Author: Gerry McCafferty

Zero 2016: All Hands on Deck – national phone call this Friday at noon

The national Zero: 2016 team will be hosting an All Hands on Deck call THIS FRIDAY, July 22 at 12pm ET/9am PT. During this call, Z16 will share what’s next for the movement and we’ll hear from Lindsay Knotts, Policy Director at USICH on the recently released federal Benchmark and Criteria for Ending Chronic Homelessness.

HOW TO JOIN – Register to attend here – You will then be emailed a link to access the webinar – Use the call-in number & meeting room code below to access audio during the webinar Audio conference line: (800) 832-0736 Conference room number: *1413051#

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Northeast States Convening on Chronic Homelessness, Opioid Abuse, and Supportive Housing

The Corporation for Supportive Housing and The Boston Foundation hosted a convening of stakeholders from northeast states on July 19 in a presentation which made clear the links between chronic homelessness and opioid abuse, as well as promoting a key response/intervention: permanent supportive housing.

Presenters shared this startling statistic:

Homeless adults between the ages of 25 and 44 in New England are nine times more likely to die from an overdose than those with stable housing.

Take-aways from the convening included:

  • To make headway on responding to substance abuse, we must treat it as a medical issue, not a moral failing, and our responses must be data-driven and evidence-based.
  • Medication-assisted treatment (MAT) is an evidence-based modality for opiate addiction, and must be one of the tools we use for successful treatment.
  • Peers/sober coaches are valuable to promote and support recovery.
  • Permanent, safe, and affordable housing is a part of treatment.
  • There is no magic to residential treatment in itself, so it is important to consider the need for affordable and safe housing plus effective treatment (including intensive outpatient programs) as one way to expand availability of treatment.

For more information, see the Boston Globe’s coverage of the convening: Housing is seen as the missing link in the opioid crisis.

FY17 EOHHS funding: good news!

The CoC learned today that, for FY17, the state has $2 million to fund homeless youth programs originally funded in FY16, and the Governor will be filing a supplemental budget seeking $1 million for the consortiuum/crisis services originally funded in FY16. This is good news for our CoC, which received both these types of funding in FY16.

The FY 17 funds will go to Gandara for homeless youth services, and to Catholic Charities and HAP Housing for crisis services: prevention/rapid rehousing for individuals and families.

Request for Proposals for New Project Sponsor for CoC Project

The Springfield-Hampden Continuum of Care has issued an RFP for New Project Sponsor for Permanent Supportive Housing for Chronically Homeless Families. The RFP seeks a new operator for an existing project that provides permanent supportive housing to eight families who have been chronically homeless.

There will be a bidders conference on Wednesday, July 27, 2016 at 11 am. Applications are due August 5, 2016, at 4 pm, at the Springfield Office of Housing, 1600 E. Columbus Ave., Springfield. Please see the RFP for additional information about this funding opportunity.

Request for Proposals for FY16 CoC Competition: Seeking New and Renewal Projects

The Springfield-Hampden Continuum of Care has released the FY16 Request for Proposals for New and Renewal CoC Projects.

The CoC will hold a bidders conference on Wednesday, July 27, 2016 at 10 am at the City of Springfield Office of Housing, 1600 E. Columbus Ave., Springfield. Completed applications are due by August 12, 2016 at 4:00 p.m. Please see the RFP for complete instructions.

CoC FY16 Competition Process

On Friday, July 15, 2016, the Springfield-Hampden County Board of Directors met and approved the CoC Application Selection and Ranking Process 2016. This document provides guidance, timeframe, and scoring rubric for the CoC FY16 funding competition.

The CoC will release the Request for Proposals (RFP) for the competition on July 18, and the deadline for new and renewal applications is August 12, 2016.

Welcome to the new site!

Hello Springfield-Hampden County CoC members!

In an effort to improve our local communication network, we have started a new website/blog. There are a few reasons for this, including the fact that we have not been very good at maintaining the additions and subtractions of an email distribution list for our CoC news. We often use the blog of the Western Massachusetts Network to End Homelessness, but sometimes that tool broadcasts our local news far more widely that makes sense or is necessary.

This site will allow us to have a more local focus, and will also serve as a single place to post news, documents, and data related to Zero 2016, coordinated entry, the annual planning process, the CoC competition, ESG announcements, the Point-in-Time count, and HMIS news and information.

The best part about this site is that you decide whether or not you want to receive our news. Everyone can opt in or out as they wish. This keeps our distribution list current, without relying on me to remember who is in or out. To get an email every time there’s news, click on the Follow this Blog site in the column on the right, and provide your email address.  Presto–you are subscribed!

For now, the site is very basic, but we will be adding content over the next weeks. As the site become more fully developed, we can work together to think about how we can maximize our internal and external communication using this as our base.

Thanks for following along.