless
numbers are way larger than just point and time count and rarely do we talk about
homeless youth in in K12 just
curiosity so Christina maybe we can both take a shot at this I think from my perspective I it the conversation is
happening perhaps just in different settings than you're in will um because
I'm part of quite a few meetings where we do talk about these numbers pretty regularly um and so maybe we just need
to do a better job of presenting that information to this larger group um but
also Christine I have one last thought and then if you I I will stop talking um I think connecting to your local mckin
vento liaison in the school district in in Portsmouth and surrounding communities will help you get your more
local numbers yeah um yeah I think it's spaces where we're talking about this um is not
overlapping right now and so this is why this is really important that I'm here at this meeting we're getting this
information out here um and I'm on other things with Melissa too um and I also
think it's that doubled up number that HUD doesn't recognize that is our L the large part you know those are families
that are displaced they don't have another place to go they are you know through mckenny vento eyes homeless um
but we don't see it at HUD we're not allowed to count that in that point in time count um and those are the numbers
that get publicized um because they're at that that National level so we are I mean we are definitely trying to bring
it further in the conversation and I appreciate um everyone listening
today say like when we did our Council on housing stability data we had multiple sources of data that we use
including um these mckin vento numbers so we we have the many years worth of
numbers to show the trend and then we put in some narratives to help explain the ups and downs and and wise why
things might change um several hands are up operations
manager I'm not sure who that is I am Jeff from hundred nights hey Jeff so the
question I have is individuals that are homeschooled do they still qualify for
any mckin vento services so that gets a little tricky um
mckenny vento is tied to public schooling um so schools do not have um the
requirement to reach out to students who are homeschooled to offer services some
homeschool students do come into the building right for you know special or something like that and then when at
that touch point we can we can kind of step in and help a little bit um but other than that if they are homeschooled
and have removed themselves from the district um they're not counted in the mckenny vento piece
thanks Christina and Megan you have your hand up I'm I'm just gonna Echo basically
what you just said there is a definition difference like HUD dictates the
definition for the coc's and it is quite different than what the mckin vento
schools have it's that um doubled up number where uh that is not in the point
in time it is not considered literally home unless um it is considered housed
so just going that um that's that's a big um and the point in time is very
important for HUD cooc funding and that's probably why you hear that more in the COC than the other
um and talking about some other things um and I wanted to actually go
back to what Melissa just said about um contacting your local liaison I do have
a list of current liais on on the nhed website that's specifically my web page
um so if you scroll down at the bottom of it there's contacts for the current year if you want to reach out um it is
kind of a everchanging position there's a lot of turnover there but most of
those are are current and available and if you can't get a hold of them let me know and we'll we'll get you the name um
but I would encourage you to reach out to that person and just say who you are and kind of what you do and how you know
maybe there's a connection that can be made
and Mandy I just saw your comment in the chat about in your um in your Grant
reporting and applications you supplement pit data with your own data doe numbers um in the youth count that
the youth Su youth success project does talking is hard um so I think
that's that's a really important point about you know each piece of data is a
tongue tester each piece of data is one part of the story so we we have to put it all together to show what we
can any other questions for Christina or comments
thoughts no so I will um share Christina's slides in the link to the
website when I send it out um Susan I see you waving at the camera do you have a question
yes I do actually um if we have a family here at the shelter whose child is going
already going to doora schools already being provided um transportation to that
school because it's not our school um and she was homeless before
she came here and we move her into our transitional housing which would put her
yet again in a different School District can that child still attend the school
in the same district but outside of that neighborhood so that's part of yeah
that's part of what mckin vento does is offer that stability so especially for students who are moving around like that
um Dober will you know just let them know communication is key um and they
will they will work to help help provide transportation all right yeah perfect
perfect you I don't see any other questions in
the chat any other comments or questions for
Christina no okay um so your presentation actually kind of
flows nicely into our next part which is um I wasn't planning on diving
into these numbers too intensely because I don't have all of the breakdowns um
but we do have our preliminary point and time count breakdown by by County um and
I'm going to show you 23 and 24 just because that's what I have open and kind of neatly totaled let me just share that
screen um just as a sort of a checkpoint for where we're at and I think once
we're um at the point where I can work with Megan a little bit because I just
thought of this this morning Megan so I haven't even asked you to help me do this yet um going at some point in a
near future or maybe at a future meeting we can kind of do the breakdown showing the different populations that are represented in the pit um I'm not sure
that we can do that part by County but um I don't know stay tuned we'll see what we can figure out but we do have
our numbers um I think the biggest thing and actually I should have shown 22 as well
but I didn't so I don't have it broken down with the total the biggest thing I wanted to highlight is um
first of all the dramatic increase in unsheltered this year I call it dramatic it seems pretty significant to me it's
over 200 it's 20 I'm doing math real quick on the spot 241 I think somebody
check that um I think it's 241 newly identified unsheltered individuals um
and speaking to what Christina had said these are just the ones who have been identified we know that our point and
time count is not perfect we know know that we don't capture everyone for a variety of reasons um but I will say the
community is really rallied this year and came together for a much more robust
point in time count um and it's reflected in the numbers and some of the most dramatic
differences um I'd say bellnap County had a pretty significant difference
Carol County they uh Hillsboro and marrat those were
the ones I really wanted to H Rockingham is oh Rockingham and straford so many counties
did a much more robust count this uh this year
um and it's um I'm trying to carefully say
it because politics are very strange right now um there is a lot of attention
on unsheltered homelessness right now um and I I don't know how we're going to
necessarily navigate the next coming months with with a lot of focus on encampments and our numbers so much
higher than before and Freeman I see your hand give me half a second and then I will pause so you can um jump in here
the one other point I just wanted to note was our sheltered numbers look like they've gone down
significantly um the big difference and I I have it noted here is our 2023
numbers included um it was like 600 and I forget I'll have to find the exact
number it was a really large number of individuals of households that were staying in a hotel paid for by the New
Hampshire emergency rental assistance program so in a hotel paid for with
government funds um that counted as sheltered homelessness and we did have
those programs entering into hmis um and getting connected with coordinated entry
so our 2023 numbers while it was accurate that those folks were there it
was a bit of an anomaly so we're we're closer to our Baseline for sheltered than we have been before um I think it's
slightly higher but we also had our cold weather shelters this year again um
Freeman do you want me to keep sharing my screen while you ask your question or comment or do you want me to stop so we can see each
other uh it was just more sharing sentiment than anything I mean the
numbers the numbers right um and uh the pit count shows one thing but like
Christine and I were talking about uh the disheartening news that like the balance of State coordinated entry like
prioritization list went up by like 300 bodies you know like and and we're talking like month over month right um
so I think some of this is due to our to your point more robust efforts to
collect data during the point in time count um you know Asen was in charge of
the bellnap county team I I I coordinated overall and helped with the marrat county team I definitely think we
had a more robust pick count this year than we have in previous years we had uh even a QR code that participants could
scan and they could do self-reporting um so I think that increasing people's
access through technology is one of the reasons we saw numbers Spike but it's
no uh secret that uh last year in June
all the people that were in hotels due to Erp hit the streets and some of them managed to cultivate enough sympathy uh
to to to get a couch for a number of months but after Christmas and people
start getting those credit card bills it's like all right Christmas is over get out and we saw a real
increase um in in that uh February to
now time period of this year and I think we're really just starting to see what happens to you when you yank all that
federal assistance for those uh hoteling abilities or temporary housing whatever
we want to call it um so you know and
and there is indeed no one to go and the encampment sweeps have been really picking up pace I
mean just in conquered alone it's literally every week there are
two of them that we are being asked to address and in Laconia to your point about it being political it got real
political real fast and is getting real ugly real fast um and there is just
nowhere for a Shena and I to put these people nowhere um so you know we either need to
provide shelter or we're going to see tents on Main Street like there's there's no ifs ANS
or butts about it
um and hearing that same sort of sentiment across the entire State
um I'm seeing Matt Bushi nod um I know he and I have had many conversations
about Manchester um I've been down doing Outreach in Manchester with DHHS
leadership um and I think
I don't know I'm I don't want to get myself in trouble and say things but I am nervous about how it's going to play
out um because you're right there's just not enough beds for people um kind of
connected to this just want to put it on the radar that I know many of you were involved with Senate Bill 406 that was
trying to add additional funding to the shelters um in order to help support
them and and keep doors open and provide you know
the um all of the case management and housing navigation Services um a few
weeks ago it was um voted down in the house it goes I'm getting updates like
left and right today it goes back to the house finance today where it's expected to be voted down again um but I did just
get notice of a late item that was added to the fiscal committee agenda for Friday trying to do the exact same thing
um I will include that link when I send out all of the information showing what we're asking for um this is this is not
a promise that the funding is coming it's another sort of like last ditch attempt to get the funding that we were
hoping for um I don't know how it's going to go but that's happening on
Friday so hopefully we'll know by the end of the week if there are additional dollars coming through to
support our shelter so I will make sure to send that out as well um any other
comments or thoughts on the point in time
numbers none um our next agenda item is
noo is coming soon in quotes because we don't know what that means in HUD world
but it does seem um Mandy I'm not going to comment on your your comment but um
yes I see it um and I've been distracted let me go back to my agenda the
uh Christy shot and I have been sort of anticipating that the noo the the HUD
annual competition for folks who are unfamiliar with the term noo um we anticipate that it's coming soon
everything sort of happening in the same pattern that has happened in the last few years so we expect that it will be
released sometime around Fourth of July that typically is when it has been coming out um I'm usually camping and
chrisy will text me and say no fo dropped and I get to read it on the beach um and then it's usually due at
the end of September so I wanted to give Christy a chance to just share some ideas share some reminders so you can
start thinking about possible projects so that you're not scrambling once it is released so Chrissy I'll give you a
couple minutes to talk through some noo ideas um so first of all for all of you
who have um grants with us through the Continuum of Care or why
HTP and your renewal Grant um we will be looking at pulling down your annual
performance reports very very soon for scoring purposes um so we will be sending out
those a annual performance reports having you take a look at them and correct any data in hmis prior to us
using any of that information we typically give you a couple of weeks to clean up that data um we do anticipate
the 2024 noo coming out soon I think we shared last time maybe not but the noo
is moving to every two years which is phenomenal we don't know what next year
will look like as of yet HUD has shared that they're still working out
this process but there will be an opportunity for agencies to potentially if they need to reallocate or do
something new with a project there might be that opportunity so we will look forward to that next year um balance a
seat does have we are I'm hosting a bids Conference next Wednesday the
22nd um for anyone who is interested in applying for any potential new or bonus
funding um through the 2024 noo this is open to Renewal projects as well who may
want to expand their projects um or any
new projects that you can think of that you might want to apply for so I highly encourage you to come to our meeting
next Wednesday I will put my email in the chat I did send it out to everybody but just in case I can forward that off
to you and that's all I got Chrissy I got
distracted by somebody telling me that their child keeps calling me mama when they see me on the screen so I apologize
but did you mention the focus on housing and healthc care leverages
can you touch base on that real quick yes so in the last I believe two noos um
HUD has really focused on leveraging health care resources and leveraging
housing resources um with Healthcare they are looking for Partnerships between continu
of care projects and healthcare agencies in your area a lot of your agencies
already do this and already have those Partnerships with Healthcare um they're also looking at Partnerships
with housing authorities and other housing resources um to kind
of have some other funding that's available to the cooc projects for
people to be able to continue to reside in permanent housing um so one of the big things is looking at can you do a
partnership with your local housing provider or hire Housing Finance Authority well they'll assist with the
rental assistance portion and your agency would assist with the Supportive Services sides of things um typically
HUD is looking for us to with any new project to see if they are able to leverage either Healthcare or housing
resources um Freeman they are not acknowledging renewal grants at this
time even though most of you already work with healthc care providers across the board um they're really looking at
those new projects to have those Partnerships with either Healthcare or housing authorities or other housing
options thank you trying Freeman the only other thing I want to
mention is that um chrisy and I have been tossing around some ideas that we'll bring to the executive committee
next month and then bring to this group when the noo does open um about ways to
use our data a little bit more to provide um either like bonus points or incentives for projects to apply um
looking at a couple of things we've tossed around is like areas um with the
highest amount of homelessness so again like maybe using our point and time numbers just to show like this County
had the highest this one had the next highest and none of this is like set in stone it's just ideas that we've been
tossing around um because HUD has also indicated that um we should be using our
data to do needs assessments and things so that was one part we were looking at and the other part we wanted to look at
was uh by County how many permanent Supportive Housing beds how many rapid
rehousing beds do we have currently and where where are the gaps between like
the numbers of homelessness and the numbers of beds available and finding a way to prioritize those um if people
have ideas or thoughts that might work send us an email and let us know because we want to find a way to really get the
projects in the areas that they're needed how how to also ask us every single year if we're doing Gap analysis
of our Continuum of Care and our service coverage areas um and just like for one
example we only have one permanent support of housing project in eastern Rockingham and it serves about 14 people
um so really we're looking at to have some data driven decisions about where
we have those gaps in our system and what we can do about them any thoughts or questions on that
and again I know we just sort of threw all this sort of information at you so feel free to think about it send us
ideas um you can attend Chrissy's session I think you said it's next week
um to hear more about what we're expecting um last year we did get all
six bonus projects that the COC applied for fre minut I see you hold on half a second um our COC did get all six bonus
projects um and some of those bonus projects are actually helping us at BHS
build up our collaborative applicant staff to help continue doing the work that HUD has been asking us to do um so
one of those positions will really be doing project focused um like system performance work
and tracking their aprs and tracking um their outcomes and helping strategize
how to improve different um different items that HUD actually scores us on um
and then we'll be adding a position that will be dedicated to COC Grant
Management so some of the more um concrete tasks like the monitoring and
the contract stuff will go to a different person so Christy can really spend all of her time doing some of the
COC system workk that continues to improve our score that helps us get these new projects so um I think a COC
we're in a really good position um as far as new projects go so
um our annual renewal demand is around 7.7 million this year um and typically
the bonus projects are what 5% Christie I think it's about 5% of our annual renewal demand so uh there is the
potential um I'm doing math while we talk um of bonus funding of a
about 385,000 we won't have the exact number until the noo actually comes out
but it's a decent amount of money for a decent Siz project if you'd like to start thinking about what you might want
to do with that um so we just wanted to give everybody a chance to start
brainstorming before that like 90day window of the noo hits and we don't want it to be
frantic and Freeman I saw your hand I did I almost forgot to it was just
um when we talk about gaps um you know an unsheltered homeless being such a an
issue of Optics right you know cu the folks that
um that we're always talking about the you know let's let's call them the 1centers right you know the people that
are maybe associated with some of the uh symptoms of poverty and these undesirable behaviors that are a result
um you know that top percentage of the unsheltered population that maybe there's a lot of uh publicly visible
behaviors associated with would really benefit from something that was low barrier to no barrier um like pallet
shelter.com and I'm just wondering um if there are and if not why
there are not uh efforts to uh like like noos specifically for things like the
pallet shelter initiative because it's a FEMA solution that was deployed during Hurricane Katrina and we have nearby
examples in New England that are touting great success uh people stay for an average of 6 to 12 months and then move
on to permanent housing and it gives them their dignity back and it gives us our main streets back so from an optic
standpoint this is good for everybody this satisfies business owners which let's face it money talks and even if
you want to REM remove all the humanity from this issue and and appeal to people's selfish Natures this is a good
way to do that um because the people that maybe I'll come out and say it hate
poor people hate homeless people hate people that maybe use substances um if you can give them a
meaningful way to sweep the streets so to speak um rather than the really
expensive thing we're doing right now which is playing whack-a-mole with human beings um I just wonder why when we've
got such a Deployable solution when you can have 26 people off the street or 30
people off the street in a matter of 3 days provided the mone's there because that's how long it takes a pallet
shelter Village to set up is three days um I just wonder why um we're we're not
we're not going full steam ahead at at Solutions like this that are scalable so I have a couple thoughts and
then um I'll pause and let others time in I would say HUD
made an attempt with sowo that supplemental noo to to focus on unsheltered we got two projects which
was better than nothing um but it wasn't for that purpose um HUD has also said
they're focusing on unsheltered homelessness coming up I don't know what that's going to mean um but one thing
I'll say is um last budget cycle so state budget I don't know what my state
fiscal years are so last time we went and did the budget um our Bureau put in a request for $10 million per state
fiscal year for shelter purposes and the Hope was to better support the existing
shelters and then have opportunities for um adding some non- congregate Solutions
because that is also part of the noo is what are you doing about non-congregate Sheltering which is exactly what these pallet shelters would be considered um
so we did request 10 million per state fiscal year and we got four um so
so I would say in the next budget cycle which we're starting to prepare for if
you see requests from the state for increased shelter funding call and write
whoever you can to support that request um because the
only way we're going to get the resources we need is if people show up and and advocate for and I can't do the
advocate I can do the requesting and the justifying with the data but if everybody else shows
up banging down those doors um maybe we can make some
progress any other questions or thoughts on
that hey Melissa it's Gary hey Gary um with regards to the statement that you
just made for for myself long standing and a lot of folks have heard I don't know what don't know and for the the um
the funding that you're talking about not the the HUD funding but the the state run funding is there the
possibility to create perhaps a central distribution that notifies the COC that
X Y andz bill is coming if you want to support it here's who you reach out to
it exists um go to the housing acttion New Hampshire website and get signed up for their
alerts thank you welcome that's a great point because I don't know that everybody knows about that um Housing
Act in New Hampshire ATT tracks they're the advocacy body in New Hampshire and they track all of the legislation um and
they are generally the ones who will do sort of like call to action um you know letters needed or testifying you know
people are needed to testify um if you can't find it I can connect you with the right person to get you on that list
thank you so much I appreciate it you're welcome right anyone
else this is a quick meeting this week or week month I don't know what we're doing anymore um the only other item I
have is that the um every seat on our
executive committee is up for Renewal this year so we I have a survey already
created I'm going to drop it in the chat we will be seeking nominations for every
single position um I wrote it like I the survey that's
coming out tells you what the positions are and it talks about the specific responsibilities for the executive
committee um over the past two years we did a lot of work cleaning up our governance Charter so it was clear what
the executive committee role was um prior to that I think it was really vague and
unclear um really kind of frustrating and hard to understand so we bulleted
out and I will send all of this to you to look at um the specific responsibilities how frequently we meet
um how we vote um and I I'll just send it all to you
instead of trying to read it to you but um in general it's it's six times a year we meet every other month opposite the
COC meetings um we may have to adjust the time because uh my director changed
our management team meetings to directly conflict with everything um COC schedule
so um we will once we have a a new group we will set that recurring meeting um
but the the responsibilities really fall within um how to plan and use the COC
funds um I want to see how I wrote it so the decisions and recommendations
for COC funding purposes have to be made within the HUD Continuum of Care rules and regulations so we're voting on
priorities for the noo we can't say well our priori is going to be something that HUD doesn't fund we have to make sure
we're prioritizing it um in the way that HUD will actually approve um so we
provide Direction and recommendations uh for the planning process so those things we were bouncing
around about do we want to score based on the pit do we want to score based on gaps that was one of the things that the
executive committee will make a formal recommendation on um the second one is
to make all formal recommendations requiring a vote to the COC make recommendations for goals and strategies
to prevent an end homelessness within the balance of State service area and approve all corrective action plans that
result from the COC annual performance monitoring which Christy had mentioned earlier in this meeting so those are the
four responsibilities of the executive committee um sometimes our meetings
really are just getting together to chat about what's going on and see if there are topics we want to learn more about
um and then a couple of times a year we have specific things that we must act on
um and we have I lost the list one four five six
there are eight positions that we will be seeking nominations for um the committee or the term runs for
two years you are able to serve consecutive years you are also able to
nominate yourself I do ask that if you nominate another person that they know
that you're nominating them and it's not a surprise U please make sure that they're aware they're being nominated um
and that they are okay with being on the ballot um I I would hate to have
somebody nominated on a ballot who's really either unwilling or unable to um
serve in that position um I will set the dates I didn't get that far before our
meeting of like how long the ballot will be open but I will send it out today um and generally we give about a
week for nominations and then the vote will happen in June I'll send out a
survey an electronic survey with all of the um the nominees in each position I'm
trying to find the chat again so I can send it's not a pretty link but the link
will bring you to the page with the nominations I will also send it in an email to all of you so you don't have to
try and save it today and and make it decision today um but it is in there and Freeman thank you very much with um for
putting in the housing acttion New Hampshire link and um Lynn I see was it lincom and Leonia
moving forward with the p Village okay so there's more pallet
information there's a lot happening in the chat that I missed so cool you guys are making connections and that's great
no that's good the the context is is that the mayor's task for course which I'm on with my director Beth is pushing
forward they've applied for some leftover arpa funding and we're waiting for the official answer back but being
the opportunist that I am um this is a scalable solution and grow or die and all those sentiments so why not scale up
um you know I would love to see more than just one pallet shelter because we've got quite an issue in my hometown
which I'm not a service provider there but it's gross to watch it go down uh having lived there most of my life and
conquered isn't getting any better it's getting worse um and we're just like I said playing whack-a-mole with people
and they're dying not excellent that that's
happening but excellent point um we have time if anybody would like to
share any updates about what's happening in your community or your
agency I'll give it a moment to see if anyone has anything they'd like to
share hey Melissa this is Gary again hey Gary um I'm unable to access the link
you shared okay I am having technology challenges
fair enough not even a worry I will um
have to figure that out when we're not in this meeting and I will just resend by email I'm sorry fair enough thank you
no that's all right there are worst things in the world oh goodness all right any other
oh Christy is waving at me of course I have something um the coordinated entry
subcommittee will be sending out hopefully very soon a survey for participants who are either currently in
coordinated entry or who have gone through the coordinate entry process um
and I will send out more information in that email but we're looking to get our annual feedback from participants so
that we can continue to improve that system we are also working on developing
a survey for housing providers so you'll see that in the next coming weeks as
well right oh Heidi's got her hand up go
ahead idy um just the you subcommittee we met met yesterday and many of the
work groups are doing all kinds of work um the rural youth homeless Outreach work group is meeting with uh several
providers that are working on a um training series around rural youth homelessness they'd like to spread
across the state um they're working on that uh the training standards work group is meeting to put together uh
documents following the great work that was done with the Outreach uh curriculum
and adding a a layer of um uh trainings that might be pertinent to youth on top
of that um and then the driver's ed and Licensing work group is working with the
Department of Motor Vehicle vehicles and lots of other community um and state
organizations around uh looking at scholarships for um driver's ed for
folks um looking at where a car is available for people to take their
driver's test um paying for any of the fees for these things there is a rolling
uh they're rolling out a mobile van through the de Department of Motor Vehicles which they're still ramping up
being able to travel to help people get their documents uh they have a list of folks they're going to be starting with
um but they're trying to get the van teched out I'm not sure how to say that right but um so that that can go to
other places um they are also looking at Big Brothers Big Sisters to develop a
mentorship program around working with youth to help them get their driving hours in um and triaa as a p possible partner
and the um Automobile Association as well um and there is a single point of
contact work group that is continuing to meet uh they are working with the colleges and universities around similar
to what a mcken vento does in the K through2 schools um something also to happen in the colleges and universities
and I did just get an email about um some potential National legislation on that as well so stay tuned for that um
and then the youth count work group um is being um morphed into a group that
might be able to do um the youth lens for our point in time count for um
January and there's a bunch of work going on with that where they are also putting together the data from the 2022
youth count that was done and a research project with Plymouth State University so stay tuned for the information from
that as well so that's a ton of work and they're continuing to meet and um yeah
that's what's happening with the youth subcommittee thank you just real quick
um I'm participating in over theedge this year um anybody that wants to see me jump off a building uh feel free to
contribute to that all the proceeds are going to our mobile food pantry um our
mobile food pantry is entirely funded by donations um so Jameson um who is part
of our team drives around the cap mobile food pantry van through both
counties um he serves elderly Shu inss um as well
as our unsheltered friends and neighbors um so it's not just people experiencing homelessness it is many who are
experiencing food insecurity and we are currently uh we have a second van but we
don't have the money to fund it and that will be another uh van for food in
security uh and uh mobile Outreach is our goal um so anybody that can help
contribute to that uh giv smart United Way link uh anybody that's not familiar
with what over theedge really is uh you can repel off of The Brady Sullivan Tower which is the tallest building uh
in this part of the country before you hit Canada um so North of Boston it's
the largest building um uh I've raised money for it for a couple of years I've
actually never hit my goal to be able to repel but my director was able to do it the year before last she hit her goal
but again all the money goes to our mobile food pantry really important cause um so thanks um yeah I think
that's all of it thanks
frean all right last chance for any updates and then uh you all get almost
an hour
back none I did go ahead I just saw your hand
go up right thank you last minute I just wanted to share with this community of
providers that way point is now providing youth navigation supports to young people throughout um the entire
State of New Hampshire and we have a very targeted and specific focus on the
North Country so Marram County North and
um if you'd like a mailer or any marketing um pamphlets that we have feel
free to send an email to me and we'll get those mailed out but the idea is for
us to connect with young adults um throughout this day um were able to
provide brief hoteling in order to bridge their um Bridge them into safety
um we have Uber health so we're able to transport young people um toward safety
and I um and I hope that we're able to meaningfully connect with young
people particularly in points north of Marat County that need low barrier
support and it's available 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year so um
happy to connect with anyone um north of marrat County um particularly to begin
building bridges and start those really important relationships thank you
uh thank you Mandy I was going to say that as well um I'm going to have Melissa share with all of you the
updated Regional access point listing which includes all the contact information for Waypoint and all of our
other Regional access points with the
notes and one last thing that I will share in the email is um I have been
getting a lot of emails about our um the 1959 Supportive Housing benefit the
Medicaid benefit um I'm going to try and put some easier to follow information in the
email for everyone um because there there seem to be a lot of questions and
confusions or confusion about what the benefit can actually cover um it really
is truly tied to permanent Supportive Housing it's the services side of permanent Supportive Housing um this
isn't something that can supplement the shelter work um it doesn't supplement Outreach work it really is connected
to the housing part of it um and I know that we have needs in all of the other
areas as well please know I know that every area is underresourced um there are a lot of things coming through DHHS
that are Medicaid benefits that will cover some of those other gaps as well um not for shelter necessarily but for a
lot of the different Services um so I'm going to send some information out about
that um if you are a permanent Supportive
Housing provider who would like to be able to build Medicaid for the services side you do need to enroll as a Medicaid
provider even if you already build Medicaid for other things um you must
enroll specifically to provide this benefit um and we are frantically
working here to put together documents that show the flow of the work um CMS
which is you know the the Medicaid Federal agency I can't remember the
acronym um Center for Medicaid and Medicare I think Services um has
continued to throw us kind of little um just little hurdles we have to clear and
we are still on track to be able to start billing for this July 1st I do not
expect this to roll out like a freight train on July 1st I think it will be slower um because we are still trying to
figure out exactly how it will work um but if if you are not a permanent
Supportive Housing provider you don't have to pay attention to this part so um I just I know a lot
of people have so much on their plate they're trying to interpret every single thing we send if you are not a permanent
Supportive Housing provider please feel free to just delete this information um
and then once I send out the the more simplified information if you still
have questions let me know and we can work together on setting up a session um
for the folks who intend to enroll as Medicaid providers to provide this service um we didn't want to do a
full-blown training for everyone um because I didn't want to waste people's
time if this was something that you weren't going to be able to provide or needed to know um I just I know how
tight everyone's time is so um just stay tuned for more information about that and Gary I see your hand oh and Mandy
Mandy was first or was that your old I'm sorry that was my old hand I'll take it down
you got it all right Gary so my question is being the regional access point for
Eastern Rockingham um I think and please correct me if I'm wrong sy's um organization at
Crossroads offers permanent Supportive Housing so with me being the regional
access point there was talk about like referrals and information being funneled am I still a part of that or can I be
excused from the table please that was a good question um no you can't be excused
I'm sorry so there are two parts to it so most of it um is open to anyone providing permanent Supportive Housing
one of the one of the components of this whole process is that Regional access point work um um if your agency does not
want to build Medicaid you don't have to you do still have to do your Regional access point work you just can't build
Medicaid to be reimbursed for it so that's the it's um it really is covering
what you're already doing it's just giving you another funding stream to pull from to build up the
work got you so and and I apologize because it's it's something that only just learned about recently so I'm still
trying to wrap my head around it if if Crossroads elects to Bill
Medicaid then how would I be involved in that or it seems to be a separate
offline conversation because I'm I'm out lost in the woods I'm happy to do that as well that's okay um so I'll give sort
of a high level answer for everyone because I'm sure other people have this question too um the flow of the work is
not going to change whatsoever so um I guess I shouldn't say that because there is um care coordination coming but stay
tuned for that we'll have a specific presentation about that um DHHS is really trying to streamline efforts so
that we aren't having to make referrals in uh 10,000 different places we have
more of a centralized case conferencing kind of platform we can use um but don't worry about that part e there because
that's not here yet um for 1915i purposes the coordinated entry flow
really is going to stay pretty much the same the part that people need to worry
about is who's and you don't have to worry about how Crossroads is paying for but each agency really is more about is
this funding coming from HUD or am I billing Medicaid for this um it really is more about who's paying for that
particular service the flow of the work really won't change so your role in the
regional access point you'll still take those calls you'll do the initial um cordate entry assessment follow the
policies and procedures we have make your referrals um and then the receiving
agency if they are billing Medicaid then they'll build Medicaid for their services if they're not they'll pay for
it some other way okay okay and oh and did I see your hand come
up yes hello um you for presenting the uh data earlier broken down by the
counties on homelessness for 2023 to 2024 204 numbers have actually been
looking for very interesting do we have those numbers broken down by COC currently yes I can um Megan you can
probably help me get that yeah I sent the I sent each COC their point in time
data okay I don't seem to have it if I could have that sent over to me that would be
fantastic oh and it's it's me sh we're we're presenting on it tomorrow um in
our meeting on Thursday okay got you all right I'll touch base then
thank you guys okay and I hold on I don't know if this
chat is from this meeting or something
else um so Sand's question Sandy I will
respond I saw your email there have been fires left and right here this week and I just haven't had a chance I'm sorry um
the immediate crisis is almost resolved and I can get back to this hopefully
this afternoon so I will respond to your email um and I will put some information
in uh my email as well okay all
right with that I think we can wrap it up for the day you get 45 43 minutes
back sorry um and I really appreciate everyone I will send um all the notes
that I have when Christina sends me her presentation I'll make sure to add that to my email um and then I will send the
link to where all of our meeting recordings go so you can keep a reference to it um we add our trainings
there we add our COC meetings there um and it gets updated every time we add
one of these so all right well thank you everyone I appreciate you all have a great day take care y'all
bye thank you bye bye
everyone
March 12, 2024
Balance of State Continuum of Care Meeting, March 12, 2024
Balance of State Continuum of Care Meeting, March 12, 2024
Balance of State Continuum of Care Meeting, March 12, 2024
Transcript of video:
connections with a lot of you folks out there too um
so and just a statistic uh between 22 and 57% of all homeless women report
that domestic violence was the immediate cause of their homelessness and additionally 38% of all victims of DV
survivors become homeless at some point in their lives and often times a Survivor will leave an abuser multiple
times before finally escaping the abuse and therefore they may experience
multiple periods of homelessness um so now I'm going to fly
over into assessing for fleeing when working with survivors of Domestic and Sexual
Violence um so a Survivor May call in to you and you may they may start sharing a
little bit about their experience and so we want to make sure we first stop make sure you know it's a safe time to talk
with them that they're in a safe place and if they need medical attention if
they need to have assistance getting to the police department um and then it's
always good to get multiple means of contact for a Survivor as they may need to discard a phone they may it may not
be safe for them to use email and so just asking them what you know if they
have other means of communicating so that way you can stay in touch um and then asking them is it safe to leave a
voicemail an email how should I identify myself when I call um just again because
they as they're in fleeing they may still have some connections with that abusive partner um and then of course
always offer to provide a referral to the local DV program um which again is
their choice um if they do or do not want to um
participate um so as you're working with somebody to really identify if they are immediately fleeing and and or um in you
know in need of domestic violence specific housing or domestic violence specific shelter um we want to really
work on having a conversation with them we find that the more open a conversation you can have with them and
more open-ended questions you'll generally get more information as opposed to just let's go down ABCD we
have all these questions let's get on with it kind of um we want to get a
timeline of the abuse so kind of understanding all right so you're calling me now when was you know um when
was the last time there may have been um contact with the abuser um is there an
act of restraining order in place um where did you last sleep for example um
and then ask if they feel safe in housing that is not confidential that may vary between Survivor um if they
identify they need a confidential shelter or location you definitely want to direct them our way um but it is
possible for survivors to be safe in homeless shelters um especially if the abuse has been some time apart um and
working with a crisis center in um to safety plan um there is a possibility
that they can be safe and um through in you know
protective orders and legal support and intervention as well can help somebody become safe um to access other programs
as well um so this is just sort of an overview we kind of already um scroll
through that the one thing that I will also point out that might is a little bit helpful too if a oh sorry um a
person you know talks about um for example if you ask them what has happened before when you tried to leave
that really kind of gives us an indication um and often times we'll hear a Survivor say the abuser repetitively
calls me he searches for me he shows up at my place of work um the last time I
left you know I had to leave in the middle of the night and he you was calling my my friends and family and
showing up at their house that's like a real indicator that somebody is actively
fleeing um and then just some guidance on confidentiality um you know at crisis
centers we have really deep confidentiality and um we're covered under a statute called
173c so in order to communicate with anyone we need to get a release of information from the Survivor and so
we'll be a little bit mysterious and we might say like I cannot confirm or deny or um but so if for best the best way
for us to work together would definitely be in getting a release of information um and then on just in general uh
working with survivors avoiding as much of a paper trail as possible um redact
utilize ID codes as opposed to names um definitely keep locked you know locked
cabin if you do have any paperwork um case notes should be vague
and non-identifying so like having real specifics in your case notes like the Survivor works at T-Bones a nsha or
something like that for example um that's a little bit too specific we you know can be more General um ensure that
you are using your databases safety guidelines and you're really up to date on what that entails um ask you
definitely getting releases of information um sometimes family members
and friends will call to try to support a Survivor and sometimes they have wonderful intentions and they're very
helpful and then other times um not so much and we want to make sure that the
Survivor is in control of how much information is getting out there and so even if a family member is calling it
it's best practice to get a release of information from the Survivor to speak with them um but again up to the
Survivor how they want to proceed um and then informed consent is ensuring the
client knows how their info is being used how it's being distributed um and make sure you have permission at each
step so if you're going to disclose information out make sure that you talk to them about I'm sharing it with with
Bob at such and such location and I'm going to share with them this um just so that way permission is really um in the
in the Forefront so I talked a little bit about crisis centers so just a little bit um
more to to this um we provide crisis counseling support groups obviously we
have some Housing Programs um we also have Advocates that support survivors
through the court process whether that be through restraining orders we're not lawyers but we can certainly connect to
Legal resource such as 603 legal aid um all Advocates I mean everyone in New
Hampshire is a mandated reporter um but we talked to survivors about um what that looks like as well um and let's
move forward a little bit here um so interrupt you for a hot minute
absolutely um just so all of you know um the New Hampshire Coalition against Domestic and Sexual Violence um as
they're a victim service provider they do not enter into hmis they enter into a comparable
database and we have set up a process to ensure there's confidentiality for all participants in
that project um in regards to entering them into coordin entry and to get them onto
the prioritization list for housing and Rachel I'll let you talk
about housing protections yes definitely yes and so we we do go through coordinate entry for our rapid rehousing
program but like Christy said sorry to open up a bag of worms there Christy but we uh yes exactly what chrisy was saying
about that um so um HUD was re I'm sorry
um the violence against women act was reauthorized in 2022 with some extended
protections but just first off the bat vawa um is um a set of of of legal
rights that survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault have um specifically through public housing
programs such as Section 8 Rapid rehousing transitional housing um it's a
safe bet that if you're receiving Federal funding especially from HUD that um your programs are going to need to
comply to these protections um so basically some of
these protections are that anyone un um that has experienced domestic violence dating um violence sexual assault or
stalking um is covered through vwa protections and they cannot be denied
admission or assistance under a HUD subsidized program um based off of the
fact that they are a Survivor um they also cannot be evicted
from a HUD program or unit um nor have their assistance terminated um be again
because of violence that has been perpetrated against them um
and so they have the there's also the option um of transfer through um through
vawa so if a Survivor so is in public housing and they experience um domestic
violence they can go to their public housing provider and ask for a transfer um they must be allowed to move
with continued assistance and if the Survivor has a Section 8 um housing Choice voucher
specifically um they must so in order to basically gain
these protections a Survivor must self-certify using um the HUD vawa
self-certification form this is specifically through public housing but it stands um in general um that
basically they need to disclose that they are Survivor they can disclose whatever information they're willing to
do they can provide um a doctor's note they can provide provide a restraining order a letter from a third party such
as um a crisis center or um a therapist um but they do not need to provide any
definitive proof if they do not have that um but they just need to excuse me
self attest that they are a Survivor um and then they have to be
provided their their rights um of basically under vawa and um
they have a right to strict confidentiality of information regarding their status as Survivor um so the
agency isn't going to be able to disclose their status unless there's Again release of information and
permission um what can also happen is through these programs you can request a lease bifurcation from the owner or
landlord to remove the perpetrator from the lease or the unit and if the housing provider bifurcates it must be done
consistent with applicable federal state or local laws and the requirements of the HUD housing
programs um basically to um we survivors cannot
be coerced intimidated threatened or retaliated against by a HUD subsidized housing provider um for seeking
protections under vawa they have the right to seek law enforcement or emergency assistance for themselves or
others without being penalized by local laws or policies um for these these
requests um because they were victims of um of criminal activity um there's a
significant amount of Rights and protection so it could be really helpful to get um familiar with vawa and I do
have a link here um that takes you straight to the um to the the most
updated policy um it also expanded um to include broader like to include more
definitions of domestic violence including um economic abuse so um just
as a federal housing provider really understanding those those vaa guidelines um can be
helpful and so that's it for me I really appreciate all the work that you do and
I always look forward to collaborating um we can provide training um really on
anything related to this topic um feel free to reach out anytime and here's my contact information right there um and I
would be happy to take any questions
Rachel I have a question sorry sure um when you said Roi do you have a specific
Roi or would our agency Roi suffice yes so um your internal release
of information um will suffice to be able to provide information out in the
community if you're working with a crisis center we have our own confidentiality so the Survivor would
basically have to sign a release with both of our agencies um for us to
communicate so they would have to sign one like with um let's just say conquer crisis center of New Hampshire and then
whichever agency you're working with and Rachel not to overstep um but
in working with both the Coalition and the crisis centers through their rapid rehousing project the the member
agencies of the Coalition prefer to reach out to the participant and get that release signed
if possible um because they have that relationship with the participant um and really want to make
sure that the participant is okay with signing the release for other agencies to interact with outside
parties
yeah and there's one question in the chat um from Kelly if one has an
eviction due to a domestic violence situation is the victim penalized for
this Kelly I would I'm asking where you think they would be penalized in regards
to an eviction status well mine would be like if
somebody would have caused damage to um say the apartment or whatever because uh
a person got violent and if they went and applied for somewhere else um would they could that
be used against the person that did not cause the damage obviously they didn't
cause it but it was the perpetrator that caused it um how do you deal with a situation like this one applying for
housing yeah so um it can be really helpful in those circumstances if there
is a police report that like um identifies um the
circumstances um but also there um as a person is a Survivor and you know they
didn't not you know um they're not asking basically to be a
victim that in cases like that that could be a discrimination issue um so I
would really reach out to the 603 legal aid fair housing team in that circumstance so that way they may be
able to Advocate or um with a potential landlord or housing agency
um because again survivors are a protected class so denying eviction
based on the fact that somebody experienced violence um you know will you know make fall into that
category Kelly did that answer your question yes thank you I just was
curious because um there are some people that I have encountered that worry about
yeah absolutely and I think it could be really hard for landlords to like um to
fully understand um so I think that advocacy is important but thank you for that
question does anyone else have any other
questions I do we will share with the entire balance of State membership the
balance State emergency transfer plan um we will send that out with the notes so
all of you can see that and see what it says um it's really a policy around if
there is an individual or family who believes there's an eminent threat of
harm from further violence if they remain at the same unit it provides protections and assistance in order to
move that household or participant into another unit so that they are safe
um so we will include that emergency transfer plan that was developed by the balance estate with the notes for this
meeting anyone have any other questions for
Rachel they're all quiet today all right and without further Ado
I would like to introduce Cindy from straford County Community Action Program
Cindy is going to talk about the cantry domestic violence project that is
balance of Statewide um they serve participants throughout the balance of State
Geography who are fleeing or attempting to flee domestic violence and also at risk of or experiencing homelessness um
so she's going to talk about that project and how it intersects with coordinate entry Cindy I'm hoping you can share
your presentation or I will I hope so too I send it to you just in case because sometimes I'm not a
technological wizard neither can you all see that's what my kids are for exactly
what one of my co-workers is for can you see the screen
now yes so the cantry domestic violence project I think it's been two or three
years now since I think this is the third year so we are currently in the third year of this project that was awarded by Hud through
the notice of funding opportunities um and we have seen some
thanks to the hard work of straford County cap some significant increases in
people utilizing this project and some positive exits to permanent housing
destinations and just the support and assistance that this project is providing to those specific people
within this population and I will let Cindy take it away thank you so some of
this um I may skip through because this um a lot of you already know some of this information um
so let's get to the second screen oh good it's not going okay there we go um
so uh I believe everyone here should know what coordinated entry is um so we will skip this um Rachel went over a lot
of the domestic violence so that is very helpful um I always like to remind people that it's not just the physical
violence that is domestic violence um and that it's typically a pattern of course of behavior to gain power and
control um it's not just what most people would think of as an assault um so physical violence sexual violence
stalking emotional financial and it's rarely a one-time occurrence um the people that would
qualify for our project would be um and Christy gave a good intro to this um individual or family who's currently or
attempting to flee domestic violence and is homeless or risk of homelessness due to this um and um I do have some
examples later I think in the next slide that might help um because a lot of times U people will come in and you will
not know whether they are appropriate for our project or not um first of all you're always H we're happy to get the
referrals and reach out and um either work with you to get some more information or with the client um but
what it looks like would be if they are leaving their home wherever they consider home which could certainly be
um a homeless encampment um due to safety but they have no other place to go they're attempting to leave a violent
relationship and they have no resources or support systems um and if the abuser
is no longer in the home but the Survivor is still facing homelessness um because as Rachel mentioned a lot of the
domestic violence focuses around financial and so often um the the um
abuser may be removed but the Survivor has no way to continue staying in that home and they will be homeless um
imminently so what it doesn't look like is if a client is being evicted um but
they are also a survivor of a previous DV incident but they're not currently at risk of harm or actively encountering
abuse um that would go more towards just the regular Regional access points um or
if the abuser is no longer in the home and they don't feel like they're in danger um but they're looking for other
housing for other reasons it has to actually they have to be fleeing or attempting to flee homeless or facing
homelessness at this time not sure why this is so there we go
sorry about this one it's a little bit small but um the flowchart of how this typically works is a Survivor discloses
that they're fleeing or attempting to flee and at risk um or facing homelessness and they are provided with
the contact information for their local um victim service provider so anyone in the Coalition um often people are
referred to us first which is fine um but if they are currently actively fleeing what they need more is the
support um and the safety aspect from their local uh domestic violence agency
so that they can safely flee um then the next step would be to either um have
them call 211 or any partner agency at all can refer them to our option um and
uh what you do first was get their permission to participate in the coordinated entry system um if you are
an agency that works with that you could do the prevention diversion tool um and then make the referral to us if they go
through 211 211 typically does the prevention diversion tool and then sends the referral to us um once we get the
referral uh we would reach out to the Survivor within 24 hours we try to contact them multiple times with any way
that's provided so if it's a phone number an email we will try any of those ways um it's very important like Rachel
said to make sure that this is safe um for us to be doing so so when you are getting their information make sure it's
safe for us to reach out and leave messages and texts and emails um because we never want to put someone in more
danger by reaching out for help um uh if we do not hear back from
them after these multiple contacts um we would basically close that referral until we hear from them again um because
it's not safe to continue to try and do that um in this situation once contact
is made the we would assess the situation um through a lot of the things that was Rachel was talking about about
um having conversation with them about what's been happening where they've been staying um if this is the first time
they've tried to leave what's happened before when they've tried to leave um to sort of assess you know their safety and
what kind of um shelter or supports that we can offer them um we Supply them
because we cover the whole balance of State um we Supply try to supply them with whatever resources we know
throughout the state um we have a you know a sheet for each um County so that
they can access any resources there um we can help them Reach Out to any shelters to see if there's if that's
something that they need um any other U basic needs that they immediately need
um we also uh throughout this time working with them would um complete the
coordinated entry assessment and place them on the prioritization list if that's appropriate um if for some reason
we get a referral that is not uh currently fleeing or attempting to flee or is not homeless or facing
homelessness then we would do a warm handoff to their Regional their regular Regional access point um or any other
service that might be more appropriate for
them sorry I'm not really sure how that went down there um so how to make a referral to us is you can have them call
211 you can email or um call us at the numbers provided on this screen um and
you can also um a lot of the agencies use the referral form that we have made
um which sort of gives an easier way for you to put all the information down and it's a good reminder to make sure you
have their permission and if their texting is safe and if they're calling is safe and things like that so if you ever need one of those I
can certainly provide that um most of the um Coalition agencies have access to
one already um one thing that we try to make clear to the people that we're working
with is that there's a difference between working with their local crisis center and working with us um we our
focus is on housing uh and on you know providing them with resources and Connections in the community but um
obviously it's their choice if they want to work with the crisis center but we always try to provide them with information about why it could be
helpful um the crisis center would have the things that are on the screen the 24-hour confidential support helping
them with protective orders safety planning um as Rachel mentioned they have their own housing um programs that
also we can work in conjunction with um they can accomp them to the police or to
the hospital or child advocacy whatever is needed um those are not services that
we provide in the domestic violence coordinated entry program ours is really focused more on um housing and resources
and connections sorry this is just the map that I use every single day to uh tell
me where everything is while we're trying to serve the state um this is the map of the um crisis centers that we
work with throughout the state the things that we do um so we are the
regional access point for the balance of State um sometimes clients are referred
to their U regular Regional access point and at that point they determine that they might you know be served better by
working with us and uh they are asked if they would like to be transferred to us Sometimes they come straight to us we
get referrals from um lots of different agencies uh most of the crisis centers
211 um what I like to call a self- referral when someone just emails and says someone told me to call you um we
get a lot through our website at cap um and so any way that they come in is fine
um we provide trauma informed case management for housing and Supportive Services we collaborate with all the
crisis agencies we connect them to Local resources um sometimes we can provide advocacy if they're struggling to work
with um any agency that um they're just having a hard time getting hold of them
or having a hard time Comm unting with them um or maybe um the agency just isn't um quite aware of the barriers
they're facing by fleeing domestic violence we can help with that um we definitely help them apply for any
housing option that we can come up with um and we one of the things too that we do is provide information um a lot of
people that are currently fleeing they have no idea what the difference is between a housing Choice voucher and a
housing authority and an income based housing and um we can sort of U help them understand that and figure out
which ones that they are eligible for um we can provide immediate needs such as food clothing toiletries and
other necessities uh and we can assist them with budgeting and developing a housing stability
plan um sorry I didn't ask if anyone had questions I was just going through my um
so if you have questions you can certainly ask me now um I'll leave this up on the screen for a minute this is uh
all of our phone numbers and our email um we're happy to answer questions anytime someone reaches out um does
anyone have any questions now about the
program the presentation was so good no one has any questions stendy you're
amazing so what I will say because I think all of you know me um but the
cordian your domestic violence project started three years ago we have seen a huge increase and because of the
education and marketing that straford County cap has put out there with in the community and to the regional access
points and people accessing this project anyone who is fleeing or
attempting to flee domestic violence or is at risk of or experiencing homelessness they have the option to
work with the regional access point in their area or with the coordinat domestic violence
project um we are allowed because of Hud's rules to have specific Regional
access points for specific populations but again it really is client centered
and we are looking at where does the client want to be served what options do
they want to have do they want to be served through Southwestern Community Services
because they know the staff there are they fleeing or attempting to flee domestic violence and want to work with
shafford County capab so it's really up to the participant to decide which way
they want to go in order to work with our coordinate entry system to get prioritized for
housing we also have the same situation set up for youth as well we have several
youth Navigator sorry M Alexa is talking we have several projects set up just
specifically for youth um in order for specific providers to provide assistance
to youth navigating our homeless Services Network
there are also specific rapid rehousing programs that are just for people that are fleeing domestic violence or human trafficking but the clients that we
place on the prioritization lists are um eligible for any of the rapid reh housing openings um but the specific
ones are very helpful because um sometimes our clients have some the same
barriers and um you know the questions on the assessment do apply to them and
sometimes we have people who have not faced any of those barriers but they are very very unsafe and fleeing domestic
violence so it's helpful to have those ravry housing projects that focus on that um and just to explain on that
every single year through the notice of funding opportunity the noo that we do for the balance of State continue ofth
care we apply for whatever funding HUD has an opportunity for we currently
have a domestic violence rapid rehousing project through marra County um soon and
we also have the New Hampshire Coalition against Domestic and Sexual Violence reper housing which is balances
Statewide we were recently awarded projects through um I call it Triple C
the conquered Crisis Center of Central New Hampshire um will be starting a rapid rehousing domestic project this
year as we were just awarded it we also awarded a project for straford County
cap um with will be balance of Statewide to provide rapid rehousing services to
people fleeing or attempting to flee domestic violence who are also at risk of or experiencing
homelessness so we are working on building up those opportunities for this
specific population um and there are options for them they're also eligible for any of
the Continuum of Care projects that we have out there um because you either
have to meet one either category one or category four of the homeless definition from HUD to be able to enter into a
continu of Care
Project anyone has any questions about that um HUD is continuing to
offer projects for specific populations specifically unsheltered those attempting to flee
domestic violence and the youth experiencing homelessness um so we will see those opportunities for funding
moving forward if anyone has any questions you can email me
directly christe there is a question in the chat oh thank you you're welc done
thank you chrisy um I'm going to let Rachel answer
this question but it is how do you get help with getting an Advocate when someone has to go to
court yes Kelly so um all of the crisis centers um do have Advocates uh Court
Advocates that are able to connect survivors with legal resources and also provide advocacy in court so with an
issue like what you have um experienced comes up um this is an example of where
you can certainly reach out to the Coalition and we can kind of do a little you know deeper to see you know what may
have occurred there um but there should be um a a court Advocates available to
be present at restraining order hearings
um as well as um divorce or you know child uh child custody uh kind of
experte orders again we're not lawyers um but we are there to provide support
and can connect to Legal Services so I'm sorry that that was an experience that
um your client um had so um please feel free to reach out to myself anytime something like that um pops
up and I just want to jump into if we're working with a client that is not
working with a crisis center this isn't a service that we can provide but it is a way for us to talk to them about why
it's important to connect with the crisis center and sometimes we will even go with them um or sometimes I will meet
with them at the crisis center so I can connect them all together um because sometimes if they've started to trust us
working with them it can help sort of join them to the right organization to help them with other
things and um just to add to that too so our crisis centers have relationships
with all of our courts and there's usually a DV point of contact at the courts um sometimes we do find that that
they usually call us when somebody comes forward just fill a protective order um and sometimes it's also a matter of
training for that Court staff so um just just to give a little background too um a person can access Legal Services sorry
court services by walking into a crisis center or um potentially through walking
into court and asking to speak to an advocate um but any issues that may arise feel free to to reach
out thank you anyone have any other questions you
can either put it in the chat or raise your hand or start
talking um so as I'm not seeing any other questions
um we will move on to the last part of this presentation for the balance State um I'd like to introduce Bethany catrell
who works with Bridges House of Hope they have a rapid rehousing project that
is is specifically to serve those who are fleeing or attempting to flee human
trafficking which is funded through our Continuum of Care um so I will let Bethany take it
away thank you chrisy can you all see that slideshow okay awesome so I'm bethan
Katrell um thank you so much for having me back today to talk about Bridget's House of of Hope um I am excited uh this
is my first presentation to announce that uh I am only using the term founder
and um we have our new full-time executive director Miranda Lane well she'll be full-time hopefully by the end
of this month um on the call today as well so uh we're excited at Bridget's house as we talk about some of the
updates and changes but looking forward at sustainability our agency truly as
many of you know needs a full-time executive director um to manage our full-time staff uh so that way we can
are accepting more referrals and supporting those uh who have been trafficked or exploited in our area and
um manage some of our our weight list as well and so when we're talking about
Bridget's house um Bridget's House of Hope is a safe house which provides
Housing Services for victims and survivors of human trafficking and exploitation and our goal really is that
full support of um um care and coordination of services for those
experiencing or having experienced trafficking uh we have grown our program
in the year and a half almost two years that we've been open but to see a little bit of our history uh we've been a part
of the task force here in New Hampshire since in Inception um we received funding in um
2022 to open our safe house here in New Hampshire so it's been quite uh the ride
and journey uh through covid and everything else as many of you are aware and have seen but um we know that here
in New Hampshire it has been a gap in services and a need and many people were saying you know um why why did we open
Bridget's house where did this come from and being a part of the balance of State COC and also the task force for many
years prior to opening Bridgets we would often be saying um you know how do we
help what do we do doing with these survivors because they were choosing homelessness um they were going back to
their exploitation or their trafficking situations in order to avoid homelessness or avoid going to a
situation that may have been worse and we kept hearing over and over again that housing was our biggest concern as many
of you know um having these discussions in these meetings and presentations often and so a a few of us said well
what are we going to do about it because we're really tired of hearing that and this was before we had all of this
funding through the continu of care to assist with rapid rehousing and before
really housing was uh funded like it should be uh sort of should be in New
Hampshire sort of funded I should say we're still making those strides uh and so that's really where this this stemmed
from was quite a few of us in those two groups getting together and saying let's start a nonprofit because this is um
something that we definitely need to focus on and so in 2022 like I said that is when we were able to start accepting
client currently we have uh three clients in our physical location and not and six
clients in the community uh receiving rental assistance and ongoing case
management through Rapid rehousing and other voucher programs uh my favorite
statistic to give although that is a good one to say that we're working with nine clients and in the past year and a
half um we've worked with almost 20 uh survivors in New Hampshire and coming
from surrounding areas that's a lot that's a lot in our small State uh that's a lot for the referrals that we
see and I can promise you at least once a week we're getting another request for
housing and for services uh and having to put people on a wait list because the
the need is great as we all know um so with those nine clients that we're currently working with we also are
supporting um four cats and four dogs as well and so I find that an important
statistic to share because as we know many shelters do not allow pets uh to be
a part of that program and also a lot of apartments are really hard to find that also allow animals and many of our
clients will either choose living in a campground um homelessness or um you
know living in an unsafe situation before they would give up their animals and so it was something that uh as staff
and a board we said this needs to happen and so um I always find that interesting and I have more information about it
later but I'd like to start with it and so people will say to me you know what is human trafficking and I think you
know we've grown in our in the professional world and even in our community to be able to talk about what
it is and to understand it but I can remember back uh when we first started talking about Bridget's house and doing
interviews with the local paper and uh one of our one of the reporters said to
me don't worry I watched the movie Taken last night uh I I did my homework I know what trafficking is and I was like man
that's not at all what we do uh that's you know that's not what we're seeing here in New Hampshire but we are seeing
exploitation and we are seeing trafficking um that is a crime um through of exploitation of a person for
labor services or commercial sex through Force frauder coercion that's the definition I have to say I you know I
Stumble over it every time because it's a lot of words and it's a lot of definitions within there that we would
have to look at and so it's hard for us to then work with
clients to get them to identify as being a survivor of trafficking because if it's hard for us to even Define what
these words mean exploitation Force fraud coercion what's the difference between commercial sex between labor um
how can we expect that someone who has a trauma history someone who has substance use disorder someone who has a mental
health diagnosis uh someone who has been sexually assaulted or in a domestic violence relationship or has no support
or moved here from somewhere else in this country how do we expect them to say yes I'm a Survivor of trafficking
and so we really rely on our stakeholders on our Community Partnerships on groups like this so that
way when referrals are coming in we can have those conversations I talk with Cindy often uh and and many of you to
say okay you know what does fleeing trafficking really mean and really look
like and it's more about having those conversations than it is about being able to check a box and so you know what
does it present as it presents as prostitution um it presents as you know
someone living in a home a home share maybe so uh when it comes to prostitution a commercial sex that we're
seeing where people are going out on the streets or or going into homes of others
and being forced to provide sexx to maintain their opioid addiction uh it's
the only way that their boyfriend or um their partner will give them their drugs
or some of the money that came from that they're not getting all of the money they're not making that choice on their
own free will um they're being told to get back out there and to make that money and to and to do what's needed and
then maybe they'll be allowed to live at sort of a status quo um we're seeing a
lot of referrals regarding domestic servitude so what
might look like a home share people can't afford um uh rent they can't afford to live on their own it's hard
for anyone even in professional roles that are making a a standard wage to be able to afford the rents that we're
seeing here in New Hampshire as we know and so we're seeing um I i' have to say
out of the last four referrals three of them were clients who were live moved
into a home of someone to help either take care of their Farm or their animals or to help take care of the house itself
um and then those people that they were living with started saying well you used
our internet and the electric and you ate some of the food and you have your
room so you actually expensed and cost us you know
$1,500 this month but you only worked in the farm for 10 hours or whatever it may
be and we've seen spread sheets um we've had people you know have clients report
that there very detailed um sort of invoices done and they were never
getting any of that money they were supposed to be working to get paid and then living there as part of that agreement um but none of that many money
was ever given to them so then they can't get out they can't get a security deposit they um can't you know even even
put the money down for an electric for the initial for utilities and so that
would be the exploitation of Labor as well and so it's it's really showing its
its ugly head in many different ways here um in New Hampshire and I think the more that we can talk about what we're
seeing and what some of those experiences may have been the easier it's going to be to start identifying so
that way then others can identify and and self-identify as well many of the
myths that we hear is that it's only affecting adult women um you know in it's very sensationalized that that's
what's happening and that's where it's happening but we know that's not the case we know that there are males we know they are
transgendered um we know that it can really be happening anywhere uh also people are saying you know some of the
myths that we believe especially through watching movies and and different TV shows is that violence is always
involved um the interesting one to me this third one here uh I spent my a lot
of my career working in the Child Advocacy Center model back when we first started talking about human trafficking and what did it mean and we used to
always say uh it's mobile sexual assault right it's Tri coming across state l
it's like going from different counties and then like no we were wrong right we
learned a lot through all of that it doesn't require travel or Transportation ac across borders and I think that's
where some of that definition comes in but I think back you know we first start talking about this that's what we really
thought is that there had to be some sort of um transportation whether it be
across state lines or across um country uh borders and that and that's not the case and that it doesn't happen here in
our community people think all the time there's no way in a small state that's safe like New Hampshire that this is
happening but what we know is that this can really be happening to anyone again regardless of age gender or race um the
clientele the referrals that we receive are from all over um that many of them
are from the majority of them are from here in New England so it can be happening here it happens in our community um we have seen referrals from
transgender um from fluid neutral uh sorry gender neutral and gender um fluid um we have seen male
referrals we have seen female referrals we've seen referrals around um youth as well um which we have to refer those out
at this time um so it's it's anywhere and can be happening to anyone and we
know that it's not always involving violence it can it could have some violence at some point it could start
that way but most of our tra traffickers are using psychological tactics um many
of you may have seen Jasmine Grace uh do her presentation on Surviving
trafficking in the New England Massachusetts mainly in Maine area but in the New England area and her
trafficker put her through college to get her degree to be um a bookkeeper and
to do um office management so that way she could then run the strip club and
the trafficking business that he had going and so there was this tie there there was this like like you need me but
also how can I leave because you've paid for all of this schooling um and you
know and I feel tied to that I owe you something and sometimes that can be even larger and even more um controlling and
detrimental to many of these clients and that's that's the hard part that's those are the pieces that it takes a long time
um as many of you know to overcome and to then support many of these clients as
they transition into Independence right that's always our goal but we also feel very strongly that case management and
and the support that we provide doesn't have a end date because many people go
through this process at a different pace um many of them once they get into a
rapid rehousing program uh sort of you know revert back to some of their old behaviors or their um or their old
trauma triggers because they're now living on their own again and so it's important for us to be there and be able
to support them um and so knowing that human trafficking is not human smuggling doesn't require Transportation or moving
across those borders uh as we said but we do know that it's happening globally globally as well and so um the amount of
trafficking that we're seeing uh globally is astronomical but it's also
very much related similarly here in New Hampshire the between local law enforcement Homeland Security and the uh
collaborative task force trafficking has been identified in all 10 counties from the northern tip of Coos County down to
you know Hillsboro County and Manchester NASA um you know out in pouth as well um
these numbers have been hard and so I'm sure if anyone from the task force some of my numbers are older um because it's
been hard to identify like what are we seeing for referrals and what is coming in um I know there's been a lot of work
around that um you know I always find it interesting because it's we've been identifying it for a long time
um I grew up in Hudson New Hampshire which is right next to lynfield and I can remember every you know spring or
summer the migrant workers coming in and you know you knew it was almost time for the Farms to open because there'd be uh
pickup Tru trucks driving down um 3A and everyone would be sitting in the back of the truck you know they'd have the
workers going back and forth um there was a house on one of the farm
properties that you everyone like there was probably like 15 or 20 people that lived in there and it was sort of part
of like our community but we never really understood what was fully happening and come to find out one of the first cases that was prosecuted in
New Hampshire was in Lichfield at a tree farm and you know I look back and think
why didn't we ask the questions why didn't we try and figure it out more why did we just accept that as normal when
really people's lives are in danger and and that's why it's important that we're all here and still talking about it
because although it may hard to identify it or maybe hard for people to self-report the more we can be talking
about it the better it's going to be um for them to be supported throughout this process and so through Bridget's house
where are we now we're still working on our grants and fundraising and growing through our rapid rehousing program uh I
think we were a little bit ahead of the curve I have to say nationally because we have our initial uh OBC offic of
victims of crime grant that supports our physical location um and when I worked
with Christy and Melissa around adding the rapid rehousing program we thought you know this is really going to help
people as they transition to Independence um and and assist with some of the weight lless problems we see when
you have one physical location and I started to have conversations with the offic of victims of crime um Grant
supporters the project managers there and they said that across the country people were starting to see that the
independent rental assistance case management process is what is working well and what is working better because
people are able to as we always say build their tribe with our staff and with our with our support but then
actually be building that tribe in the community too and not continuing to have those Transitions and um having to build
their Roots there and so um it's exciting to see that because I think a lot of the grants that were initially
looking at how do we support this one brick and mortar space are now saying
how do we support these survivors and where they at and get them in the community because that's how they're
going to be most successful um and so that's really exciting as we're seeing that with our rapid rehousing program and continuing to grow that as well
we're continuing to collaborate with our Community Partners and agencies um and those of you on this call that we work with are probably so
excited to hear that uh we'll have a full-time Ed so that way she'll be able to communicate with you um during your
normal business hours and you won't be waiting for me to uh respond to emails after hours and so that is really
exciting to be able to continue to build those relationships um continuing to build that residential program model
identifying you know we've been open um and and accepting clients now for uh you
know for almost two years which is wild to think about um it also feels like a lifetime but to be able to look back and
say okay what have we heard we have residents who have transitioned we've been able to talk with them and say
through your life experiences what worked well what hasn't worked well what do you think could be changed we're able
to have those conversations with the clients that are in the program to say you know what do you need for example
one of the things um when we first started was that we wanted to have a 247 staffed program um you know when I'm
sitting at my dining room table and reading research it sounds great to say that that's what works best and then
when we implemented that um clients were saying it feels like a group home it
feels like when I was a you know when I was under DCF or when I was in care and
you know I was in a group home or when I was in a um Hospital uh for you know mental health
concerns and you know it felt very triggering and so we were able to dial some of that back and say okay how can
we build your Independence give you that lifeline and that safety net so you're still being supported but not making you
feel like um someone's looking over your shoulder every second and not making you feel exploited again all over again you
know not controlling everything um that happens during the day because if we're
trying to build that support for Independence that's what we need to continue focusing on um and continuing to build our relationships with our
business and Faith Partnerships because we know that again as our clients are building that Community um they need to
have those supports they need to be getting jobs they need to be finding where their if they have a faith group then what is that Faith group and how
can they partner with them and how can we get them into that community that would be most supportive for them when
we talk about our location the physical program itself it's four two-bedroom apartments um mainly female residents uh
that are there and their animals um intensive case management like I said we've recently changed that
247 Staffing and we see most of our clients are there about 18 to 24 months
uh before they transition into Independence our rapid rehousing program is the just over seven um units we
currently have um six people in uh five people in the rapid re housing program six people in the community uh and
looking to grow that as our staffing Stables out so we're excited for that we
work really hard obviously on confidentiality similar to the crisis centers um our location is private and
so we want to ensure that confidentiality of the location itself we also utilize uh PO Boxes and our
address confidentiality program for both those in the physical location and then also for those in the community if that
is something that they would like to continue using um and really assisting in keeping them Anonymous um ensuring
that they have that safety that they need as they transition to Independence and build their future
goals these are some pictures of prior to there being any furniture in there um we're going to promise you that that's
not what this looks like anymore because we're cleaning everything and trying to reorganize uh but I like to show this
because the space that we have um they renovated the entire building and you know many of our clients say it's it's
the it's the best ofart I've ever had or it's the best space I've ever been in but you know we don't want anyone to
have to worry about it we don't want anyone to have to worry about do I have to get um toilet paper or milk this week
um that shouldn't be their concern their concern should be am I safe do I have a safe place to live um and then how do we
continue moving forward with that um you know because many times the as we all
know the level of trauma but especially with our trafficking survivors is it's so complex it's such an onion and every
time you peel one layer back you know uh you find 10 more so uh it's important to
try and keep some of the other pieces there still consistent and so for our referrals although I said we have a wait
list which we do we're really working to um get the Staffing into a place so we can start accepting more of those in you
can email uh the info@ Bridgets houseof hope.org uh email address that goes
right now to both Miranda and myself and as we uh continue with our staffing that will go to other staff too um you'll be
able to connect with the executive director and have initial intake discussion to our board and um our
program development and our program committee uh in my background in the CAC world it was really important to us that
there be this sort of discussion right the discussion with the Survivor and the
um Community partner that maybe they're currently working with when I first started uh talking about Bridget's house
I was working with Homeland Security and we were at Franklin Hospital uh working with a patient that was there who was
non-verbal and uh came in non-verbal and pretty much catatonic and slowly over time um
started to speak and I had applications for her for housing and the first
question on both of them was are you a survivor of trafficking check checkbox or exploitation checkbox and we never
got past that we never got to her name we never got to her address she could not identify what she what
her box was right we put so many people in boxes all the time and I think that's the biggest thing these are humans these
are um family members they are friends they're neighbors and so if we don't
have to have someone put themselves in a box again we can have that conversation between them and whoever their current
Community um supports are it's only going to make it better as we move forward with these referrals and so I
think that that is really an important part for us is that yep we have a form online yes we you know accept emails yes
we're going to ask questions but it's the conversation that helps just figure out where someone's at are they going to
work well in a program like this are they ready um to you know to better
themselves and and to work towards independence um and are we going to be the right fit there there is an
assessment to um assess are they a survivor of trafficking um so that way we can understand working with the right
population there are amazing people in this state who work with survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault um
and there's a long list of people that are trying to get into those Services right so we want to make sure we're
staying in our lane and wearing our our right hats and we can support each other when we can um but for the most part you
know we're working with those survivors of trafficking so that way the experts on the other side can be working with DV and sexual assault um we do that intake
interview we have a team house discussion and then plan that intake and move in plan um throughout this process
and then really looking at what is the case management what are those needs one of the biggest uh one of the most
powerful moments for me in this process was uh years ago there used to be a
annual conference training at the Bethany Church in Greenland um the faith Justice Summit and one day they one of
the sessions they had a Survivor get on stage and she listed off all of the community services and community
supports that she worked with and um she you know talked about uh rental
assistance she talked about utility assistance and the church and her therapist and um her case man for
Medicaid and the list went on and on by the time she was done there were 13 people standing on stage with her that
means 13 phone numbers 13 email addresses 13 appointments to try and schedule and coordinate 13 people that
somehow had an effect on her daily living or her weekly living that she had to try and organize
and I don't know about you but like I can't live without my phone and my calendar and um even then I'm like
dropping the ball or forgetting something or you know what was I going to get for groceries or whatever it is
how can we expect people who are constantly in fight or flight who have lived their entire lives like that whose
brains are completely different as we talked about as um the Coalition talked about in the first session they're their
brain structure is different because of this trauma how can we expect them to facilitate and coordinate calls and and
life conversations with 13 people and so that's really you know when we're talking about case planning and case
management it's about how can we help people manage that not how can we do it all we can't do it all there are already
experts doing it but how can we manage you know the work with those different Community Partners the work with those
those agencies and those needs and those next steps and help really try and put it in a package to say okay you know
here's step one and then like next week we'll do two a b and c right like what does that look like and how can we help
set them up for Success so then that can continue moving forward um we are so
thankful I keep saying this but relying with on the work with our Community Partners working with dartman Hitchcock
the um continum of care we work really closely with lamry Healthcare they've been fantastic um and Community Mental
Health Centers in the area we also recently have started a partnership with Goodwin Family Health um home care for
homeless uh the crisis centers and then bless this home is a great nonprofit if you're not familiar with them they
anytime someone moves into a new apartment uh we work with them and they completely furnish and decorate the
entire apartment for them based on a survey that our clients fill out so they get to pick what they want and their
colors and their needs and then they get to move into an apartment that's fully furnished and all of that then becomes
theirs that they get to keep um and many of them have never owned a mattress have never owned a coffee pot um and now this
is theirs um to take with them if they move out and go to a new apartment so we're very thankful for that partnership
as well here's some of our contact information um um you I you are more
than welcome to email me but I can promise you Miranda will be more responsive uh but I am still here and
trying uh but uh we you know are just very thankful for this group and for the work that everyone here does and I can
put these email addresses in the chat as well any
questions I not seeing any questions in the chat as of
yet the only thing I will follow up with is that this is the only project that we
have in the state of New Hampshire that specifically serves those fleeing or attempting to flee human
trafficking um and I think most of you know that when we go through the coordin entry system and part of doing the New
Hampshire coordinated assessment tool we do asked that question if they're fleeing or attempting to flee human
trafficking um so that we can make appropriate referrals to this project to
house those survivors who need assistance um they currently serve seven
households and about maybe 10 people give or take
um and again it is the only project that we have throughout the entire state that
serves this specific population um all of their referrals do go through the coordinate entry
system and if we cannot find anyone who's fleeing or attempting to flee human trafficking we do look at those
fleeing or attempting to flee domestic violence as
well it's been I do have to say though Chrissy it's been interesting right because um you go back to like putting
people in boxes and the trauma-informed conversation we had and everyone has a you know a laundry list of diagnosis and
how frustrating is it every time they have to write it out um and so we've had a couple referrals who are fleeing or
attempting to flee domestic violence but when you talk to them right goes back to that conversation in my brain I'm like
uh no this is definitely exploitation you've been being trafficked but I don't want to say it because I don't want to
give them another label uh another box that they have to live in but it just
you know the things that people do to survive oftentimes fall more under other
labels and I think but I think that's on us as professionals to talk about and to
identify and address without making someone feel like they have to be a survivor of something else or a victim
of something else I completely agree with you um
it we really look at trying to match the right participant with the right project and not put another label on them but
make sure that we're matching them with the appropriate services throughout the balance of state so that
they're housed and they get the services that they that they need to move forward
and maintain that permanent housing option that we are able to provide hopefully and I think that's one of the
things through the um rapid rehousing uh and and some of the crisis centers probably see this in some of their
shelters is that um when you're doing rapid rehousing and people are in the
community there's less of a comparison well how'd you get here what was your referral right like when in the sh in
the home in the Tang physical location there's more opportunities for that where people are like oh well you're
just a victim of DV and I'm like well well well that's not what we're doing here um so I think it just goes to show
why rapid rehousing and the the support through the COC and through um the beer
of housing supports which I know is not the right label anymore I'm sorry someday say the right one um is so
important because I think our profession as a whole is becoming more trauma informed but that is why we see such
success with programs like this i' just like to say too I if you
are questioning whether someone is fleeing domestic violence or fleeing human trafficking or which one are they what should I check up reach out to one
of us because I do this every day and I can't tell you how many times I've reached out to Bethany to say I just run
this by you because it feels a little like human trafficking but I'm not quite sure um it's better if you you know
reach out and and figure it out um then have somebody miss an opportunity so or
have somebody in there's nothing worse than someone being in um
a we had a referral once that said domestic violence it was not domestic violence and then having to not like
take away an opportunity from someone and redirect them somewhere else is terrible and so um you know reach out to
us if you have a question if you're just not sure thank you Cindy I will say we are
very very lucky within our Continuum of Care to have these very specialized
projects for those human trafficking domestic violence we have specific youth
projects we are very very lucky to be able to focus on specific populations
and provide the services they need in through a lens whether it's trauma
informed whether it's for the Youth that we are serving but we are very lucky to have all of these projects to be able to
serve those at risk of or experiencing
homelessness does anyone have any questions for Rachel from the Coalition Bethany from Bridges House of Hope or
Cindy from shefer County
Cap all right um if we don't have any other questions or if you have questions
afterwards please feel free to email me and I'll drop my email in the chat um and I know Bethany put her information
in there and I can share Cindy's and Rachel Duffy's information if that's okay with
both of them Rachel says yes um I would like to introduce Megan
raferty from The Institute for Community alliances she's going to provide a point
in time update for the balance of State continue of care still morning right good morning
yes still okay um so this is just a really quick update um
right now all the hmis point in time reports have been confirmed um and we are waiting on I
believe it's three um housing inventory chart reports to be confirmed um and
then for anything that was entered into the Google forms um I will be working
with um BHS to review clean that data and then get it all aggregated so we can
combine it with the hmis data um we do not have a point in time due date
historically it's been the end of April um we don't even have HDX 2.0 available
to enter the point in time or hick yet um hopefully sometime this month that
will happen um so we're not and this is a new process we've always entered it
into what is called HDX the HUD data exchange um and there's a newer version
of that that's the 2.0 where we have always entered the longitudal system
analysis um this year new was putting in the system performances in the 2.0 and
it will also be new for the point in time and housing inventory chart so we are hoping that they open that very very
soon so we can at least get familiar with it um and thank you to everyone for your
point in time um they hmis especially because we've been able to confirm that
um and we also thank those that entered unsheltered and for um anyone who
entered their emergency shelter uh into the the Google forms really appreciate that it's very
important for the COC it's the only time we have like all the data together because most of the time it's just the
hmis data so this is very important for the COC thanks thank you Megan and I just
want to follow up to say that a lot of the data from the count in January for
the point in time and the housing inventory count um is used during our
notice of funding opportunity for the Continuum of Care competition so a lot of this data goes
in and that's how we get scored on our overall Contin of care system performance and how we're doing so I
really appreciate everyone and all of the hard work that went into the point in time count planning because I know
there's so many of you on here um even just from our staff who worked really really hard to make sure that we had a
really good point in time count this
year see Rob waving um we do have final numbers from
the FY 2023 point in time count um which I believe have been shared with all of
you but if you haven't gotten that information I did drop that email my email in the chat so I can send that out
to you um we are here and getting it up on the Bureau of homeless services website as
well anyone have any questions about the point and time count or the housing inventory count
are awful quiet today all right the only last thing that I will say is that we did and Melissa
sent out last week we received our FY 2023 notice of funding opportunity
scores for our Continuum of Care competition um and I think you all saw that we were awarded all six of the
projects that we applied for um so we're very very excited um we are able B to we
applied for an expansion of coordinate entry to include the last remaining County that we cover and fund them which
was Western Rockingham um we also applied to expand hmis so that we can work on more data
analysis of the data we have in h we received the conquered crisis
center of New Hampshire domestic violence rapid rehousing project conquer Coalition
against homeless to end homelessness sorry um permanent support of housing project was funded we
also received funding for a Statewide domestic violence rapid rehousing
project through the community action program of straford County and we also
received funding for Waypoint in order for them to provide coordinate entry
services to youth as well I feel like I'm missing one I don't know who it is
um but we're very very excited we're hoping to get these projects up and going by the end of
October the only other thing that we want to bring up is we as the
collaborative applicant the Bureau of homeless Services is looking to revamp subcommittees similar to what we did
with the balance estate Continuum of Care um meeting list um Melissa recently
updated that entire meeting list for the Continuum of Care we will be working on
updating all of the subcommittee email lists as well in order to ensure that we
have the right people at the right tables so that we can move forward in ending homelessness connecting people to
permanent housing options um and really meeting the needs
of what HUD expects from us each year through the
noo that's all I have I don't know if anyone else has any
other updates
Rob says
no all right well I am going to end the meeting and we will share the recording
and post it on our website um as soon as we humanly
possibly can and we will send that out to everybody I also will include all of the Powerpoints from the three
presenters today from the Coalition stford County cap and from Brides house so that you can all have access to those
trainings as well thank
you thank
you
January 9, 2024
Balance of State Continuum of Care Meeting, January 9, 2024
Balance of State Continuum of Care Meeting, January 9, 2024
Balance of State Continuum of Care Meeting, January 9, 2024
Transcript of video:
I saw your message Melissa but I know if Mandy you had anything you wanted to start with before we jumped
in think I saw her somewhere um I don't I
mean good okay all right I'm going to share my
screen
just make that a little bit bigger like the actual slide there perfect thank you okay so hopefully everyone can hear me I
know Melissa was having some technical difficulties with her sound um but we're
here today to do the 2024 hmis and nonhis W time training I think most of
you probably know who we are but I am Robin meloff um and I'm accompanied by
my partner in crimes Tina Walker we both work for the institute commun for Community alliances uh we are the hmis
uh system administrators for the state of of New Hampshire so we are the ones who are managing the hmis here in New
Hampshire uh we work across all three cc's in the state um we're the ones who
are always bugging you about your data and running reports and we submit all of those things to um to the federal
government to HUD uh so that's kind of what we do um we help with the point in time training every year uh this is kind
of a two-part training we're going to talk about uh both hmis and who enters into hmis and that process and what it
looks like and then also the non hmis agencies so those agencies that do not have access to hmis they don't have
anyone other agency entering into that system so 202 2024 point in time count
our agenda today um is uh that first we're going to go over a little bit of a background pit
information we might have some people on the call today who have never participated in the app point in time before so we're just going to give a
little background about what it is and why we do do it and when do we do it um
then we're going to talk about uh the those agencies that do enter into hmis and the sheltered count what that
process looks like um what the timeline for the reporting is going to look like and then we're going to take a look at
the actual uh reports themselves and kind of go through what they're going to look like what sort of Errors you should
be looking out for how we're going to get those reports confirmed um and then we're going to talk about non hmis and
the unsheltered count so we're going to do a timeline for that as well we're going to talk about the type of people
who were making sure to count for the point in time and then the people who we want to make sure we're not including in
the point in time um how that data is kind of collected for agencies that do not enter into hmis um and then we're
going to talk about the paper survey and the Google forms uh for non
hmis and we just wanted to mention that um we're going to stop every now and then for questions so if you could avoid
putting them in the chat um just because it will be difficult for us to respond in the chat and we will be
responding verbally once we stop um we have we'll stop in between every few slides we'll just let you unmute
yourselves and you can ask any questions as we go we also have Mandy on the call too
hopefully Melissa will be here at some point if like here if she's here already but Mandy can jump in and answer some questions for us too if they go beyond
uh our skill set of data
so a little bit of background on the point in time the point in time is an annual count and Survey of both
unsheltered and sheltered homeless persons and it's conducted on one single night every single year in the month of
January every Community Nationwide participates in this count and it's categorized by three program types which
is emergency shelter transitional housing and safy so again um we have those two project types we have the
sheltered which are agencies um with the above programs that will count individual individuals that are
physically staying in a bed and then the unsheltered are agencies who are going to count individuals who are sleeping in
places not fit for human habitation and we'll talk about that a little bit more as we go through this
Paro so when do we conduct from point in time hopefully everybody knows what the point in time date is at this point but
uh the night of Wednesday January 24th 2024 is going to be our point in time
for New Hampshire you can collect the data for up to seven days after uh the point in time but we always just want to
be making sure that we're asking where did you sleep on the night of January 24th
2024 uh because we're collecting data for that single point in time we want to make sure that that's even if it's two
three four days later we want to know where were you on on this night we have
a
I think somebody un oh okay ionna say Melissa I think you muted me I unmuted myself I should be good um so uh
important to be asking people where did they sleep um on the night of January 25 um only clients who are physically in a
bed or who were unsheltered on January 24th 2024 those are the clients that
we're going to be counting for this point in time
do does anyone have any questions before we get into the nitty-gritty of the point in
time Al
righty so first up we're going to be talking about the shelter couch um and these are for hmis agencies so hmis data
is used for all agencies that enter their shelter their transitional housing or their safe haven data into our New
Hampshire hmis um IC is going to pull the reports for you and send them with
an email we do this every year so uh agencies who have been around for a while and who've been participating in this um it's the same email that we send
every year it kind of breaks down um this is what we're expecting of you your report is attached here's things to look
for and then we usually uh link you to our knowledge base which has uh more
Pitt and hit resource guides on it for you uh if you need that so that's going to be sent to you January 2th which is
the day after the point in time um please pay attention to the timeline and due dates we're going to go through them
in this PowerPoint but they're also on our knowledge base they've also been announced in the hmis newsletter that we
send out twice a month we do understand that the timeline might seem a little tight as far as making sure all your
clients are in there making sure the data is correct getting a confirmed point in time report uh but we also have
to finish our work so that we can submit that to HUD uh so we just want to make sure that we're kind of keeping with the
timelines as close as we possibly can and then again yeah can I interrupt you
for one minute um can everyone please make sure that you're muted um and if you have a
question you can raise your hand um and ICA will be checking for questions throughout the presentation as they
stated thank you thanks Christie
um so again be on the lookout for emails and newsletters from a um both are going
to contain important information we are always squawking about the newsletter because not a lot of people read it even
though we have all of our most important information in there so especially at this time of year you want to make sure you're keeping an eye out for that
newsletter because it's going to have important information in it again keeping an eye out for emails with your
PO uh your point in time reports we might need to go back and forth a couple of times to say oh we still see that
this is missing you still have some things that you need to work on can you look again and we'll send it again and confirm sometimes it's a little bit of a
back and forth so you just want to make sure that you're watching out for those emails uh just to make sure that we're getting those reports in when we need
them to be
in uh so here's that timeline that we talked about uh Thursday January 25th
again that is the day that we're going to be sending out all of your hmis pit reports to you Thursday February 1st a
week later all of your data needs to be entered into hmis so this is kind of when that back and forth process happens
of um you know maybe sending us a report and asking if it looks good or adding
clients or taking out clients that don't need to be there or fixing data that's kind of going to be that week between
when you're getting sent your report and when all of your data really needs to be entered into hmis and then a week after
that that's when we need the confirmed and accurate uh pit reports so that'll be Thursday February 8th 24 that's when
those reports need to be done to us confirmed everything's accurate and good to go any questions on the
timeline uh the timeline again is going to be in the newsletter and it is also on our knowledge base so if you forget
and you need to look back it's you'll have various places where you can go back and find it and feel free to always email us at the help desk if you have
questions as well um so diving into your pit reports
you may see some errors or some missing data when you're reviewing your pit report um we're in a much better system
this year um and we were last year too so we saw a lot less of this which was nice because the system kind of forces
you to not make mistakes um but there still may be some things that you need to to go through what we find a lot of
times is we send the pit reports and people don't even look at them and they just say yep it's good to go and then we
have to email you back and say well you're actually missing this data you actually don't have or is this really
the accurate amount of client and then we have to go back and forth so making sure that you're kind of taking the pit
report when we give it to you and actually going through it and reviewing it to make sure there's no missing data
um there's not going to be anything um highlighted on the report for you we're going to pull up a report so you can see
it we've highlighted some things that you know might be missing but we're not going to give you a report that's highlighted with a bunch of missing data
that's your job um for your agency to kind of review that and see what's missing and see if it's accurate so um
again check that there's data in each cell of the um Excel that we're going to give you if not it could mean that you
do have missing data on your program enrollment um or you could have missing data on your client profile um but keep
in mind that children do not need to have data for things like veteran status or domestic violence so if you see
missing data in those categories for children that's okay that's supposed to be missing um but if you see any other
missing data and your program enrollment you those are things that you'll need to
address um so households households is one of the things that we've seen in this new system that is not the most
intuitive um it's not always easy to add people together to go back and add them
if we have new people being enrolled later on um it's the thing that people
struggle with the most so we wanted to make sure that we just went over that all household members um must exist in
Clarity before you're able to add them into uh the households and the enrollment when when you're creating
that enrollment you want to make sure that all of the appropriate house me members are included in the enrollment
um and then ensure that you're enrolling the household in the correct program so
for things like if a head of household exits the program before the rest of the household you have to make sure that
you're going back into that file and changing the head of household from the
person who left to whoever is going to be the head of household now that's another thing that we've seen a lot where people are not going back and
switching it to be the correct head of household and then you get the error where there's no head of household and
then that's going to reflect on your appoint and time for um a child only household means that the child is not in
the same enrollment as the head of household we've seen that happen a lot where you know a four or five-year-old
is being the head of household because they're not being added into the enrollment appropriately with the actual
head of household um the only time that that's appropriate to see is if there is if you're a youth program who is allowed
to serve child only households otherwise we would not expect to see a 5-year-old being the head of
households any questions on that households are a little tough so I just want to make sure that everybody
understands that we need to to be adding them in
correctly it's also I just wanted to quickly mention it's something that um
for you to also realize how many households you have because when we send the report the the families are together
but they aren't kind of clumped as a household so if you serve adult and children they won't be um it's not
separated out it just says a list of people so you have to know how many people should be in your program and how
many households on the night of the pit
and we'll see that a little bit more shtin is going to pull up their report we're going to take a look at it so we can kind of show you what that looks
like all righty so uh now we're going to move on to sheltered count non hmis
agencies um so who to count um here is where we're going to count sheltered
people who are experiencing homelessness this is um as defined by Hud physically
in a bed at an emergency shelter or a safe haven or a transitional housing uh
designated for people who are homeless uh in a motel uh paid for by state funds
or in a motel paid for by a charitable
organization those are the people we're going to and Mandy feel free to jump in at any point in time if you want to add
more information to any of these because I know there's some confusion about sheltered and unsheltered and non- hmis
and hmis there's a lot going on there so if there's any questions yeah we really
want to clarify that HUD captures sheltered and unsheltered homelessness on the night of the point in time and
within those categories we have agencies who enter into hmis and we have agencies who don't enter into hmis so as you're
listening to this presentation just be mindful about kind of where you fit in based on your own agency so Robin
reviewed the hmis sheltered count in previous slides and now if you are a
program or an agency that has either emergency shelter transitional housing
um and you're not entering a hmis these slides would be for you these are how you would then submit surveys um to
collect the data so still sheltered but not
hmis um so uh agencies with emergency shelter transitional housing Safe Haven programs who do not enter into hmis as
Mandy just said um we'll need to survey people staying in their program on the night of the pit
to gather that data for HUD so you're still going to be gathering the data just like we would gather the the data
in hmis um but we're not using hmis for that um so it's it's entered and
submitted uh with Google forms and paper forms um and we're gonna we're going to
talk about those a little bit later in this presentation but it is also important to note that all the data on the survey is required to be collected
so an hmis it's a little bit easier because we can at I can say you didn't collect this data you you have to go
back and and put in the data we want to remind you too that even for the paper surveys the Google forms all of that
data is required to be collected HUD does not allow for any missing data for the point in time so for example if you
missing someone's race um and the client refuses to give it to or you're not you just didn't get it for some reason uh we
have to then reach out to the COC leads and we have to have a conversation with them about what we're going to label the
what we're going to put this what category we're going to put this person into because um unfortunately HUD is not
going to allow us to submit anything to them with any kind of missing data on it so that's important to note for both
hmis and nons okay so this is the unsheltered
both hmis and non hmis
agencies so the timeline for this is going to look exactly like the timeline for the
hmis the dates are the same um it's just that how you're doing it is a little bit different so Thursday January 25th day
after the point in time that's where we're going to start collecting data um and we can start entering uh you can
start using those paper forms again we're going to review those a little bit further um and then you can start entering into the Google forms as soon
as as January 25th uh the next Thursday following Thursday February 1 that's
when all data should be collected and ready uh to be into the Google form so if you haven't um entered any of your
data into the Google forms yet that's when you want to make sure that all of that data is in there and ready to go
and then by Thursday February 8th all data should be entered into the Google forms because what's going to happen is
um IC is going to work with the cooc leads and we're going to take all of the hmis data and all the non- hmis data
we're going to compile that together we're going to try to go through and duplicate things make sure that it's as
accurate as we possibly can um and then we're going to take all of that compiled data and we're going to send that to HUD
um as the final submission for the point in time um so again that's why this timeline is a little tight because we
have work to do um at the end of the data collection to make sure that we're getting it all compiled together and
sent on time any questions for that timeline so
is exactly the same as the hmis data St shouldn't be too conf
using all right so uh for who to count we're
counting people who are literally homeless under Hud's definition HUD has a very specific definition of who uh
they deem as literally homeless um we do have that information on our website but you can find it on Hud's website too if
you're curious to know what that is um unsheltered people who are homeless so they those are the people as we talked
about before that are staying in a place not meant for human habitation uh they might be in a tent in a car in an
abandoned building on the street uh those are people who are uh do not have
a roof over their head they're unsheltered they're staying in a place where they uh should not what that's not
meant for human
habitation um so who not to count so these people who are uh doubled up their
couch surfing um they have a private Motel stayed by their household or
family or friends those people per HUD technically have a roof over their head
and so those are the people um that they have they're staying in a place where
they are covered by family friends you know they're they're hopping around her
HUD those are the people that we do not want to count for the point time anybody who's in a jail prison any sort of
Correctional Facility um the doc transitional housing those people who were not counting to the point in time
anyone who's in foster care so like a home placement or a group uh home that's dedicated to serving the homeless we're
not counting those individuals um anyone who is staying at the state hospital
hospital or equivalent um any of these dmh housing subsidy programs Mental
Health crisis fed or group homes again those are all people that HUD is deeming they have a roof over their head they're
in a stable environment that they're not literally homeless for the point in time
and then any other kind of Health Care facilties so hospitals nursing facilities Assisted Living substance use
treatment um deeds and Facilities um those are the people that were not tting it looks like we have a
question I think from Bob if I can see that correctly hi it's Bob Mack um hi Robin
um just a quick question as far as the hospitals I know in the past we've reached out to like emergency
departments should we not would that be considered in a hospital if they're in
an ed um that's a good question Mandy do
you know the answer for that I would definitely say uh emergency rooms are a great resource for point in time because
it could be someone coming in off the street was seen in that moment and then returning back to the streets right
because they're not like impatient so when we talk about hospitals we're talking about people that are impatient
in a hospital kind of thing okay once they're ad be at the emergency room for
two hours right and then be back on the street so yeah sorry Freeman go
ahead no I was just gonna say I've always gone by whether or not they were admitted that
night so if they were admitted they were inside you know
yep that makes sense thank you any other any other questions on that also if if
somebody is arrested and just taken to the county jail to be booked but are not going to you know you
know with bail reforms many get let out that same day that they were able to
be counted as well right yeah so I think what's important and Mandy if you want to jump in here
too it's it's it's more of like a we're we're looking at a single point in time
for one night versus like a long-term stay for clients so like Bob was just
saying if they're going to be admitted to the hospital and we know they're going to be there for a week that's or two weeks or whatever the case is those
are clients that we might not want to count otherwise we're counting them if it's not a a more
stable stable environment that makes any sense and I think it also brings up a good point
about um the fear of double counting like don't be afraid of double counting because we dup the back end we want to
make sure everybody counts so if they are in this kind of weird situation where they're in an emergency room and
you're not sure if they've been counted by someone else please conduct that survey um yeah we'd rather have
everybody count and do a little bit more work on the back end um and have a better count for the New Hampshire so
good questions so better to overcount than under count for sure
great so how is the data being collected so for all agencies hmis non hmis
they're going to need to do they're going to need to survey clients that are sleeping in places not meant for human
DEH habitation on that night of the 24th um Extended window can be to
collect information like we kind of talked about at the beginning of the the presentation that you do have up until
seven days after the point in time to continue to ask these questions to survey but again we want to make sure
that we're asking that question of when did you sleep where where were you sleeping on the night of the point in time that's important um the paper
survey can be used and then um all that data is collected um it's entered into a
Google form by the agency who collected it and then that's when we take the Google form responses and we uh dup and
combine them with the hmis um it's important to note to that all the data on the survey is required to be
collected again as we said previously we can't have any missing data um we can
actually show a a picture of Shina has it up on her computer the paper forms
and what they look like so you can kind of have a little bit of a visual um again we do have this on our um
knowledgebase uh website that you can pull from um and I'm sure that everybody has access to them at this point but if
you want to pull that up shtino we can kind of take a look at it I do just want to jump in like really emphasize that up
to seven days so I know as we're planning uh within the balance of State um some of our more rural areas you know
brought up in the past maybe a snowstorm hit the day of the pit right so we know that the count Maybe wasn't as accurate
as it could have been so please by all means use those extra days to go back to
that night the 24th to see where folks stayed you know again we want an accurate count and that may mean an
increase in homelessness by the numbers but we need to get to a baseline to understand the scope to be able to
really work on a solution to reducing that number so um I think after this
presentation we'll probably just highlight a couple of areas and how they're approaching that but definitely the seven days please keep that in mind
U during the week of the point in time um so this is what the paper form
looks like um again it's all the same information that is collected in hmis
it's just kind of on a paper form instead it gives you a little bit of a um a script to kind of say hi my name is
this I'm volunteering for this this is kind of what we're doing we're conducting this annual count and so
it'll kind of walk you through um how what to to say um and then if the client says that uh if they refuse or unable to
be interviewed um that's when we're going to do an observation instead um
and kind of fill out what you see um and Mandy might be able to touch a little bit more on that but if they do say sure
I'll I'll fill out this this form this is what's this is the next steps that you're going to take so um asking where
are you staying on the night of Wednesday January 24th uh what type of place were you staying in again place
not meant for human habitation were you in a tent campground all of those places or were you staying in an emergency
shelter transitional housing hotel room it's going to give all of these options where were you staying that night um and
then if we scroll a little further down um next questions this is all of that
household information so this is that information that we were talking about in relation to the pit report where you're asking them what their name date
of birth their age range their gender their race and ethnicity again those are all the same questions of right asking
in hmis we want to make sure that we're filling that out to the best that we can
um and then it gives you some information down here uh about the date of birth uh the age range the gender um
what we're kind of looking for for these These are the options that you can choose from in hmis so it's going to
give you those options down here below and and then currently fleeing from domestic violence um HIV AIDS and then
some disabling conditions as well and if you want to scroll a little bit further
down sorry we just had a question um I was going to just go through the form Al together and then
answer questions okay yeah good I just want to make sure we get through it first um so again disabling conditions
and then history of homelessness so again this is that per HUD definition is this the first time that you've been
literally homeless how long have you been literally homeless um if it's the first time how many separate times this
is that HUD definition of what they're counting as literally homeless so it kind of it's nice that it breaks it down
for you so that you don't have to think of that definition off the top of your head it kind of walks you through those steps of is this person literally
homeless per the HUD definition then you can keep scrolling I
think we're close to the end here um and then down here in our uh our
little section about do not count that we already talked about these are the people that you're not going to count so it gives you a little reminder if these
people are double do couch in paid for by motels those are the clients that you don't want to count and then in our nice
big red bold writing here we have the due date is by uh 2824 so that's kind of what the Forum
looks like uh and then I think shtin said we had a question I think I saw something about the Google forms in the
chat yeah in the chat um Sue is just wondering how we access them yeah so we
have the Google forms that are going to be up on our IC website um it's in our pit and hick knowledge based article um
which again has been sent out in the newsletter we're going to include it um in our emails uh for the pit reporting
but you can um access them through our website these are just the demo links the ones that are up currently we don't
like to post the actual Live Links until the week of the point in time because we just want to make sure that nobody's
actually going in there before and accidentally entering data um so these are the demo links if you want to take a
look at them before the point in time you can find them on our website um and I don't know shatina maybe if you or one
of us at some point can drop the link to that in the chat here as well um but it's going to go over exactly what you
just saw in the paper uh the paper survey um so if you want to go in you can kind of play around with it and kind
of see what it looks like enter some data feel free to enter fake data in here so you can practice with it and
then the week of the point in time is when we're going to set up those Live Links so that you can begin using them
once uh once we have the point in time thanks cha
and we have another yeah one other question I didn't see it I H do we have
to use the Google forms for everyone for everyone I'm not sure what
for everyone in the house Kelly can you
elaborate I think she means everyone in the household but they're on the form
you could see that there were multiple there were spots for each family member and then that translates to what
goes on the form in Google I'm assuming that's what you mean
but if not D us another question Mandy anything well and I want
to just say that there is a a that check box uh going back to the paper form you saw of an observation and I just want to
stress how careful we want to be with that you know this is really about collecting information and having people
be a part of that so I'm very hesitant always with that observation box you know we don't want to assume gender we
don't to assume ethnicity and race so uh as much participation from the
individuals that you're working with uh that we can get please please please go
that route technically it is a choice that we have there but uh again be very
careful with that yeah and that kind of goes back to the missing data too we don't want to have to choose people's
RAC or ethnicity or things like that for them so as much as you can possibly get
from the clients that you're speaking with the better we all are
so all right great so we talked a little bit about
the paper survey already we've taken a look at it the paper survey is um used by all three coc's it's the same uniform
survey across Ross the whole state so you'll all be using the same thing um again can't stress enough all required
data is on the form it's required uh the pit committee creates and edits and approves the survey uh months before the
point in time so that's kind of how we uh get to what survey we're going to be using um and then the pit committee is
made up of leadership from all three of those coc's uh so that's why we have a nice uniform uh point in time survey all
three coc's
and then again the Google forms um ICA creates the Google forms uh they match
the per the paper survey exactly we use that raw data and again we D duplicate
it uh we produce the aggregated data once all of that is cleaned up and D duplicated and that's what we then
submit to HUD um the Google form surveys can be found again on our ICA knowledge
base in the pit and hick article um sha just had it up and you might want to we might want to pull it up and show it
again sha it's a so this article is all about the point in time and the housing inventory chart so it's going to have um
everything that you need in it the timelines that we were talking about some of this information um about what
it is and why it is uh for the housing inventory chart as well and then below is when um we have all of our resources
so we have some like um Quick Gun and some um uh the the access to the paper
forms the Google Sheets everything is on there and then once this Melissa started recording this video as well so once
this training is complete and we get the recording we'll post this onto our website as well so you can access it go
back and look at it if you need
to perfect and again those Live Links will be there uh the week at appointment time so you'll be able to access
those great so that's kind of the end of our
uh PowerPoint presentation uh the next step is that cha is going to pull up hm my and we're going to kind of go over um
the the uh report and what it looks like um does anybody have any other
additional questions on anything we just went over before we do
that did I miss any in the chat sha I think we got them all no we'll just put
our um I realized there was one last slide that I missed on the PowerPoint but we'll just put the email if you have
any questions that comes up that come up after the fact we also will have um
office hours that will be in our newsletter that come up if anybody has
any questions as um we start going with the pit it'll be after the pit I don't
the dates will be in the newsletter I don't know the month it's already been in the newsletter so the it'll it's
already been in the newsletter it will be again it's um January 29th uh from 10 a.m. to 12: p.m so the link to register
for that is in the newsletter um like cha said it's a time two hours that we set aside to if you want to look at your
P your point in time reports you want to talk to us about anything we have that time set aside so you can register for
that with the the link in the newsletter so the pit report that we're
moving into that's specific to sheltered hmis agencies correct so before we move
into that since I know there's a lot of people on here for the unsheltered count I just want to uh you know because it is
so different and that you're going out you're canvasing um you're you're you know working with your community at large to
really go out the following days after the 24th know that there are pit
planning committees happening uh throughout the state so if you haven't already been looped in or connected uh
please reach out we can connect you into your local community um for kind of
joining in on that either Street Outreach canvasing being a part of actually working with individuals
experiencing homelessness or other ways like maybe making pit kits or you know
having soup on or you know there's a bunch of different roles that I think I'll contribute to making that day
successful um that maybe not necessarily direct Outreach so uh please let us know
afterwards and I think there are a couple other things coming through the chat as well
I see one from Melissa I I think I know what the what what it's asking it's um
this one for the point in time count purposes only what is the effect an observation has when no one is counted
without all data entered I think I'm not sure what no one
is counted without all data I think it just is asking what happens if we have missing data is that I don't know if I'm
reading serine or Mandy if I'm reading that wrong
yeah if whoever answer asks that question can elaborate on it just so we have Clarity on how to answer it yeah
I'm not quite sure um if we do have that was me Mandy okay
go ahead what we're we're being told at one part in the slides that we need to have all data in order for someone for for it
to be counted if we're just doing an observation what is the effect that has
on the count you know what is what is the purpose for the piit count itself
I'm not saying it doesn't have other purposes but just for the piit count itself for the
unel yeah it's a great question because so what happens and maybe IA can further
explain but what happens if they don't have all of the data it defaults to the
uh population at large so again going back to uh you know either race or
ethnicity or gender it will default to whatever is the largest number in the
the system so it will skew our results because it will not necessarily be
accurate as that person identifies because we live in New Hampshire and we are primarily in a a
white state so for example you know it's going to default to White so that's the impact that it has is that we're not
necessarily getting the corre account okay I just wanted to make sure
because we want to get as much data as possible obviously we want to make sure our folks are counted but I just wanted
to make sure what was the the effect of that thank you
sure okay so I think we're probably good question wise uh and we can move into
the system and kind of take a look at what that report looks like and hand it over to
stina okay um we just had the this is recorded um somebody just asked in the
chat so we'll put it on the knowledge base like Robin said I did put the link for the knowledge base into the chat so
um if you don't subscribe to our newsletter you should but if you don't
the link is right there and you can access all of the documents we've reviewed and then this training eventually will be on there as well um
Christie hi thanks uh we're also hoping that the recording will we will get up
on the Bureau of homelessness services website and we can send out that link as well
great um okay I'm going to go into what the
report will look like this is for again as Mandy had mentioned for the agencies that do enter into hmis so the agencies
that don't enter into hmis and are doing the non non-sheltered that is the Google form and the Google
form uh data will then be merged with this and that's how we get the ultimate
um the end numbers for the the pit so again four agencies that enter into
hmis and will be receiving a report from us I just don't want people to get confused so let me share my screen
again Zoom is insanely difficult
to share okay can everyone see my
spreadsheet great okay so when you receive
according to that timeline we will be sending we'll be running all of the reports for each individual agency the
night of the pit so any the day after the pit so any emergency shelter transitional housing or Safe Haven we'll
we'll be writing the report for you and sending it over to the following day and this is kind of what it will look like
um except there will be no highlighting I highlighted this for the purpose of what we will be looking at but as I
mentioned before this is this doesn't combine any families together so this
will just give you all of the clients um unique IDs their ages all of the
required questions but it will tell you over here in column U what their
relationship to head of household is so it's important for you as an agency to know how many clients you should have
had the night of the pit um and then how many households so that you if you see
um a head of household a child only household then you will know that you
are missing you know a couple members uh on the report um I don't know why this
downloaded with this fun little symbol but that's supposed to say head of household's child and like Robin
mentioned there are some that will be empty because it's for children so
children don't need to have their veteran status obviously this child no
veteran status um and then the DV question are not answered for children either so if you see some of these blank
it should relate to a child if it doesn't then you'll need to go back and answer it um because we are in a better
system most of the time it doesn't let you move forward if you didn't answer this but there are cases where that
might be um there are times when that might be the case the other thing to look for is that if this says um
Survivor of domestic violence if this is a yes there should be um a response in
the next column so yes no yes no yes yes
so we want to make sure that there's a follow-up answer if this does say yes um the additional required data
elements that are there are the um race and ethnicity secondary race and
those should all be race and ethnicity should be completed but that's something probably
on our end that needs to be fixed um I didn't notice that till right now oh wait nope it's over here there's right
the right column um okay so this is what it will look like it
should if you are a big shelter fit has a very large shelter this will be a really big and possibly overwhelming
report for you to look at you can filter columns however you want to look at to sort through that but this um unique ID
is how you'll go into and find the client that may have any errors so for
the sake of this training I highlighted the few errors that um were intentional
data not collected is an error data not collected here is also an error um and
data not collected and Veteran status of an this is a child that's I don't know
that's an adult it should be but um the data not collected should have um should
all be you should go back and fix them um does anyone have any questions about
the way this looks so
far before I go into the actual clients Robin anything I'm
missing I don't think so chat anything in the
chat uh NASA City Welfare recently started entering into hmis the clients
were served in motel hotels will we receive this report yep so hotels motels are
considered emergency shelter for the city um and any welfare that doesn't enter
into hmis we use a Google form but if you enter into hmis those who considered emergency shelter and we'll send those over to
you did I see something else in the chat too I think somebody uh can you define the age of a
child yep so um unless you're a youth
provider you shouldn't have any head of households that are under 18 so um the
children are under 18 and those that's why those questions don't populate do that answer the
question okay all right so when you receive your
report and oh something else okay great so when you receive your report and you do see some of these errors that you
might need to fix or you do notice that there's somebody that doesn't need to that have has to be exited um another
thing I didn't mention was making sure that any client that has to be exited the night that has to be exited because
they weren't there at the na of the pit should be exited from this report um and then from the program for this report
and then anyone that needs to be added the same thing you'll have to add them in to make sure that it's counting all
of the people that are there that's why we send this report and then like Robin mentioned we have the back and forth for a few days because you might have
clients that you need to enter that I mean we're guys are all super busy you may have not been able to enter them
right away um especially in a shelter setting so what if you do see that this
is too little or too many or whatever um we obviously go back into the system so because I have I put enroll the test
client and I didn't enter some information I'll just show you how to kind of go back into the system
everybody should know how to enroll everybody enroll a client if you enter um and to how to get that information in
there but I'll just quickly show you um I have to figure out how to change my
screen please hold
okay um so you log in like you normally would and you in
this case I'm already in my client so I knew that from my report that R race and
ethnicity was not collected and again this is one of those required data elements elements that Hut is not going to let us submit um so if we see this on
the report we send it to you we see on the report that it's not there but you tell us that this is confirmed we're
going to come back and say this is something you need to answer um again because we can't stress enough that Hut
is just not going to let us and the cooc leads are put in the position where they have to make a decision and again we'll
just defer to White because of the state that we live in and that may not properly collect the right information
so you will have to go in change this information to whatever it may be and
then save it the other question that we didn't
have answered was their um disability I
think so you'd want to go into your program that you ventured the client in and you
want to make sure that all of these are answered so all of these disabling
conditions here you can see data not collected so I would just change that to whatever it is if this is um if this the
data is not collected the client doesn't know again you have to put something if you can't OB I mean if it's a situation
where um unless somebody has a disability like a SSDI letter or
something and they're saying no it's self-report so just put no um and make sure that you have the following
questions answered so that it comes up on the
report another thing that we want that I wanted oh it looks like there's something in the
chat um our organization only uses hmis
report clients covered by cold weather emergency respons otherwise we usually use so
um okay so the question is I was reading it
quietly to myself so uh there are some agencies that may have a um a cold
weather like day Center or something and then additionally offer um shelter in
another case they would be using you would use both non hmis the Google
Document and then hmis
does that make sense so some of the like warming
stations will be using the Google Document Outreach may be collecting maybe going out to collect that
information however your community wants to do it thank you yes that answers that
question thank you no problem we also have a question from Lynn about um
conflicting information so it's it's not conflicting information so HUD does not accept any missing
information but what happens is is that um that's that's how it's not missing
once it's missing then we have to say here's the answer and we give them that answer and then it goes into HUD as that
answer right so it might be missing originally you can't get the information but then the COC leads are going to say
okay this person's race was not collected that means that they're white and then we're going to put it in as
white and is going to get submitted to HUD with the answer of white even if you did not give even if you didn't collect
that information so um so it might be missing originally but then it's it's going to get an answer and it's going to
be submitted to HUD with an answer whether you collected that information or not does that make more
sense thanks for clarifying Robin yeah um and and that's that's exactly right
so the answer may not be there originally but we have to come up with something and then because otherwise head would be like nope we can't take
this and then Olga I saw your question about people staying in the warming station that's some so this is something
each cooc I think and Mandy you might have more of a perspective on this but I
know that um people in the warming stations that are not sleeping that did
not sleep at a shelter the night before or at your shelter the night before are counted as unsheltered the people that
are in your shelter the night before um they would be put into hmis as as
sheltered that night because they were in your
shelter yeah I think that's actually a perfect example of why you do community counts right so working hand inand with
your Outreach teams on who's being counted on shelter or if they can do drop in hours at that warming station um
again don't be afraid to double count we want to make sure everybody's counted but there are ways you can be strategic
and use each other um I know Sue I think is is spearheading that down there so
you all do so well in ashaa of having that comprehensive planning but yeah it's a great point of why you use each
other as partners to make sure that everybody is counted regardless of their
situation does anyone have any more those are really great questions the warming stations are really confusing for people so um including us last year
we had a lot of questions because who was counting them so yeah they're if
they did not sleep if they were if you are meeting with them on the the day after that Thursday and they did not
sleep in your shelter that night before then they would be counted um or in a
shelter they would be counted as non
sheltered um declin to answer instead of leaving blank um in hmis there is the
client there is the option the client did not answer uh but again we will still have to put a response
there um okay so any more
questions okay great so I'm going to go back to the
report because so once you fix those errors you'll back to us um and say
these errors have been fixed um and we will send you a
report back so um it's that back and forth that once you get the report you
look at the data you decide you are able to fix whatever you need to fix or if there's nothing that needs to be fixed
then you're like all right this is good we confirm it we send you a copy and we keep it on a copy for ourselves and say
a confirm it as the report the night of the pit um you will then when you get
your new one you'll have the correct answers in these highlighted spots instead of the ones that are highlighted
and you will um that is what we'll take for that's what we'll use for HUD so the
thing the next thing that is a big um something to really remember is that the
data that you've confirmed with us is the data that we're submitting to HUD so we've had in the past people go back and
change data without letting us know so whether that means exiting clients um
I'm not talking about specifics of like data elements more so exiting or enrolling clients for the night of the
pit that we're not here on this confirmed report um if you do need to do
that you it's important that you let us know so that we can update our numbers because otherwise we're submitting you
know 10 clients on the night of the pit and then we run run a report closer to
submission and it says that you have 12 clients and then we hit come back to you and we say did you add these clients
these numbers are different what happened and then we do the back and forth again so whatever you confirm with
us that's the number that we are sending to HUD and of course we know that things happen Etc that number if it does need
to change then just let us know but we we need to be sure that the number
that we are are confirmed is the number that we're submitting and that your data doesn't
change does anyone have any questions about
that okay so that's kind of the entirety of what the report will
look like they're going back and forth um and the data the cleanup again because we were in a much better system
than we had been in the past the system doesn't really let you move forward even when I was trying to make these
intentional errors it was like hold on you messed this up so um we don't anticipate there to be a lot of errors
on these reports but we do often have this case where people need to be added or exited from each program um and
that's something more so to keep up to keep in mind when looking at these Robin did I miss
anything I don't think so I think that's the gist the only final thing is that when we do
uh send you the final like this is it this is your confirmed report we're also going to send you um the aggregated data
of that report so it's going to just say this is the amount of households you had this is the amount of adults with
children adults only this is the total count so we just kind of do it as an additional uh check just to make sure
here's the exact numbers that you should see um in your report so you're going to get an Excel and a pdf version for your
final confirmation um just with those final KS and we're happy to we have the pit
office hours as Sha said but we also um are happy to meet at any other time with you uh in between if you don't want to
show up to those pit office hours or they don't work for your schedule we have calendly links that are also on the newsletter um every other week uh you
can it has all of our availability so you can just sign up with a day or a time to talk to us about it um if you
have any questions that you can't ask on the P offit Reser you can't make it
Mandy anything else that you would like to add I think the only other thing I'd like to add is just to really look at
the pit forms when you get them like there's a script on it and you don't have to stick to the script of the form
but it has some specific definition information in there you know for me I always think back to veteran status and
it has a specific Federal definition so if someone says oh National Guard in the
script it has additional questions to ask to determine if that individual meets that status so for the sake of the
point in time we want to have it as accurate as possible so that we can have a scope of understanding about the
populations experiencing homelessness these are the numbers that Congress uses uh when they're talking about homelessness across the country so it's
important to have those subpopulations U be as accurate as possible so we can make the case uh for funding and
programs and all of that good stuff and I did put a link in the chat
to uh HUD just released new Hampshire's 2023 numbers um as we're gearing up for
2024 so that's the New Hampshire Statewide numbers and you can also Break It Out by COC as well for subpopulations
so if you're interested take a look um you know no surprise over the last two years we have had increases in
homelessness um and then we expect again a very comprehensive count this year so
uh likely we'll see an increase as again so so if you have any
other questions you know how to reach us uh again if you have any questions about linking up with the unsheltered count
and what's going on within your local community please let me know and otherwise are we turning it
over to you Christie for because I know Melissa's mic is still out yes so good
morning everyone yeah Melissa's microphone is still broken um I want to thank everyone for attending this um
balance EST State meeting today um it's really exciting we're looking forward to the piit count in
2024 um I am going to ask and I know we didn't prepare anybody but do any of the subcommittees for the balance estate
have any updates that they want to provide to the Continuum of Care
membership Heidi oh yeah um so the youth subcommittee will
be having a meeting on the 29th of January which is a Monday um we'll be breaking out into to work groups for the
coming year during that meeting uh giving updates on where our projects are
at where um sort of kind of where the whole yhdp uh community plan is at um
and context around that and then breaking out into workg groups um so that the leads for those work groups can
um put together um how we're going to work on that during the year so we have single points of contact again uh our
rural Outreach folks if anyone's interested in that uh we'll be doing a youth count this year in October so
they'll be planning for that group um trying to think of all the ones uh there's a driver's ed one for young
people um I think Becca's on this call am I missing what am I missing Becca there's five of
them uh training that's the other one I knew I was missing one and uh a training
work group to uh look at uh kind of following uh Mandy's lead with the Outreach groups in terms of putting a
curriculum together partnering with the right agencies uh the Hampshire coalition to end homelessness certainly
being one of them but also folks that are uh working with youth and young adults and um kind of planning a
curriculum around what would be best practices for those folks thanks Mandy for putting in the chat
too um yeah and uh also we are planning monitoring visits with all of the
projects right now Christine and I are putting that together and we'll be out there very soon
thank you Heidi uh Mandy do you have any updates from the Outreach committee or is there
we'll start there I mean Outreach uh all across the state right now is definitely
unsheltered point in time so again if you need to be connected let me know um
and then the veteran sub committee I am no longer the chair of so I think I saw
Katie maybe Emily as well they want to give a quick update
I can give a quick update I don't know if Emily is on this call but um we have
uh moved our um our subcommittee meeting this
month it was going to be today but scheduling conflict um it's going to be the afternoon of the 24th um via teams
we have some a lot of program updates a lot of program changes we have a new ssvf granty in the state of New
Hampshire so they will be um discussing um that service that's being
offered and we have the staff sergeant Fox Grant as well that's going to be um presenting at that committee um lots of
changes within the subcommittee uh for 2024 um I will send the um invite link
um to Christie so you have it so if anybody from um balance of state from this meeting that wants to attend that
meeting um just to get more information um you'll have that opportunity
thanks and a huge shout out to Manchester VA I don't know if we've announced it here but they have a new
coordinated entry specialist for the VA Nicole frisella so we are very excited
um as we continue to expand the coordinated entry process and kind of moving forward with data sharing and all
of that good stuff so positive
movement right thank you both um and then Freeman and I um chair the
coordinat subcommittee for the balance of State Continuum of Care um we have we
were supposed to have a meeting this week which we have cancelled because we are going to have the leadership for the
coordinat subcommittee do some strategic planning which we will present to the entire subcommittee in
February um we will also be looking at recruiting new members for the coordinate entry subcommittee meeting we
are hoping to have at least one step staff person from each one of the regional access points as part of the
coordinated tree subcommittee so you will definitely be getting an email invite from me to join if you work at a
regional access point and I think that's it for
coordinate entry today did anyone else have any updates that they wanted to share with the
group hi Susan here just want to appreciate Public Health they've really hired a lot of Outreach for workers
Bobby baggley has really seen the need for the Outreach and it's made a big
difference in nashille just just to thank you we meet on the
20 2nd is that right crew at 2:30 for
Pow Wow before the point in time actually it's Tuesday the 23rd 2:30 so
looking forward to it I have I have about 22 folks volunteering this year so
and I see you there so thank you for taking care of the the folks for the the shelter that
for the warming Center so we don't go through that this year thanks and thanks that's
it unless anyone else has anything else I don't see any hand raised or anything
in the chat our next meeting is in May um I do want to let all of you know that
we have gone through and we'll looking at last year's notice of fun oh sorry
March I think it's March already it's okay it's the weather uh so our next meeting is in March um Melissa and I
have gone through the requirements from HUD through the notice of funding opportunities available and we will be
scheduling some Continuum of Care wide trainings um and also some very specific
subrecipient trainings for all of you um so stay tuned for that we do have a training already scheduled for the March
balance of State Continuum of Care meeting um and I think that's all we
have Patty did you have anything are you good um actually this is this may seem
far field but it's it's not we're seeing more and more um referrals coming our
way of people who are working but who are stating that they are homeless so on
that vein we are just about about to Kickstart our free tax prep program um
that is a program that is National regardless of where you are in the country but most especially in New
Hampshire there is a very robust um number of sites of uh volunteer income
tax assistance as well as AARP tax Aid who will do anyone's return regardless
of income eligibility but if you do find that you are being presented with people who who
are working or who have worked recently please feel free to have them call 211
or I can um send a flyer that I've made out that can be sent to everyone as well
it is a a ridiculously valuable tool um
and and benefit for people especially uh looking in the H in our rear view mirror
with covid and all of the stimulus funds those people who had not thought they
should be filing a tax return it was much more difficult for the IRS to find them and alert them to to those stimulus
funds so there's a lot of reasons for people to um to have their taxes
prepared fuel assistants often will ask for them so again I will send out the flyer that I have it the reach in New
Hampshire is excellent so no matter where you are sitting uh there will be a a program
nearby thank you Addie does anyone have anything else
otherwise I will say thank you for attending and we look forward to seeing all of you in
March thank you thank you
2023 Videos
March 14, 2023
Balance of State Continuum of Care Meeting, March 14, 2023
Balance of State Continuum of Care Meeting, March 14, 2023
Balance of State Continuum of Care Meeting, March 14, 2023
Transcript of video:
all right um and as I shared with just a with the few folks who were on a couple minutes ago
um I'm getting unstable internet notices so I turned my camera off and I'm
um keeping all my fingers crossed that we make it through this two hour meeting without
um the the entire Zoom call getting through that um no if you could mute yourself if you
are not presenting that would be great thank you sorry um and if everybody could go ahead and
um introduce yourself in the chat please include your name in the agency you are representing and um just a friendly
reminder we use this to take attendance for um our annual HUD competition so
um if you don't receive Continuum of Care funding then you're just letting us know you're here and we appreciate your
attendance if you do get HUD COC funding um we do use it as a scoring item every
year um and we track the the attendants that are by my deadly
balance of State meetings um I am looking to see if our first
presenter is here so I can let her share her screen uh I am not seeing her yet
Jenny O Higgins are you here and I just don't see you
not seeing Jenny yet um so I did speak with Jenny this morning she is also home with kids
um having a snow day and she was worried that it would um she would have a couple of
interruptions we'll give her a second um
her presentation really leads into our second presentation so while we wait for
um to see if Jenny's able to join us can we shift some of our order and maybe do
some subcommittee updates while we wait I'm looking I see Heidi in my top left
corner Heidi how do you feel about jumping in and doing a youth subcommittee update
sure thing just once I'm doing the same problem here the internet is not
stable in time so um is Arielle here too she's gonna help me do that I haven't seen her yet either
laughs um if she jumps in she can jump into
that one piece um so all but one of our youth homelessness demonstration program
grants uh have been approved by governor and Council so Connor going and setting
up invoicing templates for our uh for the Claremont learning partnership Tri-County cap with two projects and
Waypoint has two projects as well so though all five contracts are going through on those and we have one to go
so I'm excited about that uh all in the process varying degrees of hiring do the
works excited and welcome and so uh have a board
um we do have a balance of State youth subcommittee meeting uh that's planned for March 15th from two to this week uh
please let me know uh shoot me an email if you have not like to attend
um
uh that we have uh going forward our higher education work group our coordinate entry for youth uh youth
count work group and our use uh yhdp outcomes our data work group
um and Delta hedden uh just in time perfect um Arielle if you wouldn't mind giving
the uh last oh okay I didn't realize that we were starting sorry sorry that's okay we had to switch a little bit in
the schedule um so hello everyone my name is
and I'm um part of the success project um so I'm
a chair uh subcommittee but um we have a higher education Summit coming up on
Friday is a summit to really call in colleges
to work on address saying needs disparities among their
student body specifically around housing um and that's happening on Friday March
24th High registration closes on the 20th is that correct
okay um and part of this came from goal seven in the balance of State
coordinated community plan to end youth home assist so it is us taking a step forward in
um executing some of those things on the coordinated community plan and we'll have a panel of younger
we will have a presentation on some of the youth that we ran the youth count
survey in October so yeah lots of good info
information soon
so I'm not sure how the sound was for everyone else it's very choppy on my end was anybody else able to hear it or are
we going to struggle all day Heidi's saying it's okay all right
it was good it was good okay so it's and it's better if I'm the one who can't hear it because Heidi can give me the
updates again later and Arielle can update me when we have our our youth meeting this afternoon
um okay Jenny I think is working on getting on but we'll keep moving through
um our updates do we have a coordinated entry subcommittee update and again for people who are just joining our
presenter is home with her kids on a snow day as well so we're we're sort of doing the um the juggling Act of
balancing work and life and kids in snow and all the fun things so I appreciate your
flexibility as we shift our schedule around just a little bit here coordinated entry Christy is that you
it's me um I was looking to see if Freeman's here but so I don't think he is I'm
Christy shot I'm the continuation administrator and the co-chair of the balance of State
Courtney um I believe my co-chair Freeman talked from Belknap Merrimack cap is
out a storm um so please excuse his absence
um a couple of things that have been happening in the world of coordinated entry um are bridges rapid rehousing project
which specifically serves those fleeing or attempting to flee human traffic
violence took their first referral week um so that project has begun to accept
referrals they do tenant-based rental assistance and Supportive Services
and to piggyback off of the youth update um wage um youth homelessness
demonstration project also took their first referral in the last week and a half so they bring into youth accounting
in regards to ordinary entry subcommittee group we met last month
um we are having three different subcommittees we have a data committee
which will be reviewing the data that comes out of hmis and from our
prioritizing looking at the trends in the data comparing those Trends against
and really evaluating what we're seeing
system we also will have an evaluation subcommittee which will be
would require evaluation of the coordinated entry system they will be working look at surveys or
having meetings with consumers around how the coordinatory system is working
both from provider perspective Community perspectives and from people who have gone through the coordinated entry
system and the last subcommittee that we have is the training subcommittee which is
the Conor ever Coalition um they are working on finalizing the entry environments including quizzes and
trainings to make sure that those are in place for both assessment partners
foreign entry awesome thank you and I lost the agenda
uh veteran and Outreach subcommittee updates I think Emily were you Emily
raising were you here today for the veteran update
I am can you hear me okay I can't but others seem to be able to so okay you
can go ahead I'm trying to put my camera on and it's not working I don't know why I'm not pie
yeah oh good okay it's not all right um so I just wanted to introduce myself
um I recently have taken over as the chair for the balance of State veterans
South community meeting I'm again my name is Emily Racine I'm the homeless Program Coordinator at the Manchester VA
so um I just kissed the last meeting happened but I wasn't able to attend the last
meet um so um I apologize if I'm giving updates that were already in as last time I think was there so she was
probably able to or maybe Mandy was able to step in but um so the balance of
State um veteran Subway meeting has merged with the Manchester
um meeting because we realized that we're all kind of having the same conversations and it was pretty much
just seeing people at the meetings so it made sense for us to all kind of meet just to streamline the process
um so we've been meeting every other month um and we've made a lot of progress in
the last few months we've developed um the New Hampshire partnership agreement so that we're able to case conference
now so those providers that signed on to that are able to meet during those
meetings and having case conferences and meetings so we can look at the list and um you know assign providers to work on
those veterans so the case conferencing process has begun which has been great our committees can be meeting
um next Tuesday again on Tuesday afternoon I think that's the 14th from one to two
another exciting thing that's kind of developed on pretty recently is that Outreach
um the veteran Outreach social workers um or case managers that have been working on doing Outreach
Partnerships Harbor care and meeting we had our first meeting yesterday to
develop a very sort of formalized Outreach schedule throughout the state of New Hampshire hitting all the different areas whether
it be the Seacoast North Country Manchester area the Nashville really
Conway or I'm sorry Comfort area I definitely specific shelters specific Outreach posts to really
know where those will rely on going and meeting with us so um that's it works so
about getting that schedule going um see anything else
um I think that's it for now um unless there's any
one else that would like to chime in with anything else
okay thank you thanks Emily all right and our last uh or last
subcommittee update for today is the Outreach subcommittee gosh I have to follow all those amazing
uh so Outreach subcommittee uh we are every other month we met we're
looking at training specific an Outreach best practices as well as
implementing some um Mr COC wide standards for uh what
Outreach is this is the balance of state so more to come on that
once that will go to the executive committee and then we'll be shared later date with the entire membership stay
tuned Mandy have we shared with this larger
group um the updates on the snow foe I think we did through email but have we had a
chance to tell everyone can you
yes so well we've been we were told that
we project congratulations to cap of Merrimack County as well as Concord
Coalition and homelessness uh who were awarded projects
um beyond that though we are still anxiously awaiting word about the next steps so as soon as we have more
information we will be in contact I'm very excited though for one of very few
communities Across the Nation that were chosen for that snowfo so we want to
give kudos to everybody that was involved so in conjunction with the regular notebook
so thank you for your patience and your participation in that it really matters
and as a sort of mini follow-up to that we have still not gotten the update or
the award announcements on the regular Continuum of Care competition from 2022
um our fingers are crossed that it will be any day now so um as soon as we have those updates we will let you know uh we
did put in a couple of new project applications this year and we are crossing our fingers that we get those
approved um Jenny has told me she is trying to get in I don't see her yet
um so I think in the interest of our time in not wasting
or just not getting behind on our agenda I will switch to some Regional updates and then
we will bounce back to Jenny as soon as she's able to log in um I do have Emily Whitaker taking notes
so Emily I just want to thank you for your um your flexibility as you're taking our minutes for today
um I don't think you'll have to take minutes on Jenny's presentation so hopefully this doesn't cause too much
chaos for you I am going to just kind of call out local community groups in order
as they're listed on my spreadsheet and if somebody's here from that group that could give us a local update that would
be great so I will start with the Belknap County lsda do we have anyone here who could give an update
hi this is Freeman stove um mobile at the moment um but the Belknap lsda meeting is alive
and well and um yeah nothing really new to report
um I will say that anybody in need of shelter The Doobie [Music]
operational last night and we'll be operational this evening as well they'll be picking people up at the uh City Hall
parking lot across from like the Lakes Region mental health van at around eight
excellent thank you Freeman all right oh I see Jenny
all right so we will pause the other local updates and um Jenny if you're
ready to go uh we'll do a brief introduction of who you are and um and then we can kind of jump into the
presentation but I wanted to share why we asked Jenny to do this little presentation on um it's called words
matter um where as a Continuum of Care we are looking at our
um our anti-discrimination policies and our our best practices as it relates to
those policies and um my team got to see this presentation I think it was just last week and it
really really sort of integrated nicely into this larger conversation so we asked
Jenny if she could jump on in um Jenny we all understand if uh kids interrupt or if snow takes you out I
don't have my camera on because my internet is unstable today so um would you like me to give you screen
sharing so you can pop the presentation up sounds awesome
and if you could introduce yourself so people know um who you are and our connection that
would be awesome absolutely so hello everyone now Higgins
so I'm a policy analyst in the division for Behavioral Health so I look across our Sim uh our different systems
um and try to you know work on the integration of mental health with substance use disorder and obviously
working closing housing has recently um joined our division as well which is
really exciting since we've had so much collaboration over the years um and we just all understand sort of
the housing first model and the need for all the folks moving with through mental health and through with substance use
disorder um over time and you know how critical that is for the State of New Hampshire to have that uh that connection
generation so that's been very exciting I've um our with our different systems and
working on legislation and all of these different changes one of the things that has happened and come up again and again
is that we the way that we talk about folks actually influences stigma and so
when we're working with our legislators um we often do a lot of Education we
often just sit with folks and answer questions and get to a place where we're not
coming from you know any place of judgment that stigma in its worst form is discrimination right which is why
Melissa started there with hey we're looking at these policies and we're thinking about that and um and so
throughout you know over the last couple years uh my team and I have created this presentation and it's really just its
Basics and so for all of you who are in the field it may feel like it's just second nature it's the way that you
already think and speak but I kind of think of it like CPR or something where we just need to
continue to be retrained and have good reminders and I think about it as like
learning together so the whole presentation I'm not coming from a place of like I have it figured out and now
I'm here to teach you I'm just walking through some of this information and saying what are what are the things that
you're thinking you know ask me questions reflect on it tell me I said something wrong which actually happened
happened in the presentation last week I was presenting and somebody called me out for using the wrong language during
a language presentation um I love that because I do really think that it's about continued continued
learning right and so if it feels basic that's okay think of it as a review right and um and if it feels interesting
and you want to engage and ask questions even better because then you won't be falling asleep during the presentation
right so feel free to jump in to ask questions to challenge assumptions that
I am putting out there um or to add to the presentation so every time I present this I also end up
changing it afterwards because somebody asks something that helps me think about it in a different way
so that's you know who I am and sort of where I'm coming from also to give you just a little bit of background on me my
um my expertise is really in prevention and my career prior to coming to the state of New Hampshire was with youth
services and so sometimes I'll frame some of these thoughts about working with uh adolescents in particular
um and then happy to learn from other people's expertise as well
all right I'm going to share screen and get us started
and the other thing is it just I think that while I'm sharing I can really only
see like three people at a time so if you want to unmute and jump in with a
question or um you know Melissa uh Heidi and Megan
and people that are on from from DHHS if you tell me if people do like the raised
hand feature or if it seems like somebody needs a question I'll just need that help because I can't really see you all
I'll keep an eye on the chat and the Hand raising to see what we have all right great
um and the more you interact the better right it makes it less boring so please do please do stop me or ask questions
um all right so we're basically just going to talk basics of how we can create a safe space and just we also
wanted whenever I start this presentation we're always respecting People's Choice so sometimes when I'm
doing this presentation people will say to me but I have a friend who actually likes well
you know you can't call yourself that how in the field safe
plated and not you know open with this quote that words
are important have Grace
carry a sense of hope and actually create you know a sense of
pessimism and set us up for low expectations so they really you know start with this
sometimes people think like when we're talking about how we talk and our language matters that they'll think it's
just fluff or it's just like to be politically correct and while it may be some of those things it also goes deeper
than that where there's significant research that shows that you know folks that engage in an emergency room
um do or do not go on to engage in treatment based on the way they hear that ER staff talking about them there
are some significant research around the retention in treatment based on
um how we talk about how we talk about folks and then how they also their their outcomes based on how they feel about
themselves so the way that we talk as a society also sets us out up to
understand our self-worth based on how Society views us right um and so at Earth end being you know
politically correct and it does create a sense of feeling worthy of going on to get well so that's really the most
critical piece reason that we do you know that we want
is just around to better connect with others to break down negative sites any
six of it is that turn people into things so the
basics of this whole training is good language right which you've probably heard of before and person
first language means that we're just talking about the person diagnosis or disease or a thing
that they're experiencing and the reason that we do that is that none of us are defined by anything right of us are
um are simply our diagnosis or simply the what like one part of ourselves our
identity is made up from a whole bunch of different pieces we may call ourselves a mother we may say I have
children we may be um as we may have a professional career but the point is
that our identity is so if we start identifying all as the thing that they
are um them as a whole person and that impacts
how he treats excess services and care foreign
people who experience stigma are less likely to seek Treatment Services they're more like sooner so it reduces
retention Services leading outcomes um some of our language is really is
in a professional setting and some of it is informal and it's how we talks when we can't hear us or um how we might talk
at home and you know second grade birthday party when we're
off with our kids and our friends and things like that I would I would challenge not only to make these changes
in our professional lives but also to carry them through in those informal settings because
I believe of our society so that we all um can get those attitudes around around
people that can help that'll ultimately help all of our different uh changes in
policy and legislation and all the barriers that we have as a field
to a place where we want to treat our friends and neighbors with dignity and respect instead of judging them as they
somehow had um control over the skin in which they're in
so the basics again are that person first language we've already talked about that it's about creating non-judgmental spaces expressing concern
and showing compassion and empathy so here's some examples let me guess
afterwards we don't have to read through all of them but some examples of just when someone's sharing their experience
right the idea around how do we make a space that feels non-judgmental or how
do we show that like empathy words in you know and so one of the ways we can
do that is oh that'll pass or there's worse off
than you are or oh I know how you feel because I went through XYZ
um instead validating and opening things up that we are really ask so that's why you
know when I said earlier that I actually Converse's background I always would be
kind of asking myself how do I be an askable adult like that's kind of how I thought of it how do I set myself up to
be somebody that a lot are sort of willing to and willing
to and how am I willing to like sit in that and part of that was just being one
not and I'm not making those the feelings their experiences so
um you know one of the big things that happens though there are is a breakup Adult Day
fish in the sea it's not like you were going to marry the person you
know how that person's feeling when we say things like that I think give you know our similar sort
of examples where the sort of don't say this say this side um the say this side being like sounds
like you're having a hard time you know that that sounds really hard and I I just want to you to know that you don't
get out together that's sort of the basic of all of this work
any questions at this point or thoughts
of a sip of coffee while you all read this quote
read so much so I feel like it's nice to hear it and have it sit with people so this is
familiar with she says I Define connection as the energy that is between people when they
feel seen heard and read without judgment and when they
derive sustenance and strength from the relationship so we
keeping with and that we want them to go on to get well and that we're here to
sit with them in this work because we want to improve quality so
we can do that is helpful feel
s right so we're going to go through a few
specifically about suicide prevention and the language around suicide and
we're going to go a little almost as well places where we can use person first
language and these are all places where again happy to have you all engaging
things we're talking about or um let me know what you hear your word
so a lot of the language changes started to
grow out of the communities so experiencing grief and loss
um through you know the side actually said denial reefs so much hard
to the stigma and so new language to this so that we could
feel comfortable to talk our losses the same thing that happened with our family
um our community and so that's how some of this started um and so some of the things you know
that that create stigma oftentimes there's these two major pieces to help
create our in our own assumptions and in our societies and those things are
there's some um fault or choice in the person having
another and second is that they that the person
that you know illness or disorder and so things like use language like choose or
choice or commit which you know people commit or that so we've kind of put language
onto we had put language on to um death aside that really felt like it
alluded to some sort of choice and it alluded to
go to something that equated to a crime or from stigma shame and so that shift
in our language is to move away from that is really that it's not that people want to die it's that they can't find a
way to go on living and so there is no there is not here
it's really that with a mental health behavioral health challenge
um around threatened suicide so people aren't threatening to do a thing
um they're they're telling you that that's actually how they're feeling and so to sit with them and say that sounds
really hard tell me more uh can actually can be life-changing come
the other pieces are you know around saying that somebody
was unsuccessful or had a failed attack just looking at the person went on to
live and went on to find help appropriate treatment and enjoy life
again right so that shifts in this language here um are again with sort of committed
peace but also with the idea of success
uh that really just isn't isn't helpful in connecting people with
the character so another piece around function if people were coming to you
with thoughts you know you wouldn't want to say things
like you're not thinking of killing yourself off like you want and need that answer to be
no right you're not thinking about that for you I mean I'm not a person who's willing to do as opposed
just had any thoughts of suicide or what what's been going on with you lately are you
carried about you and I I'm here for you those are things that are more like door openers instead of closers
Melissa I see that something popped up in chat is there a question nope it looks like somebody was
um signing in giving us their attendance so but we could pause here to see if anyone has any questions or anything to
add yeah I have a question this is Damian Santana go ahead man so I think these
specific language examples are really excellent I've seen this in the past and I've definitely found it helpful and I
definitely get corrected by people as well um if I use outdated language or
something that you know somebody could find offensive but just in my experience I'm using it because it would not occur
to me that the language that I'm using is offensive um I guess my question is
I think we all recognize the importance of using uh good language like this
what are your thoughts on you know when we start to feel overwhelmed of like oh
my gosh everything I say I feel like is offensive and I and I feel like I'm just doing this wrong do you have any
thoughts about how to kind of help coach especially older folks like myself who
grew up in a time where language wasn't so important and now is and how to like
each other to feel like we're being successful does this make sense yeah this is such a great question I love it
thank you so much Damian so I think one of the things is that this is every time I do this presentation I add
more to what it gets the more I think that people thinking I can't memorize all this stuff and I I don't think
that's the point I don't think you have to do not this I think I'm giving some
examples to help frame your thinking and what I hope that you'll leave with is
that when you sit with someone that you're you're that person isn't there
from any drone and the person does it over their situation
um when when it comes to something like a mental illness and sub since you are
that are in the eye and when we bring it back kids wreck my background with youth we
often don't judge kids as though they got to some place because it's their own fault if we could carry that to people
into to recognize recognize and went through something in childhood adverse
childhood experiences Mama um they're just forgot oh it become
because of that debate and so if we kissing I don't think we're gonna say
all the wrong things because I think we're
therefore the language will follow
very much is that is it full effective something I think about
the thing is we're all messed up I just said I gave this presentation last week I've already given this
15 others thing last week um something with substance use disorder
that's going to be next slide I'll tell you about um because like
he said if I'm doing can earn it and I'm saying the wrong thing is
basically sound solely raw right
language it's not about that it's about the thing of terrible person or the
thing I'm trying to help you right and so I think we'll get there I think I'm trying examples just to helping
and kind of complicating if it was stuck and um and then I think we're all gonna get
it wrong at the point but I think if we're sitting with someone and they can feel that what we want is just the very
best quality of life for them it's going to come out okay yeah yeah awesome thanks
and then I think there's many of us that were already there but maybe our um saying this really Antiquated terms and
so we just need to be willing to need to learn thanks and Jenny Craig Pratt Bureau of
homeless services so things are changing um you know unlawfully my wife and I
were watching that uh game show the other day and one of the contestants introduced themselves and then with mentally children
and we look at each other gas for just a moment realize we're watching a show from the 70s on the game show channel so
things are changing and like even the sports the washed out the washing Wizards the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and now
the Tampa Bay Rays so things are changing slowly it's just people have to be made aware of this but great
presentation by the way thank you very much thank you I thought that was such a um
excellent question too because honestly it's like I can't hold all this in my brain I'm already trying to hold all these services and this complicated
system and um and you know I don't think you have to leave here and feel like now I've
memorized all this terminology I think it's just a helpful framework are there other questions in the chat Melissa I do
see a hand uh Linda okay here we'll stay back on this
she's coming okay I can't see you all
so I'm like not sure what's going on over there whenever you're ready hi my
name is Linda um only because I have personal experience in this area
um just to encourage people your heart makes more of a difference than the
words even if you stumble over the words um wear your heart
is coming to more of a difference um so just to encourage people not to
totally get caught up in in the words but I'm very encouraged by the words
because it is a difficult area to be in and to have people be able to step in
and be willing to help people walk through this area it's great I think
Linda I couldn't agree I think the exact same thing I think some of this language you have Suicide Prevention experts too
who you're listening to at a national level on a webinar and they're saying commit suicide so like yes it's changing
and uh a language is Habitual and so we forget oftentimes too or we say the
thing because we've always said it that way um but why I think it's great to talk through some of this stuff too is to see
how we're trying to shift attitudes and how we're trying to shift culture to get
us to a place of care and so I couldn't agree more that you're it is really about where your heart is at and the
percept you know how your own and likely when you're being warm and creating a
non-judgmental space people aren't even noticing the exact words you're using right especially like in crisis
um but I do just think it's really more about sort of that exceptions that we all have right and
the other thing I'll say is when we make a mistake you know it's okay to go back and say
something different so one of the big things like in this slide right here where it says like thinking of killing
yourself are you who could think to like not say it that way to like their child or someone that they love and so you're
scared because you don't want the answer to be yes
so that the question can be scary or the topics are uncomfortable because
taboo go along our society that we have some of them
that's like oh don't say that it's just a reason yeah but what I would also encourage you
think if you if you're sort of ruminating and think like somebody down
you two need a oh you can reacted that way I want to hear from
this conversation would you be what
young people like in my own where you kind of like the time to have the common in that
moment you go back to and you can always say I'm sorry that was my reaction I
felt kind of scared but I want to get through this with you you know
um I think it's more important that you ask the question question that you
all in their time of need and that you worry about how you ask it and I wouldn't want language to stop you from
um you know confronting a crisis or um working with somebody
I don't see any other questions or hands right now ready to move on okay ready
so we'll talk a little bit about the the language of addiction um so this is also you know something
that's really shifting in in our goodies and and um you know again I'll go back
to what we talked about what I talked about a little bit earlier where I said that these two main factors impact the
burden of stigma right I think this is even goes even deeper with um with
substance use is the the idea of perceived control the person has over the condition or perceived fault in
acquiring the condition um I think there's a really an additional layer of stigma on substance
use um and so we are you know working hard to try to shift some of that you'll see
on the right that things like addict and user and junkie and things that words like that are
um again they're making the person the disorder or the illness instead of
putting the person first so that person first language an individual with a substance use disorder people who use
drugs you know people who use substances that kind of thing it just makes it the
person and that's one thing that they've got going on and they're also a whole other person right so people use drugs
also have families and jobs and a lot you know all different kinds of components of their identity
and so when
you um that makes you know for eign from something
like being worthy to ask care and being worthy to get well and it places
um Percy to society and Community um which also increases our risk of
suicidality
you just triggered something that made me want to say things um so a lot of our not a lot every
project that we have through our Continuum of Care in any shelter that is funded through the Bureau of homeless
Services um is required to be low barrier and it's for this exact reason so all of
this language that Jenny's talking about in helping people see that they're worthy of assistance that is exactly why
we want our programs to be low barrier we don't want somebody to have to
fix everything that we see might be wrong with them before we're willing to help them and this all fits together in
that so um Jenny you just triggered that connection for me today just now thank you and when I think about homeless
services having worked in a space around substance use number of years it's really hard
supposed and has a substance
that just comes back to you later
you know when their basic needs are met it's so much easier to take the next
step in their health and in their quality of life right
um so some of the other things that are in here uh you know saying things like a
clean test or a dirty test your analysis and things like that the are placing
some sort of like you're cleaner you're dirty if you're if you use or don't use substances if we were to think of this
in terms of like a drug and as a society it and especially in New Hampshire our
culture um uh and so it's it's seeing how we
play sort of this really negative um sort of stigma on illicit drugs
um and I also think it has a lot to do with with poverty when we the way that
we talk about people I think we have a lot of you know wealthy also use substances
um and we don't we don't look at it in the same way as a society we often
um we often Place additional stigma on things that are hard to look at and I
think that you know that's something that comes up a lot in New Hampshire uh around homelessness
Wendy I see you have your hand raised yeah I just wanted to make a comment so much for all of this but um I also
wanted to mention that we try to use the same language um in regards to syringe service programs and
regards to so we don't have clean needles or dirty needles we have used used and new
um so I just wanted to point that out as well but I I appreciate it thank you so much Wendy
um even in like when we were thinking about policy and legislation and access to funding and all of these things this stigma impacts whether or not New
Hampshire is even ready for harm reduction programs programs addresses right
be because of these layers of stigma creates barriers to us having programs
that other states have had for 40 years we know um create better outcomes and are
life-saving so that's some of the reason that I hope that everybody will sort of carry these
language changes into their informal lives because we have this legislature of over 400 people in New Hampshire and
there are regular old community members and friends and neighbors and so how we start to think and talk about these
things really can have major influence especially in a place like New Hampshire um that I think is just so driven by
like word of mouth and relationships you know um and we we certainly are still in need
of a lot of those shifts if we are going to make you know a really big difference
in in all of these issues and services in the state
so the other thing I'll just describe in case you haven't heard it before is that substance use disorder is a diagnosable
you know illness in the DSM um whereas when we say substance use or
substance misuse that could be that you know a person uses alcohol or other drugs
um and maybe that includes binge drinking or risky Behavior or if the person is under 21 because it is that it
is illegal even for alcohol we may say misuse instead of use
um you know but but substance use disorder is that diagnosable
um piece and so you can use or misuse substances without having a substance
use disorder so just thinking about that sort of scope of what that looks like
um the other piece on here that I get is sort of why do we say recovery housing in so in um in New Hampshire we have
several programs that even are called XYZ Sober House or sober living
the reason for that shift in our language is that we um we know that
abstinence only and abstinence-based treatment are not always effective
um and abstinence-based treatment is um is really not what's recommended in
the evidence for it is meeting people where they're at and it is harm reduction services and it is respecting
multiple Pathways so if people you know you know some folks may say that their
goal is absence some people may say I need to not be using illicit substances but I do want to use alcohol I all of
these things are just from personal choice and respecting those multiple Pathways and how a person defines their
recovery um is the shift from Sober House to recovery housing because the other thing
that we find is that there is a lot of housing options and you know shelters and things I'm sure in the realm and the
field in which you work that just don't allow any substances whatsoever and that
can it can be really difficult to have someone's to start engage in treatment and then when they have a recurrence of
use it's actually a symptom of their substance use disorder but then they are discharged from that treatment so trying
to make sure that we're shifting how we think of that and that we're continuing to treat a symptom of an illness instead
of saying um you know you're not welcome here so that's some of that shift and
you know I think of it in really like simple terms like we wouldn't you know whenever the dentist asks me if I'm
flossing I'm always like oh do I really want to answer that but imagine if because I wasn't flossing the dentist
refused to see me um you know that that would be really problematic for my Prevention and my
treatment um and so if we just think about this as we would any other you know medical
condition then we're going to think yep we're going to keep meeting people where they're at because they're allowed to make decisions in their own care
so that's one of those big shifts and the other big shift around medications for substance use disorder we used to
call that replacement or substitution therapy we've now recognized through you know significant scientific research
that this is not replacing one drug for another um that really this is treatment and
it's also the reason that we don't really say like mat because the mat was medication assisted treatment and really
it's not assisting treatment it is treatment so people actually uh with opioid use
disorder have better outcomes than they would in withdrawal management or detox alone on medications long term and so
that's a big shift in that language as well and I'll pause for for questions there too
I'm not seeing any in the chat and I'm not seeing any hands raised okay
I think they must have clicked on something it will go okay so here's some additional language related to a addiction spaces so
um you know they're often times in addiction spaces people may talk about trauma and violence and
um sex work and you know all of these different types of things and we're just shifting language here as well you'll
see that we also have you know language around person without housing
person experiencing homelessness we've been you know hearing unhoused a lot happy to hear your Reflections from the
field on that language too and um if you you know how you're talking about
those things and and what that feels like and and how people that you're working with maybe talk about about
themselves and or if any of these things are things that you want to reflect on
right I'm curious about that last one yeah
never heard that one before yeah so actually this says that I have
resources at the end of this and you can see sort of where these came from um and it has like a better explanation
too but I think this is actually about like the abusive relationship then defining the people that are in it as
opposed to a person who is abusive and um and so trying to shift that attitude
again to not say that you're defined by that you know abusive relationship and
the using the person first language for the person who is exhibiting violent Behavior
sorry Jenny some of the other changes we've seen around that space
um and I am not an expert in this but we have seen a shift from victim of
domestic violence to Survivor of domestic violence it's not exactly person-centered but it is a shift from
um placing blame to um sort of giving credit for surviving a
really hard situation
do you have did you want to follow up with that on that whoever asked the question sorry I didn't catch your name
oh no that was I was just curious okay okay so here's some you know specific
language around serious mental illness so again it's going to be all things we've kind of already talked about
instead of my daughter is bipolar you would say my daughter has bipolar disorder right so it's the person and
then disorder as opposed to bipolar would Define the person um saying like the person suffers from
or is afflicted by as opposed to live with or have experiences this right
um that we can be living with mental illness and not always continuously
suffering especially as we find treatment services medications
um you know different quality of life measures that help us to be able to live with mental illness and we may do that
for the rest of our lives so there may not be that um that you that there's a time where
you're just gonna be over uh and through and cured with mental illness and so
thinking about this person experiences mentalness or lives with mental illness that's the reality
um and then moved we've moved to saying mental health condition
so that gives you a little bit of information around that space this one is particularly hard we this is kind of
goes back to like languages habitual and we say crazy or insane all the time we also say other kind of terms that we
sometimes use in a flippant way like oh she's acting bipolar or that person's a psycho
um and we hear this in you know media at like in on TV in movies and things like that so
um this is hard to stop saying uh and it's been it's just another sort of example of things we could change over
time and so we were giving you different ideas so I now find myself saying wild a
lot because I realize that that's actually what I meant for crazy was wow
that was wild you know um or I would even say like with my kids about being silly
we did something you know so crazy and it's actually actually meant that it was silly or wild so that um that's been
sort of something I'm actively working on because it's something that maybe is Habitual for me so it comes up in my
language still any additional questions Melissa I have
two different things um I have a comment from Arielle that says she uses wild as well and that it's
been a process of teaching herself to use the different word and figuring out which one felt right
um and then we had a question from Donna who asks what are your thoughts on using the term unsheltered versus homeless as
in a person who is unsheltered yeah I mean my thoughts are that it
depends on the person's situation because I think maybe unhoused and unsheltered are two different things
potentially right um so do we is the there are you know there are plenty of folks who actually
don't want to go into the shelter um and so unsheltered sort of makes
sense in that way unhoused could be a person who still who is utilizing shelter services that doesn't have
permanent housing so I think maybe they have a little bit of different meetings meanings but I think both sound
appropriate to me as long as we're using that person first language right so instead of calling the person
unsheltered or unhoused we should say a person experiencing or a person who you
know lives with or that kind of thing first would be my thoughts on it and again not coming from a place of expertise but just
learning along with you and that would be my feedback as well Jenny that um a lot of our shift in the
homeless Services world is to using language like a person experiencing unsheltered homelessness or a person who
is living in an unhoused situation [Music]
did we have another question I don't see any others right now okay
so I have something over this quote for people able to change their everyday language becoming conscious of how often
they use ableist words like crazy or insane is one small way of reducing stigma so this is just a reiterating
something that we just discussed this one's really uh
I mean this isn't funny so I guess that's the wrong term right I'd have to think about my language but it's almost funny to me I was going to say because
of how easy the consider saying things are so just like the you know instead of
saying take Take Your Best Shot take a stab at it that's kind of thing the fact that it's like the alternatives are give
it a go try they're so simple that I think why don't we say those consider
saying things even though I think you know I hear killing it all the time you're killing it you're crushing it all
of that these are not things you have to just completely cut out of your language or feel badly about saying them or
anything like that it's just the part of the presentation is just to point out to us how often we use violent language
um when we could use something else and um I think Greg earlier gave us some
examples of how even sports teams are changing their names from things that
like bullets that was more like of a violent language is just unnecessary
um and so the other thing is that we often again like sort of in a flippant way we'll say if I have to sit through
another one of these meetings you know I'll I'm gonna kill myself or we even use hand gestures that actually
um allude to taking our lives and for how
many people in our communities are impacted by suicide by Violence by trauma
um all of those things can be triggering and are just again like unnecessary
because of how easy it is to say I'm really frustrated or that you know that
training was boring I need a break I'm gonna go take a walk outside it's just
we really there's not there's there's no place where we really need to say some of these other terms so it's just sort
of pointing out that we could pretty easily make that shift and also just pointing out how often
we're using violent terminology probably without thinking about it at all so Jenny I have two comments and then
I'll add a reflection of my own since our since we did the session last week so shortina shares that at the National
Alliance to end homelessness conference a group was using the term houselessness because the term home doesn't
necessarily mean a house um and then Jessica says the victim
Survivor service space has also changed from saying triggered to activated when speaking of trauma responses
um and then just personally I apparently said killing it all the time
um and then when you mentioned that last slide last week I was like I think I do that and then in this past
week I have caught myself almost daily wanting to say that and then changing what I say typically with my kids
um around sports or whatever activity they're doing and then Barbara noted housing insecure is another phrase that
is being used yeah yeah so all of this conversation this is why I was trying to encourage us at the beginning too to be
engaged I think all this conversation and comments tells us that we're all learning and that things are changing
and that back to I think it was Linda's Point originally it's just about like where we where we're coming from as
people that were trying to get it right that were willing to sit through this training and and have this conversation
uh is huge right because that's going to help us shift things in our in our state
and going to help us do this work and gonna help us to show up for people in the way that we would hope people showed
up for us you know so I think all of it is growth um and I don't think we have to be
overly worried about getting it right but I think this training is more about trying to be thoughtful
are there additional chats I can kind of just see the red bubble that says that there's five different chats but I'm not
sure what's in there no I think I've covered everything that's in there okay yeah
so we're good all right great so these are some other
additional uh language changes that have come out more recently or in a more recent version from the APA I think some
that I'll just point out have to do with like age so saying things like older adults and older people saying things
like young people young adults instead of kids or kiddos I think it really is about
um about respect right just giving people respect including children uh not that
young people and young adults like want to be respected and validated just like anyone else as well as older adults
wanting to have respect and have uh autonomy and authority over their own
lives right and so that also goes with just some of this of their information around respecting pronouns it's giving
people um their autonomy their their choice and their um
and just giving them that full respect and and to to kind of identify however
they want to identify and all of these things also are deeply connected to reduction in uh suicidality and this is
part of prevention right so just respecting people's pronouns or respecting people's language choice in
the way that people want to be talked about or how that you know um what they
want to be called as all creating safe spaces which is good prevention so go back to that are there some you
know pieces comments I got even last week in doing this um it were about adding things around
criminal history and how we talk about that adding some things around trauma informed you know that I haven't you
know had a chance to update um and one of the really interesting
comments I got last week too is that when we call each other out for having said the wrong thing there's some
discomfort and being challenged but just remembering that it's all growth and um and being willing to do that is huge and
then really just that all of these things are about being valued and believed and heard and when we create
those spaces we're you know doing the right thing foreign
and I have one comment in the chat with just another consideration Barbara shares using different ability rather
than disability [Music]
thank you Barbara so again we just end on the note of you know why we're doing this how we talk to
others and about others makes a difference it impacts our access to care it impacts our retention and care it
impacts our health outcomes long term it impacts how people think about them their selves and their own potential for
Recovery it impacts their you know idea of worth and worthiness to receive care
it broadly reduces stigma both on an individual and a societal level it
establishes connection um and promotes that help seeking and
and that treatment piece and then in the slides I embedded some resources so when
we send these out these would be hyperlinks that you all can check out as well including you know framework for
successful messaging that's specific to Suicide Prevention some words matter pieces around substance use disorder
recovery friendly language as well as Equity diversity and inclusion these
inclusive language guidelines from the API they are have the the piece around
silent violence and the um that about that question that was asked
that I'm not sure that we that I answered very well so that's something you could check out as an additional
Resource as well as this last one and I'm going to stop sharing and happy to engage in any discussion and now I
can see you all I'm unmute um we do have a couple of different
comments in the chat um Arielle shares that she's heard some mixed things on
um different ability um sorry I scrolled up and then lost my spot sometimes people in that Community
don't like differently able because the accessibility barriers they face are very real
um and then Travis Travis your comment is quite long and thoughtful um I'm going to read it I think this
presentation ties into accountability so well people are human and are not always up to date there is so much power in
recognizing past mistakes and language apologizing when necessary and being conscious and thoughtful around language
going forward we need to remain receptive and open to conversations like these I love that feedback
any other thoughts or questions for Jenny and
um Jenny if you could share the slides with me in an email because I'm not sure I have your most updated ones
um I can send them out with the minutes for this and we can um hopefully further the conversation and I saw another comment incredibly
helpful excellent presentation thank you guys so much thanks for sitting in this with me and being
willing to learn um and any you know I'm I'm open to all feedback too
awesome so if you have ideas for changes in you know in the future um for the presentation or anything else
you want to learn about together I'm always happy to come back to excellent thank you so much lots of
thank yous in the chat awesome I can now see chat so I'll open them up to get all of my glory
um so in the interest of time I'm going to shift us to um Mandy and Christy who
are going to do um they're going to they have a very lengthy presentation
um that I'm not convinced we will get completely finished today but I'm going to shift over to them to do their
presentation on our anti-discrimination policy and
um equal access to housing Mandy are you the one sharing your screen
no I am okay okay I need to make you the co-host whoops hold on I think I just muted you
I didn't mean to and I think you'll find that our presentation ties in so perfectly with
Jenny's that there are many things that have been covered so we'll get to the presentation
I'm really sorry if I cut into your time there Mandy I really had no offensive
timing and I'm very chatty no Jenny it's totally okay we tend to um over book
ourselves and we have so many things that we we just have so many things to talk about and they all kind of tie
together um so it it really is good and this um this presentation actually will
probably spill into our May meeting because we've made some additional connections with resources in New
Hampshire that will help us with this conversation um so we'll let Mandy and Chrissy take it away for now and then we likely will
do a follow-up to this later just because it is it's bigger than I think we were prepared for when we first
started talking about doing this things
so I'm having some technical difficulties can you see my teams on your screen as well or Zoom all I can
see is your your presentation wonderful okay we'll just go with that
uh so good morning everyone um this is Christy shot again from the Bureau of homeless Services
um I will be co-presenting today with Mandy Reagan from our office as well
um this is going to be one of the first in a series of anti-discrimination trainings that we're looking at
presenting to the balance of State Continuum of Care um so we're looking at a couple other
trainings coming out in coordination with um with New Hampshire legal assistants and the new New Hampshire
commission for human rights um but we're going to start today um with talking about Hud's equal access
role and keeping families together
um just so all of you are aware that any um sub-recipients of Continuum of Care Program funding or emergency Solutions
Grant funded projects they are required to comply with non-discrimination and equal opportunity provisions of federal
civil rights laws including the Fair Housing Act Section 504 of The
Rehabilitation Act title six of the Civil Rights Act Title
II of the American Disabilities Act entitled three of the American Disabilities Act
today we're going to go over understanding Hud's equal access rule including defining families and
preventing separation of families and then we'll move on to any group questions and next steps
these training materials are intended to provide the balance of state and any
project with the framework to create a welcoming and inclusive project for
transgender and gender non-conforming people and to be in compliance with the requirements of the equal access rule
be helpful if I move my screen forward oh backwards okay
okay HUD has an equal access rule which is
um within their CFR it prohibits discriminary eligibility determinations
in HUD assisted or HUD insured Housing Programs based on actual or perceived
sexual orientation gender identity or marital status this includes any project again that's
funded by the COC program the emergency Solutions grant program and the hopwell program
the Continuum of Care role also contains a fair housing provision so does the emergency Solutions Grant and so does
the hospital Grant specifically
Hud's initial equal access rule was published in 2012. it required any
recipient or sub-recipient of Hud's Community CPD funding which is community
Planning and Development as well as any owners operators and managers of shelters and other facilities and
providers of services that were funded by the CPD program
had to comply with their equal access rule this rule initially ensure that all HUD
programs were open to any eligible person regardless of sexual orientation gender identity or marital status it
also established standards for the terms family and family Donette
the 2012 rule did not however address transgender and gendered non-conforming
individuals and how they should be accommodated in temporary or Emergency
Shelters and other buildings and Facilities used for shelter
so in 2016 HUD amended the rule to specify the
individuals are placed in accordance with their gender identity there's no requirement for individuals
to prove their gender identity providers also had to update their
policies on procedures sorry to reflect those requirements
they also asked that non-discriminatory steps must be taken to address safety and privacy concerns
a transgender participants I'll make it through how our
participants must not be required to accept those accommodations hold on one second
how to also issued a response um it was one of their frequently
answered questions um that any emergency shelter transitional housing project
or permanent housing project that serves households with children well it was acceptable for them to limit
assistance to households with children it cannot limit assistance to only women with children
shelters must also serve the following family types should they present in order to be in compliance with the equal
access rule including any single male household with
minor children are any household made up of two or more adults regardless of their sexual
orientation marital status or gender identity who are presenting with minor children
and with that I will turn it over to Mandy and do better at moving the slides forward
all right so I turned my camera on but I keep freezing so I'm going to turn it off for now an effort to maintain some
continuity here so everything we've talked about today is oh my presentation is lost
is really part of a larger theme with HUD funding of meeting people where they're at right so serving those that
show up to our programs and projects instead of having certain expectations
of them prior to us stepping in to help them so we wanted to highlight the
significance of the content behind the equal access rule with HUD
so while we're talking about HUD funding here in the presentation today it really is significant that the entire Continuum
regardless of funding source um starts thinking and strategic and inclusive ways in order to best serve
those coming through so transgender individuals in particular are impacted by violence and
discrimination in ways that both contribute to their homelessness as well as keeps them from accessing necessary
shelter resources and other services they're twice as likely to experience
homelessness as their non-transgender counterparts one in ten transgender individuals
reports being evicted based on their gender expression one in five reports being denied an apartment or home based
on their gender expression turning to point in time data next slide
uh what we're going to see here is a breakdown of cisgender adults
and we're going to get into language in just a moment but for clarity's sake for this Slide the term CIS actually means
match so cisgender then means one sex assigned at Birth matches one's gender
identity next block is transgender adults
transgender means an umbrella term for people who are identifying their gender identity is the
same I'm sorry it is different than their assigned dender at sex and just for clarity's sake this is
unsheltered so I know we had a conversation earlier about terminology and it's important to note that when we
say terms like unsheltered uh when we're talking about the point in time count this is unsheltered as defined by Hud so
a place not meant for human habitation and then finally the last and most
significant block here at 80 percent is gender non-conforming which means
someone who does not conform to traditional gender roles or stereotypes so these are big numbers right these are
Big percentages this is concerning we also know that even when folks are
seeking assistance when they go to shelter or are seeking other services
that often they're not served in a way that is inclusive and trauma-informed
they may be placed inappropriately nearly 30 of them are experiencing
homelessness they're being turned away from shelter due to their gender status and almost a quarter are experiencing
sexual assault perpetuated by staff volunteers or other shelter residents
their next slide so when we talk about discrimination
right what does that look like we want to have a baseline of what that means in
practice as you all work through so some examples could be a provider hanging up immediately after someone
calls revealing she is transgender provider making references to genitalia or surgery as requirements for
appropriate housing placement providers refusing to enroll participants because they would make
other participants uncomfortable or feel unsafe next slide
management of housing projects or facilities failing to address complaints from the
lgbtqia2s plus individuals regarding harassment by other residents
project staff revealing individual status as transgender then requiring special procedures for households of
transgender individuals or project staff excluding individuals based on the family composition
so we have some learning to do as a nation and as community and as a state
um but I think it's important to note as was shared in the presentation this
morning that this is a learning experience right we are learning together
and as a first step in creating safe transgender and gender non-conforming
environments I have them go to the next slide you using respectful language is that
huge First Step so that communicates to the project that all eligible residents
are welcome it is important to note though as Jenny mentioned that
we want to make sure that the individuals themselves make that a final decision about how they identify and how
they express themselves we would not be correcting folks when they are using terminology to describe their own gender
identity it's also important to remember this this is progress not Perfection here
um as Jenny mentioned too that language is Habitual language is created over a lifetime and sometimes we have these
well-worn Pathways of saying a word or a phrase the only way we create new Pathways and
walk New Paths is to practice and practice requires us the vulnerability
to mess up and to fail and to know that that's okay so long as
we're working on being better so if you accidentally use a wrong word or phrase when interacting with someone
presenting to your project apologize correct the mistake and move on
you may also practice by including pronouns in your introductions and your email signatures I know a lot of us are
doing that as part of a larger narrative that we have to step beyond our own
individual assumptions that one experience or our own experience is the
only Baseline that's out there it opens ourselves up to listening to others perspectives as well as understanding
how to best serve folks that are coming through our projects
so what are some terms that we could use in in order to maintain some
um not only trauma-informed practices but also some respectful phrases when
discussing diverse gender identities and experiences we've put together some of
these that I've been compiled from individuals from the transgender Community subject matter experts
Advocates as well as service providers know that these are some certainly not
an exhaustive list and I love the Indians question it is such an important
question and the question to ask about what how do you manage in a world that
has so many new languages and is ever evolving to maintain a trauma-informed
perspective but also uh that the ability to be able to integrate
new language without feeling overwhelmed so know that we're providing these words
going back to that practice though it's something to include and to be mindful of but you we understand that you may
not know every single word right out of the gate so just a few of them assigned
or designated sex at Birth frequently it's just a binary designation of either male or female traditionally uh they are
assigned a birth by a medical professional so that's based on a person's internal external Anatomy at
Birth that could be chromosomes hormones internal and external reproductive organs or secondary sex characteristics
it's important to note that this may or may not correspond with one's gender identity
which should be on the next slide so gender identity so this is your
internal or innate sense of being male female or another gender this may be different than the sex assigned at Birth
or one that's listed on the individual's identity documents this may also not be
visible from the outside I think it's important to note that when
we're talking about the equal access Rule and serving those based on gender identity it is based on that
gender that people know themselves to be that's what we're discussing here so
gender expression this is the external expression of an individual's gender
identity exhibited through Behavior pronouns clothing hairstyles body language and
voice so this is how Society identifies masculine and feminine although what
masculine and feminine are defined as often changes over time and certainly
varies by culture so this does not always correspond with a person's gender identity or a variety
of reasons why as we mentioned cisgender is that match
to one's signed sex at Birth and one's gender identity
transgender is that umbrella term again that we talked about earlier whose
gender identity may be different from their assigned sex it's also important to note that that individual who transitions may not May
no longer identify as transgender
transitioning is a phrase that some but not all transgender folks go through to
begin living life as the gender in which they know themselves to be rather than the gender that those assigned to them
at Birth transitioning does not require medical treatment trans woman is someone who lives or
identifies as a woman but was assigned male at first note that they may or may not have
undergone medical treatment and sometimes are referred to as in male to female or ntf but these terms may not
be preferred as they really can overemphasize that the person was born male rather than her current identity
that's fine so trans male someone who was born or identifies as a man but was assigned
female at Birth again may or may not have the under God Medical Treatments it is sometimes referred to as male female
to male or FTM but again that can overemphasize the person was born female
rather than his current identity non-binary person is someone who does
not identify as male or female
and gender non-conforming who does not conform to traditional gender roles or stereotypes based on cultural uh and
Society ideals that can vary quite a bit and individuals may be perceive as having a different gender than their
outward appearance
finally sexual orientation so this is the physical or emotional attraction to the same or opposite sex so these gender
identity gender expression and sexual orientation can sometimes be confused or
in use inter interchangeably but in fact they are not the same
um this attraction sexual orientation can be related to various factors not just gender identity
uh transgender folks may be straight lesbian gay bisexual or queer for
example someone who is transitioned from male to female and is attracted solely to men could identify as a straight
woman providers should always use and refer to
the person as the person identifies such as their pronouns that match their gender identity unless they request
otherwise so common forms of this would be he him his are male or masculine she her hers
female feminine they then their inclusive pronouns associated with
gender non-conformity non-binary identities and other gender identities
that's right if you're unsure about a person's gender identity or how they wish to be
addressed ask politely and privately for clarification start by offering your own
pronouns first and avoid generalized gendered titles such as ma'am or sir
it's not so important to know that people are not one thing so someone who presented a project you really want to
be thinking about all of the ways in which they may be facing
discrimination or disadvantages so intersectionality is that concept so it
describes the way in which systems of inequality based on gender race ethnicity sexual orientation gender
identity disability class and other forms of social categorizations intersect to create
overlapping and interdependent structures of discrimination or disadvantages
it really takes into account people's overlapping identities and experiences in order to understand the complexities
of the prejudices in which they face asserts that people are often disadvantaged by multiple sources of
Oppression and that identity markers do not exist independently of each other
that each informs the other and often are creating complex convergence of Oppression so for example uh one of the
things that we want to be mindful of is if a person presents to you with
additional needs we want to be as inclusive as possible and while we're on
the topic of language the next slide addresses
interpretation translation
next we're going to go over um both interpretation and translation intake and eligibility privacy security
and confidentiality and then we're going to kind of do a deep dive into training and education in the what defining
family means under the Equal access rule so we're going to start with interpretation and translation
um I said right now the balance of State Continuum care requires it Regional access points either
are able to have the capacity to communicate with people speaking other languages through telephone based or
in-person interpreter service and you may have staff members at your office
who are able to speak other languages in order to assist applicants we're really looking at ensuring that
we're able to provide information to people um including translated documents notice
of participants rights grievance forms in order for people to access the programs that we are able to provide to
them next we're going to talk about intake and eligibility for programs
um agencies cannot discriminate based on the actual or perceived sexual orientation gender identity or marital
status this also includes the age and gender of a child under the age of 18
cannot be used as the basis for denying any family's admission into a project so
this also kind of encompasses as well people with disabilities as people as
the fair housing law makes it illegal to fail to make result accommodations in
your rules policies and services and it also includes failing to allow reasonable modification to the premises
if the modification is necessary to allow full use of the premises
you cannot base your eligibility or ineligibility determinations on appearance or behavior which does not
conform to gender stereotypes if your agency requires ID or vitals you
have to use the individual's current generator ID as indicated by the individual not the identification they
present we're going to talk more about this but you need to let people know who we are
serving who will have access to the collected information um and under what circumstances and why
most of that is covered in our hmas release of information inclining acknowledgment forms
but we also brought agencies to be looking at if there is a safety risk for that individual or household working
with them to create a safety plan to ensure that they feel secure receiving services
thank you
when you're doing an intake or eligibility with participants and households oh my gosh the personal questions you
don't really want to be asking questions or seeking information concerning a person's Anatomy or medical history
beyond what you really need to know for the purpose of providing services whether or not a person's had surgery
does not determine that person's gender um
and it does not impact their service provision or legal status
next we're going to talk about privacy confidentiality and safety um most of the agencies that do receive
funding through Continuum of Care ESG and Papua um have to ensure that they develop
written procedures about the confidentiality of Records
um and ensuring especially that any project that is served through domestic violence bonus funding
um that the address of those individuals is not released except with the written
authorization of a person responsible for the operation of the project and this also includes that ensuring
that the address or location of any program participant will not be made public
except as provided and consistent with state and local laws so I think most of
you know that our hmis system is very secure and adheres to all of Hud's
security privacy and confidentiality requirements so when you're actually working with a
participant we also need to make sure that they know that we are
ensuring their confidentiality and privacy so really looking at does the
individual want a private space to complete an intake and for you to collect the data that HUD
requires um and really letting people know that their answers do not prohibit any
Services provided to them um I'm really ensuring that your agency does have those safe and respectful
places to do those intakes and to meet with people
we should not be sharing individual information um with people outside of our agency
without permission um and this is part of the hmis policies and procedures
um and the other part of this is also letting people serve know if and when you are required to use their legal name
um you may need to have their legal name and enrolling them into certain types of projects but really letting them know
that you're going to use the name that they want you to use when you're working with them and any other interactions
um kind of like if their legal name is I say Joe Smith um and that's what comes on their social
security information then that's the name that is on their social security information but if they want to be
called Bob then you will call them Bob in every other situation
another practice that we also need to look at when addressing privacy
confidentiality and safety is there some things that you can do either in your Emergency Shelters your transitional
housing or even your housing projects um you can offer stalls to individuals
in congregate bathrooms um to support client safety you can also offer gender-neutral bathrooms or
neutral shower rooms I think a lot of you have seen the signs that are out there that has a
female a male a robot a dog and it just says whatever under it on a bathroom
that's just one stall for people to use so really offering those General
bathrooms it's there for everybody to use it doesn't matter who uses them
um but also having gender neutral restrooms available for anyone who needs additional press privacy is the best
practice but you do not require people especially transgender people to use those bathrooms
if you're serving a person who is selling non-binary you need to discuss housing options with them is the same
you would with anyone else and ask them what is their choice what are they most comfortable with all of the housing and
options we provide are based off of client choice and we really should be centered around them
you're also should I have a preference to move people
um such as moving a person who has concerns towards a person who may identify as another religion that is
different from theirs if that individual needs to be moved for harassment and safety concerns then that needs to be
addressed next we're going to talk about training
and education so what are some of the things that you can do as an agency or as part of our
continuing with care working together to end homelessness um and really looking at as Jenny talked
about earlier how words matter looking at correcting any misinformation or inaccurate conclusions that transgender
clients are threatened on for their health their safety so when you have another client
that is threatening someone who is transgender really working with them to address those issues and that
misinformation and educating them ensure that your staff is up to date on
subject matter training this may involve changing the culture at your agency including trainings modeling behavior
that practice practice piece that Jenny talks about again this morning um and even Melissa was talking about
trying to implement as well and modeling that behavior to your staff
so Hud's equal access rule requires that there are policies and procedures in place to protect the health safety and
privacy and security um and is administered in a non-discriminary matter those steps must
include how to address privacy concerns which includes updating both the balance
of States anti-discriminary policies and procedures and sub-recipient policies
and procedures to make sure that we have those inflates to address
any health or safety issues and ensuring security and privacy and confidentiality
so when you're looking at your agency's um materials you need to make sure that you
have intake materials that allow individuals to indicate their legal name and the name they prefer to be called
um I think some of you know that I have one of the world's longest names so whenever I go somewhere
um people actually ask me what I want to be called um well so you know I go by Christy but
that is not my full first name um so really having that space even for
everyone to have the name that they prefer to be called and then on your applications and any
other forms that you have is updating those gender markers to make sure that they're aligned and people have the
correct markers that they can choose from that they identify as
if any of you are constructing new shelter or spaces or housing
opportunities making sure it includes and promotes privacy and safety in sleeping areas bathrooms and showers
and also having those spaces within your buildings to provide confidential space to discuss any issues related to
harassment or other concerns connected to their gender expression within your project
next we're going to talk about Hud's equal access Rule and what the definition of family means
family includes what is not limited to you regardless of marital status actual
or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity any group of people
presenting For assistance with or without children doesn't matter how old they are their
relationship or whether or not the person in the household has a disability so this can include a family with or
without children including a child away from a foster home an elderly family a family who is experiencing disabling
conditions or even a displaced family
you cannot discriminate against anyone presenting as a family based on the composition of their family
and Chrissy can I add an example so I have seen
um in the past requirements that parents produce a marriage certificate
in order to be housed together with their child that would be an example of
a violation of this equal access rule
so as I said earlier family means any group of people that present together and identify themselves as a family
regardless of how old they are their relationships or anything else and they
must be served as a family I
think I've kind of gone over this we've talked about that we cannot discriminate against anyone because of age and
disability of all the things that you see on the side of the screens past this one
so if you have a project that's serving any family with children they have to serve all families with children
regardless of their composition type so that includes single dads single bombs
same-sex couples opposite sex couples multi-generational families
Etc so HUD we kind of talked about this earlier but HUD has issued a frequently
Asked question response about what is the definition of family and it's
it's anyone again who presents together and identifies as a family and shelter
housing and Housing Programs cannot can limit to providing assistance to
households with children but they cannot limit it to only women with children so really if you have someone who
presents as a meal head of household with minor children that person should be accepted into your project if you're
accepting families or children
so involuntary family separation what is this this is where families are
separated um because maybe projects can serve them the shelters are equipped to serve them
Etc projects are not allowed to do this they're not allowed to deny admission or
discriminate against families once they're placed in housing or discriminate again households
on the basis of age with gender of a child we're really looking for our providers
to ensure that there are placement efforts to ensure that families are kept together and they're not separated that
they're all served by the housing project the shelter project the transitional housing project and that
they're not separated
we're going to talk about the protections under the fair housing act two
which we're going to do a full training on um we will representing a full Fair
Housing Act training um coming up in the next I don't know month or two but if you have any
questions in the meantime we have put together the slide where a few questions
um we kind of broke it down between Frontline staff managers and directors
and COC and other planning bodies so for you Frontline staff does your agency even have an anti-discrimination
policy is it posted if not we gave you a place where you can
go get a notice of Rights for those managers and directors at your programs are you regularly training your
staff and your volunteers on your anti-discrimination policy and how to implement it
and then for our balance of State COC do we have a standardized anti-discrimination policy there'll be
more to come on this and do all of our projects have an anti-discrimination policy as well and
what how do we support projects to train staff on policy and how to implement which was part of the training today
and then finally we included some resources for all of you to be able to access and to go look at Hud's equal
access role defining family training scenarios supporting equal access
um for services and then equal access for transgender people supporting inclusive housing and shelters
so I want to thank you all for being here today and listening to this training
um we will make these slides available I apologize for not being on video I'm also one of those experiencing internet
issues and I think it's important that we are talking about HUD funding here however
the if we go back one slide about that question about COC or other planning
bodies so maybe lsda um groups that are looking at ending homelessness but these are Concepts that
we really should be addressing as a body right uh we wanted to start with a baseline of what is discrimination you
know what is out there when we're talking and having these conversations we wanted to make sure that we were all
on the same page with what that looks like so this training series will feature different buckets of
anti-discrimination approaches and then we're hoping as a Continuum that we can
further that conversation through institutionalizing a anti-discrimination
policy across the Continuum regardless of funding source so that we know as a
planning body that's looking to end homelessness uh we are we are addressing discrimination
um wherever someone may present and I'd like to if I can speak to
arielle's questions about the shelter system oh sorry I had to fix my headphones for a second here
um the the current shelter system funded through BHS barely receives enough funding to keep
their doors open um so we're doing which is is kind of an excuse and also
sort of a level setting about why we're sort of stuck with certain things right now so
um some of the shelters have expressed interest in the past about doing some
um like physical modifications to create more family-friendly space but they don't have enough money to do that right
this moment so we've been trying to identify additional funding sources so that we can help with certain things
like that um right now we're going through that
budget cycle so we're really hopeful that our prioritize needs requests for an additional 10 million dollars per
state fiscal year will come through so that we can help um really modernize some of the Shelter
Systems um additionally we just uh he's not here
today because he's at a DHHS orientation but BHS just hired Rob Waters to fill
the shelter administrator position that was left vacant by Betsy O'Connor's retirement and one of Rob's priorities
that he has identified is really getting out there to meet with each shelter to talk through a lot of these things
one-on-one um and to identify additional ways that we can really move forward as a system
to be more inclusive more responsive um but he just started Friday so I need
to let him go through orientation before I get him out there um so so yes Arielle the
my preference would be that the shelters um immediately start working with folks to
really what it is is we need the shelters to start participating more in the coordinated entry system which is a
training that will be coming up with Rob's help as well because through that coordinated entry system we should be
identifying um the housing options that households identify that they need for themselves
and then we should be getting them referred into the right systems to get that housing that will keep those
families together however those families identify um I think until our our
housing World sort of balances out a little bit um our emergency response is so limited
right now that um I don't think anybody would choose what
is out there right like if I had the choice of staying in a shelter versus trying to figure it out I would probably
bounce around and try and figure it out because I know how hard it is
um to to find accommodations in my community
um it you know that can accommodate a family whatever it might be because our system is so taxed right now
um so emergency response right now unfortunately is whatever happens to be available in the moment but we are
really trying to shift towards identifying the right Solutions
um allowing the families to identify the right Solutions we're not identifying what they want they're telling us and
then we should be helping them get there um I think it's been a a work in progress over the past couple
years and and we're very slowly being able to expand that
um sort of culture shift as we move forward I hope that made sense and in the interest of time
um do we have other questions for Mandy or Christy
we will be sharing the slides uh we will also be getting the recording posted
um and once it's posted and I have the link to where it's posted I will share that with the minutes as well
um and then as Christie mentioned we will be having additional
um trainings in the near future are we have
eight minutes are there any um other updates that anyone anyone would
like to give either about Regional work agency updates
um anything else
thank you all for bearing with us through like the strange internet connections we've had today
uh it's Chrissy the only thing I would say is we really are the coordinate entry system is moving towards matching
people to appropriate housing choices
um including you know whether they need permanent Supportive Housing record rehousing looking at
those things but also looking at is this a good fit for this person um are they going to be able to maintain
their permanent housing option that's offered to them what would be the permanent housing option for them
um and really looking at matching them to the appropriate resources we have in the community
all right any other updates if you didn't put your name and agency
in the chat please do so before you log off
and I think if there are no other updates we can call it a day
thank you everyone I'm going to leave the chat I'm going to leave the meeting open for just another minute or two so
if anyone needs to put their name in the chat they can but um I appreciate all of you attending on the
snowy cold miserable day
all right and not seeing any additional names being added I'm going to go ahead and end the meeting for everyone and
we'll see you next time thank you
January 10, 2023
Balance of State Continuum of Care Meeting, January 10, 2023
Balance of State Continuum of Care Meeting, January 10, 2023
Balance of State Continuum of Care Meeting, January 10, 2023
Transcript of video:
let me do there it goes excellent all right well a
lot of you have already started but if um you haven't yet please introduce yourself in the chat with your name and
your agency um you can add your pronouns if you'd like or any other identifying uh factors
um we do use the attendance in the chat for um
the HUD nofo so the notice of funding opportunity application scoring process
so well that means nothing today um down the road when HUD releases their
annual competition we do check the attendance and there are points given for attendance so please make sure that
you get credit for being here by putting your name in the chat um
I had shared that I don't think our first presenter can be here today she
had emailed me that she had I'm just trying to scroll through names while saying things um I think she has a conflict is there
anyone here from 2-1-1 that's able to do a quick presentation or should we skip
ahead I'll pause for just a moment to see if anyone here
okay so I think that we should just move forward in our agenda and if somebody
from two on one is able to join us um we will backtrack and if they're not able
to join us today we could certainly add um add them to an agenda on a different
day so moving on to the next item
um Mandy Reagan we'll talk about the point in time count good morning everyone Amanda Reagan uh
pronoun she her I am involved in some of the street Outreach projects at BHS so
traditionally I've been involved in the unsheltered count um so it is January it is point in time
season for us so just as a reminder although we talk about this all the time I know you all are experts in it but uh
worth reminding what is the point in time or the pit count as we call it so it is a HUD mandated count of all
individuals who are sheltered and unsheltered who are experiencing homelessness Across the Nation
um it takes place within the last 10 days of January for the Mandate from HUD
and for us it's typically the last Wednesday of the month and we are keeping consistent with that this year
the three cocs have voted that we will be conducting the point in time on
January 25th which is a Wednesday the hours of which be being six o'clock that
night all the way overnight into 6 a.m the next morning which technically is
Thursday the 26th so for the unsheltered portion uh we are
looking at those that meet that definition of unfit for human habitation and again
because it's an overnight count traditionally here in New Hampshire we don't have robust Outreach teams that
are out overnight for the point in time so remember for all of you that are participating in the pit count if you're
going out and doing Outreach on Thursday the 26th you're going to be asking where
people stayed the night before and if you're looking at your caseloads you're going to remember that you're tracking
those that are in the homelessness experience between the hours of 6 pm and
6 a.m so there's been some confusion in the past about that so just wanted to clarify that
um in terms of the unsheltered count we have been meeting with you all regionally just to check in and see how
things are going and what your current pit plans are for your unsheltered response um there's some ample and robust
planning going on so I'm hoping that I'm just looking down the list here
um some of you that have been planning these within your regions you could just give some examples about the efforts
that you're undergoing here as we're leading up to the weeks of the Pips
and if I don't hear from anybody that I'll just call on a couple people so be warned
it's fine Mandy um
all right um so yeah right now like you said we're all trying to plan make sure that
everybody's on the same page so like you know as soon as the we get the link training in the next few
days talking about the actual Google form that we will all use yeah and then once we have the link in our hands uh we
can start making sure that all the Community Partners that are going to participate in the actual accounting
have that thing saved on their phones and are comfortable with how to use it so um you know we'll be reaching out and
making sure that all our volunteers are ready to go and that their questions are answered but
um it's you know for us traditionally what the cap team has done is from about
6 a.m in the morning we count until we leave work and make sure that anybody
um that calls in or visits the SSP or you know visits the shelter it's better
to have duplicates than it is to have someone not counted at all so
um I don't know anything I'm missing that you want me to talk about Mandy I'm so glad you mentioned the Forum training
because it will happen today at one o'clock at
the link in their newsletter uh we can send it out again just as a reminder but that will go over unsheltered as well as
anybody who does not enter into hmis so welfare or any of you other providers
out there yeah and anybody that wants to volunteer on that day please just reach out to
myself or um probably Conor spurn or Owen we'd all be happy to coordinate with you and and
get you feeling comfortable to participate in the account if you're interested foreign
count for those that are in Emergency Shelters or other locations I will tag
in ICA here because they really spearhead that side of things and actually Susan just asked a question
that I think Megan would be great for you to answer as well I don't know if you saw that in the chat about shelters
who do you enter so thank you yeah um so Susan uh this year we will again
be using your your hmis data like we like you did last year and the year before
um and we are having a live training on the 24th I believe
um specifically to show you what that report is going to look like because it
is going to look different this year um than the couple the past few years because we are in a different database
um but yeah you do not have to use the Google forms um for your data that you enter into
hmis if you though are um doing any Outreach or come to contact
that someone with someone that is unsheltered you are able to use the
Google forms to um to do that foreign
we are pulling the hmis reports um this year because it's a new system
and um there are not a lot of folks that have looker licenses uh right now in New
Hampshire which we do recommend that at least one person do um so you're not able to take
even pull that report um ica's pointless reports
um and Mandy sorry um got distracted with the hmis questions
um so yeah we'll we will be going over the Google forms and the paper survey uh
this afternoon um uh we will we will be recording that so
um anyone who isn't able to join the live session um will be able to at least take
um and watch the recorded uh we will have uh we do have demo links for
um so you can practice and see what it looks like the Google form so if you've never done a Google The Google form
before you'd be able to see um have some idea of what it might look
like and what the process is Megan are there links to those
um the demos that you could put in the chat for people yes let me find them and I
can do that very cool um oh look somebody else had the same suggestion in the chat
um perfect and we will when we send out the minutes um
we will include those as well um and I just want to thank Freeman for
the comment about the it's better to have duplicates than not absolutely
please I would rather have you enter even if you think somebody else already did um I I don't need you to call and double
check with somebody just if you have that person in front of you um do it do the the survey with them get
it entered I do some of the deduplication with ICA after the fact so we take care of that part you don't have
to worry about it just get as many people counted as you can because the better our count is the better we can
address the gaps in our system any other Mandy any other
pit comments or um any other questions from anyone in the group
that was all I had uh if anybody has any unsheltered questions you can feel free to email me or send me a link I will put
my email in the chat uh that was all I had awesome thank you all right
um I still do not see anyone from uh two on one here so we will move on to
subcommittee updates for the day um Heidi and Heidi are you here and your
co-chair is Maddie I believe for the Youth subcommittee
I'm not sure if Maddie's here Maddie are you on this call
she is um I'm not sure if she is prepared to do an update so Heidi could
you start and if Maddie's able to jump in she can totally fine so we are working together to plan for our March
coming up meeting um that will be a regroup of this uh subcommittee because we've been planning
for the Youth homelessness demonstration program Grant I think for like a year and a half now
um in terms of uh setting up projects doing implementation conversations and
really just planning for this group to come back together so we're going to be sort of re-grounding ourselves and
setting the stage for how we want to move forward in the coordinated community plan we actually have physical
copies of it now so hopefully those will go out soon um and if folks would like the um
coordinated community plan electronically um Melissa we can include it in the notes I can give that to you as well
um so there are lots of projects coming up going to be starting uh with four agencies and I think we share this in
the past but the upper room has one Waypoint has two projects
um The Claremont learning partnership has one project project and Tri-County cap has two projects so they will be
hopefully starting in the next few months
all right anything else with the youth subcommittee looking good okay thank you
um our next subcommittee update is coordinated entry and that is Christy and Freeman
I guess I'll go because I know Freeman's out during Outreach I know he's here um good morning everyone it's Christy
from BHS um we have some exciting new things that are happening in the month of January in
regards to the coordinated entry system um we are working on finalizing
coordinate entry materials for all of the regional access points within the balance of State Continuum of Care
um I'd like to give a big thank you to Owen and Connor from VM cap and the whole BM cap team who helped assist us
finalize those materials we're hoping to get them printed and distributed out to the regional access points within the
next month um they will have a flyer and also hopefully um waterproof business cards
as well so that people have the information of who to call if they're experiencing housing instability or
experiencing homelessness um we have our subcommittee
meeting tomorrow at two o'clock if you're interested please send me or Freeman an email we are also working on
getting case conferencing up and running in both Merrimack and Belknap counties we have a training for Merrimack County
this afternoon and Western Rockingham has their third case conferencing
meeting this month and Belknap has their first case conferencing meeting on Wednesday
don't think I forgot anything but Freeman feel free to chime in no you got it you got it yeah I know Owen made the
flyer uh beautiful and Conor was an amazing help so big thanks to cceh for
the collaboration and uh yeah it's a really nice flyer I think we'll represent all of our
communities well it's I think and those waterproof business cards I'm very very
stoked about because everything of our clients kind of gets washed away um and our training for Belknap County
case conferencing I thought went really really well yesterday so we're stoked to have our first actual case conferencing
uh next week um so super duper thanks for bearing with us guys we're doing the
thing uh the only last thing is we did there's a revised strapped in the Courtney entry
manual that has been sent out to the subcommittee um once we finalize a draft
um we'll send it out to the entire balance of state to take a look at so
all right anything else on coordinated entry no all right
um our next subcommittee update is the veteran subcommittee I don't know if Sean is here
don't see Sean here Mandy do you I always go to you do you have any updates on the veteran subcommittee
and Emily Racine actually from the VA is now the chair of it but I don't see her either right now so I can give an update
so the veteran subcommittees um they have combined uh across the
state so we used to do it that way and we got away from that and now we're back to that
um just to solidify across COC lines and kind of standardize the approach that
we're taking so we had the Statewide veterans Summit last June and from that steering committee was formed we've been
working on gaps that were identified in that Summit ever since um as kind of goals to meet for the next
year so part of that was case conferencing so we have been doing bi-weekly case conferencing that
happened every Monday sorry the second uh and fourth to Monday afternoon so if
anybody is interested in joining um you can send me an email and I will get you to the right person uh but
basically we go through Veterans that have our newly identified in our system as well as those outstanding uh for
getting into housing and talk through as a multi-disciplinary stakeholder group of how we can help them get into housing
and stay there um beyond that for the veteran subcommittee
I don't think I'm missing anything uh Katie who's the chair of the Manchester
committee is also here so if I have missed anything Katie feel free to jump in but
I think that's a summary for now I think you got it all Mandy
thank you all right and then Mandy we will actually stay with you for the Outreach
subcommittee update the every subcommittee we met uh I think was last month gosh running together uh
we reviewed kind of the structure of the Outreach subcommittee and where folks
um thought that it could be helpful in the day-to-day knowing that there's already Regional responses happening so
we talked about having it be a training platform as well as maybe some networking and peer connection so
um potentially having a one or two in-person larger Summits
um so more to come we are meeting bi-monthly for now
um and I think more strategy and more structure will come from it as we work together but big shout out to everybody
who came definitely excited feel the passion and feel the combination that we
all have especially in light of um some really difficult circumstances so I appreciate your willingness to come
together and have hard conversations to get through and serve those most vulnerable
excellent thank you um all right so those are our subcommittee updates
this month we thought we would try something new um and I didn't prep everyone so if
we're not if people from the different regions are not prepared for this I completely understand and nobody is
going to be um nobody's gonna be yelled at by me anyway so I'm just hoping we can try and
start getting more Regional updates at this meeting because the purpose of the balance of State really is to hear about
all of the great work that's happening across our entire geography and since our geography is almost the entire State
of New Hampshire um I thought it would be great to hear from folks other than just me every time
so I have the list that was created for the housing Summit back in
October November um I can't remember exactly when that happened but it was created for that purpose I'm just going to go through an
order and call out the different groups and if there's somebody here who attends
that meeting or leads that meeting that is able to give some kind of update that would be great and then I promise over
the next couple months to actually reach out to all of you to be better prepared for next time this is just a trial to
see how it goes so we will start with the Belknap County lsda group is there
anyone here who can give a brief update
I'm hearing crickets okay we will move on to Berlin Gorham
Homeless Solutions Network sounds like a job for me all right so uh
we over the last two months have been focused primarily on the pit count um we
right now have four pit stop locations uh one in Colebrook with the TCAP
Connect trailer which I just got permission for and then FRC in Berlin and Gorham as well as Saint Barnabas are
going to put some soup on um and then we've been doing that same thing across across the different
counties but uh we're gearing up for that uh and
we're excited excellent thanks Eric
okay the Concord provider network is there anyone who could give an update for that one
no okay uh Northern Carroll County provider
Network
and I think I got an update by email saying this meeting had switched back to zoom so I will update this to make sure
it reflects that and we can share this document again out with our minutes
nobody for that group okay uh next is the greater Keen Homeless
Coalition hey how's everyone doing
we're good Craig so uh good so we have uh Kevin from MFS uh
we're down one Outreach workers so MFS the path worker for MFS is taking on the the pit work in Cheshire county and we
have Jim Doherty which is our ESG Outreach worker kind of taking the lead in Sullivan County
um what's nice is that we had a Community Partners meeting last week and I really told everyone I said you know
even if you think in your wildest dreams you may come in contact with somebody and this is more than 30 or 40 agencies
that is is Street Homeless or literally homeless have somebody in your agency be the contact person and reach out to Jim
right because as you said Melissa we don't want to worry about duplication Mandy thank you so much Mandy has a list
of the pit counts for the last 10 years and it's very interesting for folks to take a look at that you can really see
the trends in our community now whether it's because of our how much we participated in it or if it's really
truly the way the economy is going or Graphics are going but it's really
something to look at and so Sullivan County is where I've been kind of focusing because we've had big zeros for
the last few years and I know that we can do better than nothing so uh you
know we're really focusing on that area the welfare departments are are helpful
we're reaching out to the social workers in the hospitals and also the sau's as
well so other than that SCS has had a whole bunch of weatherization work done
and upgrades to our shelters we're frantically trying to hire like
everybody else is for another Outreach worker and for a emergency housing coordinator in our shelters
and uh you know I don't think it's a shock to anybody but in 2020 in Keene we
served 101 people and we served 193 in Keen in 2022. that's a 90 increase of
the homeless population that we're serving so I think everybody is really stretched very thin
no I just wanted to say I really appreciate you acknowledging that because it can it's really easy for
everyone to kind of get caught up in their own day-to-day um you know just the busyness of our work
and acknowledging that we're all facing that I think is really important so thank you for saying that
all right um next on our list is home for all
is there anyone from the home for all group that could give an update
sorry I'm a muting yeah this is this is Damien Santana and I work with
Carl rottenheiser and um support the home for all project through
um Grant United Way's work so an update on a couple of things that
home for all are working on right now is we have a coalition meeting coming up on the 12th
to regroup with area Partners around um a strategy for the next year to
address homelessness on the Seacoast we also have the affordable housing incentive program uh out on the Seacoast
which looks to incentivize housing for low-income tenants and families by
providing case management through local area uh first-tier shelter partners
and providing resources to landlords to help to avoid things like tenancy issues
or eviction processes or if those things are inevitable how to sort of facilitate
those to make them less burdensome on the landlords as well as the tenants
and other than that I don't have any other updates at the moment
excellent thank you um let's see sorry working Better Together North Country
[Music] okay housing first for the Lebanon group
I thought I saw Lynn Lynn are you still here I'm here hi perfect so we have a
new program operating this winter in the absence of a seasonal shelter in
our area the city of Lebanon authorized up to a hundred thousand
dollars to provide seasonal Sheltering for up to 10 households in January and
February and we have partnered with the Upper Valley Haven which is a shelter and homeless service provider in Vermont and
Terry Sullivan is on the call from the Haven The Haven is working with Lebanon Human
Services to refer Lebanon residents experiencing homelessness to this program the plan is to shelter them in
motel rooms and have weekly Supportive Services
provided by The Haven and it's a very expensive way to provide seasonal
shelter there's enough money set aside by the city to book 10 hotel rooms
whether they're used or not to make sure we have access to motel rooms but right now we've been fortunate that there are
still vacancies so we are not having to do that at the moment and hoping that this is continuing to
build awareness in our community about the need for shelter as well as demonstrate that there are more cost
effective options than motel rooms
that's it thanks Lynn and the last one on our list for the
balance of state is Western Rockingham Rockingham um Continuum of Care sorry Angie I can't
say words today are you still so good it's a long long uh name um yeah so things are going well down
here in West Rockingham County as everybody knows we do not have any shelters so um a lot of our homeless individuals or
families um they're either doubling up couch surfing or uh in their vehicles or
trying to get into shelters uh within Nashua Manchester or even Fort Smith
um most families do not want to do that so they're trying to see if other family members can take them in in the interim
um our meetings are going great monthly the case conferencing is going amazing we've come up with a couple resolutions
for some people one is going to be joining the uh Job Corps he's actually going to be going out to I believe it's
Montana or wine opening soon uh so we're helping get him prepared for that
um excuse me and I did have a meeting with the upper room here in town yesterday with Brenda and Cara so they
will be joining our once a month meeting as well to tackle uh homelessness within
our County as well as as ideas for them with use youth homelessness as well
because they've joined Heidi uh on that front as well awesome
those are excellent updates thank you you're welcome uh so that is the end of our list
um I know that I didn't prep everyone that we were going to do this in advance so I appreciate everyone that was
willing to be put on the spot to give us a brief update um I will try to reach out to everyone that's listed as a chairperson to see if
we could have people ready to do this next time um
we did not add to the agenda a couple of things that I'm going to share and then
we'll go to an open floor um I believe most people know that the
balance of State Continuum of Care was monitored by Hud some number of months ago I think it was in July it might have
been August um we did have four findings from that monitoring
two of them were completely outside of our control one was about the single audit for the State of New Hampshire
which is managed by I believe the legislative Bureau um
and we we were able to get that one resolved by having our legislative team
write the response and explanation about why BHS cannot choose the auditor for
the State of New Hampshire single audit so that was resolved quite easily we had a second finding about who signs
the invoices because there was um confusion at the HUD level about the
structure of DHHS and the finance teams so once we were able to send a flowchart over that one was actually resolved
quite easily as well um we have two that are outstanding and
we have submitted um further documentation to HUD for that
HUD has informed us that they have to go to headquarters to ask about
those findings uh we were able to with the support of our sub recipient agency
uh Stratford cap that was the project chosen this time we were able to provide
the actual Federal Regulation that shows we're able to use the funding the way
that it was used but our HUD rep uh is would prefer to go to headquarters
for confirmation first so we are just waiting for headquarters to respond to them and then
them to respond back to us so we we feel pretty confident that those last two
findings will be resolved quite easily it's just a matter of um waiting for this chain of
communication to make its way back to us Chrissy anything I missed about the monitoring
I'm not the only thing that I would say is there there could be a slight impact
to sub-recipient agencies depending on one of the responses from HUD um
I also submitted two aaqs which is ask a question to hide about
um eligible expenses so we're waiting on those responses as well
we don't think it'll be a big impact we just think that our HUD rep didn't understand the regulation we were
looking at and so once we get that resolved we think we'll be perfectly fine but we will update all of
our sub recipients if there is a change um I think that is it we still have not
heard from HUD about the 2022 nofo or
supplemental nofo for the rural and unsheltered homelessness we're waiting patiently but I expect it
to be spring before we hear anything so as soon as we we get our funding announcements we will certainly let everyone know
um and with that uh that was the fastest agenda we've ever worked through so we have plenty of time for open floor so if
anyone has any updates agency level or program level that you'd like to share
now is a good time
Melissa I put in the in the chat the link to Rockingham County the emergency
rental program has ceased on the cap level but Rockingham County if you are
dealing with people who are residents of Rockingham they still are taking applications
thanks Patty thanks Patty yes uh they're still taking applications my understanding is there's starting to be
quite a long wait list before they're getting through applications because of the influx with Southern New Hampshire
no longer having that those debt funding anymore so um I have had a couple of clients who
have applied and they're still waiting to hear thank you both and I do see Connor your
hand is raised yeah I'm on mobile so I can't see um is
Karen Jansen still on here yes she is I just wanted to say we have a new executive director and I don't
know if he's been on this meeting since you started but just wanted to shout her out so conquer Coalition and homelessness our new Ed is Karen Jansen
um and so she's on this call I don't know if she's right in front of her computer but just wanted her to say hi
Karen are you here to say hello I am thank you Connor I was on the I think I
was on the last meeting with Alan we were sharing a camera but excellent welcome
everybody all right any other um
program updates I just have a brief um Continuum of Care
sub-recipient Agency update I know most of you know we I'm working on scheduling all of your site visits for 2023
um so look for those calendar invites I will also be setting up several different trainings
um throughout the year and at least two sub-recipient meetings as well
um and just a reminder and I'll be sending an email but we still have open vouchers for the moving on program
um we have about 18 vouchers still remaining open
um so please send me those applications for moving on um and I'll be sending an email out with
the application and information about it as well
excellent thank you all right last call any updates
hello Melissa this is Donna Harbison with the New Hampshire harm reduction coalition
hey there hey there I'm not sure where it's appropriate um to mention Something That We're
recognizing in our region related to housing instability
um would it be here or is there another section after this we are at the end of our agenda this is just the open floor
so this is a good time oh perfect well thank you all I'm I serve as the Director of care
coordination for the New Hampshire harm reduction Coalition and we facilitate uh
the Community Care team meetings that happen in Stratford County and Eastern
Rockingham County region so we have uh CCT
um groups that me and um like the Rochester Dover area and then Portsmouth
and Exeter and one thing it's been suggested by many folks that we bring this forward we are seeing a tremendous
increase in older adults or folks who are experiencing disabilities who are
living in perhaps subsidized housing or independently and who are
um facing eviction due to their inability to care for themselves
um in in Portsmouth specifically there's a lot of talk about um the public health aspects of what's
happening and condemning Apartments um folks have been evicted just to kind
of without a plan and it as traumatic as that is for that individual and
um you know their neighbors to see and you know the staff if it's in a Housing Authority
um what we are seeing is many times this is related to
um Medical components um the inability to care for themselves
it seems to get extremely tricky when there is substance use involved so if
someone if a lot of that is due to their you know dependence on alcohol there
does not seed for other drugs they're just not seen to be a next step in uh
folks in that region are really crying out for some help and um looking to see
like what we can do throughout the state next steps because this is only increasing um I think once the pandemic kind of
um kind of receded a little bit there was a window into what had been going on uh for those those few years and now
folks are at the point where we're having you know elderly individuals evicted
um without a plan without a place for them to go so I'm curious are we seeing
this in other regions throughout the state is this more centralized and um I
can put my contact info in the chat because if anyone else has any kind of
thoughts around this or if maybe we should be talking about this more
um it seems like that group particularly is pretty much at a loss so thanks for giving me the opportunity to bring it
here to you all and um see what we can do to support you know these most vulnerable individuals so thank you
this has definitely been something we've been hearing from our partners across
the state so um I actually wonder if it might be a good thing to bring to the Council on housing
stability as an identified um challenge because it's I think it
probably includes I know it includes more systems than just housing
um but I'm seeing a lot of comments in the chat saying agree this has been going on for a few years a lot of
Statewide challenges um Mandy shared Mindy Lancaster shared that
this was the topic of a training yesterday on braiding resources housing and support with ILS I Mandy can
you tell me what that acronym means dependent living skills thank you got it
um I did not attend that training but it sounds like it's definitely worth um looking at but Donna it was shared
from someone here I think Christy or Heidi may have shared the training they forwarded it out
um and it came from um one of our national kind of partners
with DHHS and there are some fruit there's like Technical and training support around it
um I'm sorry that's as specific as I can get right now that's okay no that's awesome
so Donna I can um we actually have a council work group meeting this
afternoon I could bring this to that group um and add it to our agenda as something to
continue discussing thank you welcome
hey anyway yeah I just Donna thank you for for raising that um we're definitely
seeing that with so I'm we're uh we're basically a landlord affordable housing developer non-profit organization and
and yes as um we've been able to do more regular inspections we've definitely been
encountering some pretty horrible situations um and it there really isn't
uh we're finding some people that are signed up with services but are not able
to have as much support as they're supposed to have due to the workforce challenges so we like we have one person
who's supposed to get 40 hours a week of care and he maybe gets six um and he's just destroyed his apartment
and keeps destroying his apartment you know for reasons that are really Beyond his control but I I think this would be
a great thing for the council to look at because in some situations
the only option that the landlord has is eviction because there isn't like I can't make him go anywhere else I can't
make him go to a nursing home I can't make him get any other kind of hell so the only tool that I have
um when faced with this kind of situation is often eviction because some of these situations are impacting the
other tenants that live around the individual like there's a lot of health and safety
issues um oftentimes and so yeah it's it's it is difficult on the
staff that have to try and figure out what to do especially if the person's not responding to efforts to engage
um so it is heartbreaking and if it we'd be happy to be part of any conversation around this because this is something
that we're dealing with a lot right now and it's it's been really difficult on on everybody
thank you Carmen uh can I add to that as well um I I agree with everything that's
being said I currently am working with a 76 year old man that we've housed and we
have put uh these reports in we've tried to get him extra help as far as keeping
his his house cleanly um and you know we're seeing a lot of cognitive
um issues with looks like early onset Alzheimer's although I am not a medical doctor but I did work on a dementia unit
in a nursing home for five years so um I'm seeing all the signs but even
though bees went out and you know inspected his unit they deemed him able
to care for himself when clearly we're seeing otherwise so
um it's kind of like all these resources we have our hands are tied even though we're trying to get them the help that
they need um I don't have a ton to add but we've had very similar experiences with bees
okay I'm adding it as something to bring to the council because as you're all talking it does sound like it's a
multi-system situation um and the the purpose of the council is
to bring together all of those systems so I think um let me get it to the leadership of
the council and then um I can certainly send an email to this group to let let you all know
if it ends up on an agenda in the near future
hey any other updates from anyone
you're right well hearing none you have all just gotten an hour and 15 minutes back in
your day so that was a very quick meeting um like Chrissy said we will plan some
trainings for future meetings so um that'll take up a little bit more time but in the meantime I hope everyone
had a quick question sorry I just took a phone late um I'm Dave with Easter Seals veterans
count I cover the whole state and I'm seeing a lot of people on this meeting
I've never even met before is there any chance there's like an overall directory
for everyone that's in this that I can get so I can reach out and try to connect with the various people in the
different parts of the state I have a rather large email list
um that I could probably share I don't have it in a great format for sharing yet
um that is something that I would love to do like it I would love to have it set up so it had like agency the name your
contact information and I just haven't done that yet so um
let me figure out a way to get that to you because I I do think that it would be worth having contact information for
our Network thank you so much I'd be very helpful
because I'm just basically winging it when I go to different parts of the state and going who do I talk to out
here um so that would be definitely be very helpful to have a contact in each region and yeah I wonder
maybe you could start with the regional leads of those meetings and then they could maybe introduce you to some of the
folks in those areas and you have that meeting set up already Mila so that you maybe you can put with the notes again
yes yep I can put that in the notes and if you put your email in the chat as well that will help so we can get
everything um so I can send it to you because I don't
know if I have your email address saved somewhere that I know I'm sure it's in a
list but if you put it separately I'll be able to access it easier so um I'll put it in the chat no problem
perfect thank you all right
anybody else
all right well on that note um we can end for today and I want to
thank Emily Whitaker I don't know if she's still on here but she's helping me with minutes today so you will actually
get minutes from me in a reasonable time um so thank you Emily for joining us
today and and taking our notes I really appreciate your help and with that thank you everyone I'm
going to stop recording and we will see you all next time
2022 Videos
August 9, 2022
Notice of Funding Opportunity Meeting, August 9, 2022
Notice of Funding Opportunity Meeting, August 9, 2022
Notice of Funding Opportunity Meeting, August 9, 2022
Transcript of video:
0:00
right and we're cool there it goes i am recording this um because i know that we scheduled this
0:07
very last minute not everyone that wants to get this information will be able to participate so we do plan to get this
0:14
posted on uh the dhhs youtube video or channel
0:19
today and we'll send that link out to our entire network um so for anyone who doesn't know me or
0:26
who's starting to log on i'm melissa hatfield i'm the bureau chief for the bureau of housing supports
0:31
uh bhs is the collaborative applicant for the balance of state continuum of care
0:38
um for those of you who have participated in a continuum of care competition in
0:44
the past throw out everything you remember because our time frame shrunk to about this big and we are um
0:52
the name of the game is flexibility and adjusting this year so
0:58
i'm thanking you in advance for your patience and understanding through this entire process
1:05
usually we have about 90 days for this full competition from the date it was released till the
1:11
date it's due we had 60 and we are down to i'm looking at my countdown we are down to 52 days as of
1:18
today for when this is due um these are not time frames set by me they
1:25
are not time frames i enjoy or appreciate um but they are time frames that we are
1:31
working within um real quick some of the the time frames
1:37
that are going to impact all of you the most are project applications
1:42
um hud sets a deadline of 30 days before
1:47
the due date i have my binders behind me i'm not reading it exactly project applications are due into
1:55
the collaborative applicant that's august 30th um hud has not released the project
2:02
application templates yet so we can't even give you exactly what hud's looking
2:07
for yet because they haven't released them to us so what's going to happen today
2:14
is a very high level overview of everything that's coming and maybe not everything because we
2:20
don't know it all yet um we are not going to be voting on anything in
2:26
this meeting as i originally thought we would because we just have not been able to put everything together that we need
2:32
to in order to vote and i know that we don't have enough people here so we will be doing electronic votes as allowed by
2:39
our governance charter all in one survey monkey so the whole survey will go out
2:44
you'll get a description of what we're asking you to vote on um and it will be a relatively quick
2:52
turnaround that we're asking for the other thing that we don't know yet is exactly how much bonus funding we
2:59
have available we have an estimate based on old numbers in our grant inventory
3:04
worksheet um we don't know exactly what our domestic violence bonus
3:10
is yet and we um we think we know what our reallocation total is but we'll put it
3:16
all out at the same time together so
3:22
so that being said if everyone could introduce yourself in the chat your name the agency you work for anything else
3:29
you would like to identify with your pronouns if you'd like to do that um we encourage you to
3:36
share your representation with us i am going to turn it over to melanie mondello from the technical assistance
3:42
collaborative um to give us the high level overview of this year's competition and then we will
3:49
talk about the supplemental competition for rural and unsheltered homelessness
3:55
we will talk a little bit about hud's priorities in this boring tool and then we'll wrap it all up at the end so
4:00
melanie will you need to share your screen yes please okay give me half a second here
4:05
okay so for those of you that haven't met me um my name is melanie mondello and i work for the technical assistance
4:12
collaborative otherwise known as tac um and i've been working with new hampshire for i guess almost 10 years um
4:19
on this nofo coc program fund so like melissa said we have a really short time frame
4:25
so that's not great but you have a lot of experience behind you and you have systems in place
4:32
so we're just trying to move as fast as possible while keeping integrity to get you the information you need if you're
4:38
considering a new project this year under the regular nofo which melissa you may have said already
4:44
is different than the special nofo that you've probably been talking about in other forums so this is regular coc business um
4:52
what i'd like to do is um i did a summary of the no flow what's been available to
4:59
us so far everything has not been released so it's an abbreviated summary it is 11 pages which i'm not going to
5:06
read to you but i want to share them on the screen and i'll kind of roll through and try not to make everyone too dizzy
5:13
as we go through just to give you the highlights about where hud's putting their priorities this year
5:18
and kind of what we can expect when they do publish the questions out and we're able to actually start writing
5:24
um the responses that you need to get some money into new hampshire so and we
5:30
will share all of these documents after the fact we just don't have them right this moment to
5:37
share so stay tuned for everything coming from us we will make sure you get it yes so melissa already went over the
5:43
time frame so i'm just gonna everyone can kind of close their eyes as i scroll down to the important part there we go
5:50
so um this year hud uh it's a 200 point scale with 25 bonus points
5:56
um this chart is helpful just so you can see where kind of hud is putting their priorities
6:02
so you can see like what kind of community responses we're going to be speaking to in the questions
6:07
so you can see coordination which is number one and coordination which is number six
6:13
are you know half the points of the whole competition so coordination engagement of people
6:19
with lived experience engagement of stakeholders all of that is really where hud is putting a lot of emphasis and then
6:26
also you'll see number five system performance something we've talked about every year
6:31
uh biggest change there is last year they gave us a little bit of a break because of the pandemic and this year
6:37
they put all the points back so you're going to be you know judged on what was submitted i think it was last april or
6:43
maybe february whatever your community submitted based on performance measures
6:50
that data will inform part of the points and our narrative about what we're doing to
6:56
stop people from entering homelessness get them out of homelessness quickly all of those things our narrative about your
7:02
community response will be the remainder of the point so some of it is predetermined based on
7:07
data you've already submitted some of it we have a little bit of control over as we talk about your community response
7:14
so this is nothing that any of you have to like dig into deeply uh christy melissa and mandy and i will dig deep
7:21
into this when huda gives us the questions but just wanted you to kind of see where hud was putting um their emphasis
7:28
this year around where they want you to spend your time as a homeless response system
7:35
i'm going to scroll down past some of this attachment
7:40
so new key changes the 200 points so it's more points which means more
7:46
questions which is fine um the biggest change this year is they put back the tiers so i think there's
7:52
some new faces here um what hud does is they say hey balance of state new hampshire
7:58
you have this many renewal projects it's worth i'm just going to make up a number five million dollars
8:04
and then they say well you can have 95 of that 5 million as long as you put in an application do a pretty decent job
8:10
we're going to guarantee you basically 95 of your current money and then they make you compete
8:17
for the other part so this year it's called tier one and tier two tier one is going to be 95 percent of
8:22
the current renewal projects are mostly guaranteed use that word lightly with
8:28
federal government funding um and then five percent of it is going to be competitive nationally you all do
8:34
well you do well in the competition i anticipate you'll continue to do well but it is stressful for whatever project
8:42
is in that five percent we just want to acknowledge that but these are the rules that hud has set up
8:47
maybe it will be a new project based on reallocation funds but it just you know we wanted to tell people the tiering is
8:53
back so when you see the project list that christy publishes you'll see tier one
8:59
tier two and then our tv bonus project so just wanted everyone to know that
9:05
um i think this part here is what people will be most excited about uh new projects there is coc bonus
9:12
project funding there is dv db tv bonus project funding available
9:19
the biggest change here is some of you may remember last year hud did bonus points
9:25
to talk about um to incentivize you to do partnerships in a new project application to bring in money
9:33
right money and resources from either places that had housing funds for
9:38
subsidies or actual units and a second bucket of bonus points for
9:44
projects that could bring in formal written agreements with health care entities to provide some of the support
9:50
of services that people need when they're um exiting homelessness and going into some of these programs
9:57
so those changed from bonus points last year to regular points this year
10:02
and when i did the math hud is really serious about these we knew that but they kind of put their money where their
10:08
priorities were the new questions around new projects with housing subsidies that aren't coc
10:14
or esg funded and new health care partnerships that bring money into projects
10:20
each of those questions is worth three and a half of the points three and a half percent of the points available
10:26
so seven percent of a national competition is based on checking the box on these two things so that's going to
10:32
be really important as you think about new projects as you apply for the bonus the db bonus
10:38
and any reallocation money that if you could bring this to the table it helps your coc stay competitive and i my
10:46
disclaimer i'm all about the points during the nofo it also helps because it gets better projects
10:52
but for this conversation it helps you stay competitive so you can continue to get additional money every year and keep
10:59
all of your current projects as you'd like to see them so i'm going to stop there for half a second and see if
11:05
there's any questions that came up or if i'm just talking in greek if anybody needs me to decode a
11:11
little better about hudspeak
11:16
any questions your all the cameras are over here so i'm just looking over here i have a quick one when when do we find
11:23
out that uh whether we're in tier one or tier two when does that list come out from melissa
11:29
i can review that at the end melanie i get the time frame kind of built out um
11:35
[Music] that makes sense yeah ellen let me i'll pull it up and i'll have that answer for
11:41
you before it's over okay good yeah we will have a final priority
11:46
listing and the ranking and scorings will go out per usual and you will have a chance to appeal
11:52
as well um which is built in i just want to remind everybody that all of your annual
11:58
performance reports which is part of the scoring process were previously sent out this year for
12:03
all of your agencies to review um and you are being scored on the calendar year of 2021.
12:14
okay um so i wanted to highlight that the
12:20
emphasis on building equity into your system is also actually written in even more deeply into the nofo
12:27
this year um they uh the first year they started talking about this they wanted evaluation the
12:33
second year they wanted plans so they kind of keep saying you'll evaluate you'll plan you'll implement so
12:39
this year they're really looking for evaluation they're looking for what you actually
12:45
did so the plan and then what you did and then that you implemented evaluation
12:50
so you've made it you've evaluated what issues there are you've done something to rectify those issues
12:57
and then looking at did what you do right um increase equity decrease disparity so
13:05
well again we're waiting for the questions we don't know exactly what hud wants us to speak about there but that's the general kind of guidance that
13:11
they've given um that we'll need to speak about this year they also um it's a little later in
13:18
the document but i'll speak to it now they also are emphasizing uh what's happening at
13:24
the project level so a lot of it has been about um
13:29
uh the coc policy here right um for
13:34
equity anti-discrimination but you can see here they have talked
13:39
now about developing provider anti-discrimination policies and making
13:44
sure there's feedback and assistance on that so there may be questions this year where we have to follow up with you all
13:51
to say okay this is what we do at the coc level we need a little bit more detail about what you do at the agency level again waiting for the details um
14:00
uh on that and then you know yeah they did define um underserved communities so
14:06
if that's something that um you think applies to any of your area i would read that definition
14:12
and see it might be something we have to speak to when they um publish the questions but again we don't know the
14:18
questions yet um so that's some of the just highlights of what we've seen around um
14:24
[Music] equity um for anti-discrimination policies and questions that are going to be coming
14:30
our way for policy priorities um you know typical fashion these are all the things
14:37
that you should be doing right everything under the sun or the all the policy priorities are all the
14:42
policies but um you all again do some really good stuff in this area there'll be plenty to talk
14:49
about lenovo what i wanted to um kind of highlight was these last four
14:56
so increasing the affordable housing supply is not directly under the control of your coc
15:02
but it may be um part of the role of some of your members some of you on the
15:07
phone you know on the call right now so increasing affordable housing supply is a new question this year
15:14
about what was done to decrease zoning barriers things like that what you're doing to work with
15:21
entities in your state to increase the housing supply so i would expect more and more emphasis
15:27
on that so probably be a couple points this year but i just wanted to plant that seed and everyone's head we're
15:32
gonna need to think to make sure we're at the right tables and be able to talk to that to again continue to have you be
15:38
a strong applicant so that you can continue to score well and get money into the balance of state
15:45
new hampshire and melanie to give some reassurance to the group um
15:50
the so all three continuums of care actually sit on the council for housing stability
15:55
the statewide council in addressing the lack of affordable housing is a huge
16:00
part of that work um and there are a lot of other continuum of care members who
16:06
participate in our work groups in our um subcommittee so if you
16:11
aren't actively involved and you'd like to be let me know i can get you connected with one of those work groups but that work is happening across the
16:18
state it's slow and we don't have enough yet but there's work being done to address it so if you want more information let
16:25
me know yeah um great um some places where they
16:30
increased or decreased points again it kind of tells you where their policy priorities are
16:36
um there's a list here i'm not going to read it to you we're still waiting on the details of what the question changes
16:42
are um if something had decreased points it doesn't mean it's not so important to
16:47
them they're just putting their emphasis somewhere else so hud still does want to see that families are not separated they just um
16:55
sometimes they put that as a priority question and then as soon as enough people are saying yes to it
17:00
they'll decrease points and emphasize somewhere else so it's not to undo the good work that you've done um in
17:07
discharge planning and families it's just we're not gonna get we're not gonna continue to get points
17:12
for your past good work we're gonna need new future good work so we're just gonna have to keep you know
17:18
um taking lots of credit for all the work that you do throughout the year so i just wanted to highlight that
17:26
um [Music] let's see
17:32
scanning through the stuff that is kind of the biggest you can see here the new new questions
17:38
um i mark with the bold um parentheses new uh the dating violence um sexual assault
17:45
stalking dv there will be different questions that we have to answer this year if we want
17:50
tv bonus funds we're waiting for those details so there still will be questions but
17:55
they hinted in what has been published that they'll be a little bit different um training people on the needs of lgbt
18:04
um at individual level agency and coc level around policy and compliance that's a
18:11
new emphasis it's always been there but not really talking about the compliance piece of it
18:17
of what the coc does if someone isn't is discriminating or doesn't have policies that are following
18:23
the coc policies um this question here we might need some
18:28
you know group thing from local um smaller local um efforts that are going on hud has talked
18:35
about um ensuring that you're working with your state to not criminalize
18:40
homelessness like not make it illegal to sleep out um you know be in a public park that type of thing this year they
18:47
took it a step further they want to know not only what you're doing to prevent um policies from doing
18:53
that but they want to know if you have that policy now or policy that criminalizes homelessness what are you doing to
18:59
reverse it so that we just might need some like you know feedback if there's something in one particular county again
19:05
waiting on the details of that question um a big new emphasis on soar which
19:11
again i think you're really strong in so we'll just need to talk about that around certifications and um at the
19:17
project and coc wide level uh non-congregate shelter here again you
19:22
guys have been living this it's really thinking about um
19:28
uh are you ready to put non-congregate in in the future if you need it what are the lessons learned from coven
19:34
um a lot of the rest of this oh this is that zoning question i was telling you about what are we doing to reduce the
19:40
regulatory barriers to affordable housing right all of our wishes and dreams
19:45
but like melissa said you guys are working on that at the statewide level and i think the rest of this um
19:53
oh this is really exciting i don't know melissa and christy if you found this yet so every year uh you do really well in
20:00
your permanent supportive housing you have 96 of people who either stay or leave for a permanent housing place and
20:07
we've lost points on that question because you can't do much better like if you're already at 96 or 98 to increase
20:14
by a full percentage point is really tough so this year hud set some criteria so
20:20
like for successful exits to permanent housing if you're already at i think it was 96 you're going to get points even
20:27
if it didn't go up any higher so i think that will really help new hampshire because you already have really high
20:32
like responses and good data but you were kind of getting penalized because you couldn't do any
20:37
better than 90s than 90 percentages in some of the categories so i think this
20:43
will help over the long term and you can see i was super excited about it because i was been waiting for this for years
20:50
um we talked about leveraging already um still big emphasis on including
20:56
people with lived experience at all levels of the process so making sure the voices of the people that are gonna be
21:03
you know impacted mostly by these programs are having a hand in designing those and giving feedback to those of us
21:09
working within the system and i think that is all i would highlight there the rest of it is more
21:16
like things for christy um melissa and i to watch out for as we like get those detailed questions
21:23
uh okay i'm gonna pause there before we kind of maybe pivot a little bit into project applications any questions on
21:30
the content [Music] melissa do you want me to go over these
21:36
project things or wait until we do the scoring uh why don't so i think we'll shift our agenda just a little bit so we can keep
21:42
flowing through so if you do this part then chrissy can talk about the scoring and then we'll have mandy bring up the
21:48
the end um i think that would be helpful and then at the very end i will share our um tentative timeline with the whole
21:55
group perfect yep so like i talked about there's bonus funds there's dv bonus
22:00
funds you can also continue to expand projects which means if you have a current project and you want to make it
22:06
a little bigger serve more people add new housing units whatever the bigger part is um hud is allowing that
22:13
again this year i know your yhtp community don't worry about this bullet you're not in renewal yet this is going
22:19
to apply to you in a couple years so just wanted to highlight there are new funds um
22:25
all new projects all renewal projects have a scoring tool process that christy can talk about more
22:32
but this is the calculation like melissa said hud hasn't published what these numbers actually are yet so we're kind
22:38
of guessing we're doing our best hub math without their publication to figure out how much new money is out there for
22:44
you to apply for okay i'm just going to scroll to make sure there's nothing else i think the
22:49
rest of it is going to be available to you for details if you're actually
22:54
going after [Music] some money i think you'll want to read more about this bonus funds you'll want
23:01
to read more about i'm going to scroll to the bottom there's a chart that's much easier to read
23:06
there's a chart here about what bonus money can be used for and what db bonus money can be used for
23:12
so as this publishes if you're doing a new project the latter half of this document is good for you to review
23:19
as you go forward and the tools that christie's gonna go over are really based on what hud um
23:26
put his eligible activities and what you incentivize as a local coc
23:31
so i'm gonna stop that share again that document will go out for melissa when everything goes out
23:37
and i think i'm going to pass it to christy to talk about tools
23:43
good morning everyone um just before i jump into the tools for
23:48
all of you sub recipient agencies who are on this call you were sent out last year's um project
23:55
application from the fy 2021 nopo to review by friday
24:00
um because we do not have access to the fy 2022 project applications as of yet
24:06
but i don't anticipate any big changes for renewals um
24:12
and lastly i will be sending out match templates hopefully by the end of today for all of you to put those together
24:19
um in regards i'm gonna share my screen remember how to do this in regards to the ranking and scoring
24:28
tools we made a couple of changes
24:33
to the ranking and scoring tools both for new projects and for renewal projects
24:39
this year there were two questions added specifically around equity
24:47
if you can remember last year we sent out a supplemental questionnaire tool which had numerous questions on it from
24:54
an equity perspective last year we only included four
25:00
questions you can see on the screen it's questions 18 to 21 that were scored on
25:07
this year we are proposing adding two more questions um question 22 does your
25:13
agency have a process for receiving and incorporating feedback from persons with lived experience
25:20
and then has your agency reviewed participant outcomes in your current projects with an equity lens
25:26
the reason we are proposing adding these questions is because the specific hud policy priorities within the nofo
25:34
in regards to the first question has your agency review participant outcomes
25:40
without equity lens this is specifically cited in the nofo on page 72
25:46
having the coc address racial disparities in the provision of outcomes of
25:51
homelessness assistance and taking steps to address those disparities um
25:57
and also looking at in the review of project capacity and
26:02
rank projects are rated and ranked based on the degree to which their project has
26:08
identified any barriers to participation faced by people of different races
26:13
ethnicities and particularly those who are over represented in the local homelessness population and how you can
26:20
step to eliminate those barriers one of the other big things that i want to point out as well is that one of the
26:27
things that we look at when we do on-site monitoring of sub-recipient agencies
26:32
is participant satisfaction surveys as well on
26:41
so that's one of the questions we're looking at and then the second question is does your agency i flip them i'm
26:48
sorry does your agency have process for reviewing and receiving and incorporating feedback from persons with
26:53
lived experiences this is another one of pods big policy priorities that i know we've been
26:59
talking about um for the last couple of years the balance of state continuum of care
27:04
participated in some ta around incorporating people with lived experience um and hud is really pushing for cocs to
27:12
include people with lived experience and the planning processes um and we're also looking at ensuring
27:20
that we're involving people who have lived experience in sub-recipient agencies projects
27:26
service delivery and decision-making so how sub-recipient agencies are
27:31
routinely gathering feedback from people experiencing homelessness and
27:37
looking at those who have received assistance from coc or even esg programs
27:43
on their experience receiving assistance and those steps that projects are taking to address challenges raised by those
27:48
people um and making sure that we're involving them in these processes and our feedback
27:54
loop and changes that are needed for coc projects
28:00
so we will send out both of those questions were added to the new project scoring tool the renewal project
28:07
scoring tool and new this year is the coordinate entry project scoring tool um so those
28:14
two questions were added to both of the tools
28:22
we removed points from the balance of state
28:29
questions where how many meetings have you attended in order to accommodate those two
28:35
questions so we removed two points from coc participation and added them one
28:40
point each for each of those equity questions to the root scoring tools
28:47
so i will pause there see if anyone has any questions
28:55
and this will be one of those items that we send out the electronic vote on so we want you to think about it we'll send it
29:02
out for you to look at and then there will be a survey monkey vote for you to vote on adding these questions or not
29:10
and christy can you stop sharing your screen so we can see yes thank you
29:17
and we will be sending out drafts of all three of the scoring tools for you to review once these are finalized because
29:25
i know ellen asks this question once the tools are either approved or rejected
29:30
once they're finally approved i can begin to work on the scoring of renewal project applications
29:48
i'm just finally emphasizing out of these two questions really looking at what hud was focusing on for
29:54
policy priorities from the noble this year yeah and it's important like you'll hear
30:00
us say a lot like hud wants hud wants but we do try and be very cautious or
30:05
you know at least when i work with communities about hud wants it and its value added i think is the second part
30:11
of the question right like it has to add value for new hampshire also so i think um that you'll find that
30:17
balance there's some things hud has asked for we're like nope that does not make sense for a rural
30:22
state right like um so just wanted to add that is we get very points and narrative focus uh do you know that the
30:29
larger system is as important because that's what happens every day you know i've i've warned people
30:35
throughout the year that when it's nobo time we are very um point driven but it
30:41
i try to remember to say the same thing melanie that it comes back to um improving our system and the people
30:47
we're trying to serve um but getting more points on this competition allows us to serve more people so
30:53
um we do get i do anyway i get tunnel vision this time of year when it's um
30:59
especially right now with such a tight time frame so um feel free to call me on it if you think i'm just chasing points and don't
31:06
care about the system i promise i do it just um i might not say it as much as i should this time of year
31:14
so while we're talking regular no-fo i just realized i wrote no on my
31:20
timeline let me fix that i will share our timeline it is in draft form because
31:27
some of it we can't do until hud gives us certain things so you'll see um
31:33
this time frame is unreasonable and we acknowledge that and we apologize for it and um we thank you for your patience
31:40
with it so we anticipate releasing our rfp by this
31:46
friday um knowing that our exact dollar amounts
31:52
for bonus funding may not actually be available yet so
31:57
if we don't have that dollar amount the rfp will say anticipated approximate and it'll be
32:04
based on that formula that was on melanie's summary where it showed five percent of and then 10 of a different
32:11
number um once we do have the final dollar amounts
32:17
we will edit it and we republish it for everyone to see the exact dollar amount but we want people to have as much time
32:23
as possible realizing that we are not able to give you very much time at all
32:29
um so my dates are all out of order here this
32:36
is an old one too this should come off sorry about that um so friday we we
32:41
anticipate releasing the rfp um the two that are highlighted
32:47
we need to change we'll change those dates once christie's able to send the actual renewal project
32:54
applications out for review um we have tentative deadlines that christie already described she sent out
33:00
last year's documents to everybody yesterday with feedback requested by friday
33:05
um but if something dramatic changes we will have to re-send those to everyone
33:11
so that we can look at them so um that part will change
33:17
um new project applications will be due to me they'll come to me directly
33:24
by monday august 29th so we realize that we're giving you i'm trying to look at my calendar
33:30
about two and a half weeks to do a new project application we understand that that is a really really challenging
33:38
deadline um and we really can't do anything about that so
33:45
if there are ways we can help you we will knowing that it's a competition we can't
33:50
do your project application for you um our ranking committee meeting is already
33:56
scheduled for friday september 2nd um i did reach out to the executive
34:02
committee to see if anyone would like to be a part of the ranking committee and i think i've received one response so far
34:09
um at this point i'm i'm looking for anyone to be a part of our ranking committee um
34:16
so please let me know you cannot be on the ranking committee if your agency is submitting a new
34:23
project application renewals are fine because the ranking committee does not review the renewals um its renewals are
34:30
all based on data but if your agency is submitting a new product application you cannot be reviewing the new project
34:37
applications um so
34:42
we did give ourselves a tiny bit of a buffer here two days we like to try and give us a little bit of extra
34:48
space this year we can't give ourselves as much as usual um so the ranking committee will meet on
34:53
friday september 7th we will notify everyone who applied about the status of
34:59
their applications appeals will be due to vhs in writing two days after that
35:06
and then uh july i'm in the wrong month
35:11
whatever day of the week september 12th is we will publish our final project listing so that's after the appeals have
35:17
been submitted if any uh section for 12 will publish the final project listing
35:22
um we technically have until the 15th to do all of that but we again like to give
35:27
ourselves a tiny bit of a buffer um and then we
35:33
anticipate posting our final complete coc application for review on september
35:39
26th with comments due back to bhs by
35:44
september 28th at 3 pm um that way if
35:50
if there are no major concerns complaints issues
35:56
we can submit that afternoon um
36:01
with the with a buffer of about a day and a half so um that is that is our target timeline
36:08
for this year it is going to be very challenging and um
36:15
i'm going to stop sharing this i will send this out for everyone once i've cleaned up the highlighted yellow section
36:20
i will try to make our communications about novo as clear as possible i think
36:25
in my subject line i will put nobo first and then what i'm requesting so that you
36:31
can see right away that i am sending nobo communication um any novo communication that is coming
36:37
out will be time sensitive um and again i'm not trying to
36:44
i'm not trying to be unreasonable in that it's it's the reality of our time frame this year so again i apologize in
36:51
advance and i thank you in advance for your understanding
36:57
felony any other regular coc high level stuff before i let mandy talk a little bit about the supplemental nobo
37:04
um the only thing i would say if there's new folks here folks that have been through
37:10
this with us in the past yes we won't be publishing the rfp until friday but you know now right the
37:17
project types that are being allowed you can kind of guess from last year the money probably is going to be about the
37:23
same at least for bonus so if you have time before friday not then anyone probably is a lot but if
37:29
you have time it's okay to start thinking about your project design now don't you don't have to wait till friday for this document to come out to tell
37:35
you it could be psh it could be rapid it could be right like the rules haven't changed that much this
37:41
year we just don't know what the numbers are yet and hud's doing a webinar thursday so
37:47
hopefully that means the materials will be out they don't want to talk to the whole country without publishing materials but we'll see
37:53
um so just if you're thinking about a project you know look at last year's rfp look at you know read the rule about
37:59
what's allowed you can get a jump on it if you have time in the next three days before that comes out so just that's the
38:06
other reason we wanted to talk about it today okay so
38:12
while this is happening we also have the supplemental
38:18
notice of funding opportunity that came out for rural and unsheltered homelessness we have 72 days left on
38:25
that one um compared to the 52 days we have for the regular competition um
38:31
we are trying to keep our time frames aligned for the ease of
38:39
um just for all of us i guess for for managing uh different deadlines so
38:45
as part of the rfp that comes out there will be a separate document that explains the
38:52
project types that are allowed under the supplemental competition there will be
38:57
tools that come out with that as well and mandy is going to talk a little bit about hud's priorities on those items
39:05
um what's eligible and then um we will send more information out on
39:12
friday as well so mandy go ahead get screen sharing so in the meantime i just want to say if
39:19
you're brand new to this process well you should be happy happy to have you okay awesome happy to
39:25
have you here and we fully recognize that this may seem like a different language like please don't be
39:31
intimidated by that we are here for you we want to make this as accessible as possible and we want to bring people to
39:36
the table so with that said share my screen here
39:45
so we did review kind of an overview uh the last balance of state meetings so i did kind of a hybrid for those that are
39:51
newer to this and those that this is old hat for you all you've done this million times i'll quickly go through this
40:00
so just as a reminder this nofo is broken out into two different funding opportunities those
40:06
for unsheltered homelessness and those focusing on rural regions
40:13
there are two different funding buckets underneath that the unsheltered maximum and the rural maximum
40:20
and again this will all be coming out in these documents that will be released this week
40:28
so regardless of the unsheltered or the rural category
40:33
that you're looking to apply for all project types are the same so supportive services only permanent
40:40
supportive housing rapid rehousing or transitional housing rapid rehousing combination
40:46
so some of these are in the regular nofo you familiar with them all but i did
40:52
include at the end of this presentation a full list of them with reference
40:57
documents for those that are newer to this and are looking for more information about what is included in
41:04
each but i did want to just highlight the supportive services only that is
41:09
included in this s nofo snowfo as we're calling it
41:15
so coordinated entry uh that is one we've seen in the regular nofo that helps us administer our coordinated
41:22
entry process there's street outreach sso supportive services only which is pretty
41:28
straightforward that's a street outreach project and then the standalone project this is
41:34
for individuals and families who have experienced homelessness in the last six
41:39
months but who are now residing in permanent housing that is not coc or
41:44
sorry psh or rapid rehousing or are currently experiencing homelessness
41:50
so if you think about the number of resources that have come through housing choice vouchers or other funding streams
41:57
that can do things like rental assistance but may not come with those supportive services that case management to help
42:03
support that project this is where that sso standalone project could fit in
42:12
hud has also provided other examples about what this standalone sso project could look like things like housing
42:18
navigation for people experiencing homelessness drop-in centers that provide supportive services family
42:24
unification services to reunite people experiencing homelessness with their families
42:30
so the sso category provides a lot of opportunities to really boost up these service
42:38
components to a lot of the housing and rental assistance that we've seen coming out over the last couple years
42:47
so with that said i want to just focus on a couple differences within the two buckets that we're talking about
42:53
so unsheltered that set aside all projects must focus only on category
43:01
one of the definition of homelessness or four so just as a reminder what does that
43:08
mean so category one is the not fit for human habitation
43:13
anyone residing in emergency shelter or hotel motel paid for by third party
43:19
or anyone that is exiting in an institution where they have entered as experiencing
43:25
homelessness and exited within 90 days
43:30
category 4 db specific so any individual or family who is fleeing or attempting
43:36
to flee domestic violence has no other residence and lacks the resources or supports to obtain other current housing
43:48
the unsheltered can be served anywhere within the balance of state geography
43:54
in contrast to that rural the hud has defined what rural means for
44:00
the balance of state continuum so under the formula they gave us
44:05
the following counties are eligible for the no-fo services
44:11
so not that your agency has to be based in these counties but in order to have a project approved these services or the
44:18
project type that is administered must take place in these counties so bill knapp carol cheshire
44:25
coast grafton merrimack and sullivan
44:31
unlike the unsheltered definitions this project type you can serve any of
44:37
the definition of homelessness so category one two or four
44:43
so category three is specific it's very uh focused on unaccompanied youth and
44:48
other youth specific uh criteria that must be approved by hud we do not have
44:55
that approval by hood so at this point uh we cannot apply anyone to category
45:01
three so very important in that and as part of the supplemental
45:06
materials we will be sending out we will include hud's definition of homelessness and the record-keeping requirements
45:13
so we all are on the same page with what is included in that homeless definition
45:20
there are also new eligible costs on the rural side so again only in those
45:26
specific regions hud has allowed additional costs over and above what
45:31
traditionally is seen in this no full process because of the lack of infrastructure
45:37
and resources in these communities so some examples that you'll see coming out
45:42
in the document are things like emergency food and clothing capacity building for your agencies
45:48
up to six months of rent or utility arrears after two months of non-payment
45:54
emergency lodging hotel motel etc etc a lot of different components that are
46:00
not traditionally seen
46:06
so on the unsheltered side we will be graded if you will by hud as a
46:12
coc so no the unsheltered side is extremely competitive we are a small
46:19
state with not a lot of folks experiencing unsheltered homelessness relative to communities like new york
46:26
city and los angeles you know and some of the texas communities
46:32
so smaller communities smaller cocs are going to be extremely competitive in
46:38
this so all of this is a maybe on the unsheltered side but what's very important to know is
46:44
that on the rural side hud is grading if you will projects
46:50
so the individual projects applications that are submitted will be reviewed on a
46:55
hundred point scale importantly uh these are related you know this is not siloing uh the rural
47:03
and the unsheltered homelessness separately so fifty percent of your score in your project application is our
47:10
overall coc score followed by the project ranking within
47:16
the coc and then serving structurally disadvantaged areas so hud has defined this
47:23
and we'll be noting this in the priority tool i'll be talking about in just a moment
47:32
all right so requirements of all projects regardless of which bucket you're
47:37
applying for housing first you know we talk about this a lot but hud has come back very
47:43
strong in this snowfall that we are to be practicing housing first
47:48
fidelity to the model not just checking a box we know homelessness ends uh
47:53
homelessness is ended by housing and that is first and foremost our focus not requiring services or any preconditions
48:01
on that housing so you're going to see that a lot in our ranking tools because it is a high priority
48:07
and requirement the other thing that is important to
48:13
note for all applicants is that hud is assessing our coc response to
48:20
identifying sheltering and housing individuals and families experiencing homelessness with severe service needs
48:29
so we as a continuum will be attaching a plan
48:34
to our application to show the efforts that are being done and how they will contribute on going to
48:41
our response so when we started talking about this when we released this information we
48:47
were kind of flooded by you all saying our region's doing this we're already
48:52
working on this plan so for us it made sense rather than starting from the ground and putting
48:58
together a plan to source you all so we will be attending your local community meetings
49:05
to talk to you about what's already going on uh we know hud's priorities and we know
49:12
where they're looking for us to input information you can see here across the screen
49:18
but it just makes sense to utilize the expertise in our continuum to build
49:25
a comprehensive plan that is actually happening right so know that over the
49:30
next couple months we do have some time to build this thankfully on our end um
49:36
we will be reaching out to you all for that we will be gathering information and then submitting a plan to you all
49:42
for discussion about what is missing what else is needed etc
49:53
so with all of that in mind we are discussing how to prioritize
49:59
prioritize these projects so i want to echo christy and
50:05
melissa and melanie's comments about the scoring and the points again it's
50:11
the right thing to do however if we don't if we are not competitive as a coc we can't be
50:18
competitive for our projects and therefore we will not get the funding to support the projects to serve our folks
50:24
so in light of everything we just talked about hud's priorities
50:30
hearing from you all about what's missing in your communities our proposal for a prioritization of the
50:37
funding for this nofo is to have the highest ranking projects be
50:44
supportive services only permanent supportive housing followed by rapid rehousing and the transitional
50:51
rapid rehousing combination project so we this will be a vote that comes out
50:57
to you all after the meeting so please keep this in mind um and if we have time at the end maybe
51:04
we can open it up for discussions of any thoughts about that
51:11
so we will also have a scoring tool as chrissy just mentioned and went through
51:16
we want to mirror this process as much as possible with the regular nofo
51:21
because they're both coc funds they should talk to each other and everything
51:27
that melanie mentioned as priorities in that nofo are also priorities in this
51:32
nofo so in effort to not be confusing we want to keep it as consistent as possible that
51:39
way we as a ranking committee can be objective in these project review and applications and you know that we're
51:45
speaking the same language the only difference on the scoring tool
51:50
for this nofo will be the structurally disadvantaged regions you
51:58
will get two points and the plan for identifying housing or sheltering
52:05
individuals or families experiencing homelessness with severe service needs
52:11
that plan you will get up to five points so again those are requirements that hud
52:16
will be scoring us on so including it in the ranking
52:21
allows us to be the most competitive and choose projects that will get us
52:27
the highest ranking that we can with fingers crossed that we get the flipping
52:33
and we will be requiring a vote from you all on that as well
52:39
so that's all i have on the presentation
52:44
stop sharing so that was a lot of information we just
52:52
gave to all of you does anyone have any questions about what mandy just shared
52:58
and if you i'll put out there you can send us your questions after the fact too this is not the last time you get to
53:04
ask your questions um as i noted in the chat we can't talk about individual project applications we
53:11
do have to treat it um as a competition and maintain that some level of um
53:19
i don't know what the right word is confidentiality is not the right word but integrity to the competition but as far as like
53:25
priorities process um eligible activities
53:35
reactions so i thought ellen has a question in the chat about the timeline
53:42
so we are having the same timeline for the supplemental nofo on the project
53:48
application and all of the the nuts and bolts of the application process we are
53:54
giving additional time on the plan so that will be a longer process because of the priority hud is placed on that that
54:02
is 50 of our overall score so taking the time to really invest in that
54:07
again will make us the most competitive we can and we recognize this is a tight
54:13
turnaround um but in order to not double your admin to have you go to two
54:18
separate meetings for two separate no phones we just thought it was the most
54:23
the only way really to move forward we're also hearing staffing capacity is challenging so we're trying to meet
54:30
meet you where where we can uh with these tight timelines ellen there may be a little bit more
54:36
time for like um after we get through the review of the
54:43
project applications to clean it up and like you know make it pretty for for hud
54:50
um but we on top of the project priority listing this is for
54:56
the supplemental new uh competition we have to do a project priority list like we do for the regular no vote we have to
55:03
do a coc application which is a set of questions like we do for the regular nofo and on top of that we have to do a
55:09
15-page plan addressing unsheltered homelessness um so it's
55:16
it adds like an extra component that we don't normally have
55:21
um so we're some of it really is our capacity as well to to manage all of it
55:28
um and i think we acknowledge that
55:33
project applications may not be the strongest we've ever seen because we're not giving you enough time to do it
55:42
by investing in the plan our hope is that that score that 50 of your project
55:48
score will help you in get above other project types and other continuums if that makes sense
55:56
one other question that that standalone um thing that you could do in the
56:02
supplemental noco so those people would already be housed right it's providing supportive services to people who have
56:08
been housed in the last six months i think it said but then they wouldn't really be fitting that definition of
56:15
category one or category four so it could be persons experiencing
56:20
homelessness or up to six months um have been permanently housed not in a
56:26
permanent supportive housing or rapid rehousing so really we'd be looking for that on the rural side
56:32
um that that opens it up to that category to homeless as well
56:38
yeah and to clarify hud puts a lot of language in these nofos but they want people in literal
56:44
homelessness moving out of it so while they give us the world sometimes about what you can do the focus really would
56:51
be on what moving people out and then maybe following up with them so if you're going to design something think about
56:57
the front end versus the follow-on services that we know is a huge gap so
57:03
and final life go ahead ellen and then i see chris canada if we have questions about the special
57:10
nofo the extra no vote is our mandy are you the person who's the person we would ask about a particular project we want
57:16
to submit so i would send all communication to me and i will i will be
57:22
um directing traffic here just for ease of communication that way
57:28
you only have to remember one person um and i will put it out there
57:34
over the next two weeks if you email me you will get an out of office email
57:39
response um i am only working nopo i am taking vacation from the rest of my job i don't
57:46
know how that works um but my kids don't have child care for the next three weeks so i
57:51
i'm i'm multitasking um so what you may see is an out of office response and then an
57:58
email from me later in the day than usual but i i will be checking it um throughout the
58:04
work days and craig you had a question i just wanted to clarify uh so mandy the
58:09
rural has the most money but it's limited geographically to the six
58:16
counties and it is more inclusive of the definitions of
58:21
homelessness that we can serve with it and we're only going against other rural
58:27
communities so the pool that we're against is smaller as well in terms of
58:32
competition okay thank you
58:48
so tony i saw your question about the um the webinar i can forward the email from
58:55
the snaps program office but the best way to stay up to date with
59:00
any of the hud um webinars that come out is to sign up directly for their
59:06
their list serve so that you get the hud exchange emails and the snaps program
59:12
information emails um the webinar information did come from the snaps
59:18
email so i will forward that to everyone um i don't see it on the hud exchange yet
59:25
but the hud exchange has been a little bit slow to catch up this year
59:31
so when i when i go there i often am finding fy21 documents not the 22 but
59:37
um i do strongly encourage you to sign up for those snaps office emails
59:46
so we have one more minute scheduled for today any oh now it's at now we're 10 o'clock so
59:52
um what i'll say is we will send as much information out as we can on friday
59:57
as hud updates information we will send that out as well um i do plan to keep as of today anyway
1:00:05
i do plan to keep our september coc meetings scheduled just in case there are things that we need to address with
1:00:12
everyone there um if the time is getting tight and we don't
1:00:19
have time to do the meeting we'll communicate that out to everyone um
1:00:25
i think i think that's all i have for today i have a list of the voting items we'll be
1:00:30
sending out to everyone um i will do my best to really make it clear when i'm sending nobo
1:00:37
communication out um again if anyone's interested in being part of our
1:00:44
review team please email me um
1:00:50
and i think that's it for today i know that was a lot please don't hesitate to reach out with questions um
1:00:57
we are here for you the best as we can be there may be some hysterical laughter on this side as we
1:01:04
you know process the time frame it's better than crying so um
1:01:09
to stay with us and we'll get through all right thanks everyone we'll post the recording soon as well