Table of Content
Federal funds are also provided through Emergency Solutions Grant and Community Development Block Grant funds. The Coalition also works to source other federal, state, local, and private dollars to meet the needs of people and families experiencing homelessness. (i.e., action item and/or resolution) on the agenda will have the opportunity to speak during the course of the meeting, when it is time for the steering committee to deliberate on that item. Attendance in The Way Home Steering Committee meetings is now being required for CoC funded agencies and those wishing to compete in CoC funding competitions. CoC NOFO funded agencies are required to attend at-least 75% of CoC Steering Committee meetings.
A major function of the Coalition for the Homeless as lead agency to The Way Home is to prepare the annual application to the Department of Housing & Urban Development for Continuum of Care McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance funding. These resources are invaluable for providing housing and supportive services for people experiencing homelessness. These funds are made available through a national competition announced each year in HUD’s Notice of Funding Availability . Applications must demonstrate broad community participation and identify resources and gaps in the community’s approach to providing permanent housing and other critical services that address homelessness. Currently, more than 100 partners are collaborating through The Way Home to implement programs that are all based on a Housing First model. This means that people experiencing homelessness are moved into permanent housing as quickly as possible then provided with supportive services to help them remain stabilized in housing and improve their quality of life.
The Way Home Forums
The Way Home is the collaborative effort underway to prevent and end homelessness in Houston, Pasadena, Harris County, Fort Bend County, and Montgomery County, Texas. The Coalition for the Homeless serves as lead agency and HMIS lead agency to The Way Home. Click here to sign up for the monthly “The Way Home CoC Connection” e-newsletter to receive information on what’s happening in the Houston region’s homeless response system. The Way Home is the collaborative model to prevent and end homelessness in Houston, and throughout Harris, Fort Bend, and Montgomery County, Texas. Its goals are to understand the size and scope of the problem of homelessness in our community, and to design effective strategies and solutions to address the problem. If a specific resolution number is not cited, comments will be saved for the Open Public Comment portion of the meeting.
Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County, a 501c3, is the lead agency to The Way Home. Failure to complete this training will result in user account suspension until the training has been completed. The Coalition for the Homeless is the HMIS lead agency to The Way Home Continuum of Care. Will have an opportunity to speak during the Open Public Comment portion at the end of the meeting.
HMIS Forum
Members of the PIF include all homeless service provider agencies , and meetings are led by the Lead Agency and Steering Committee Provider Representatives. The Chair has the authority to open and close the public speaking portion of each action item on the agenda to ensure the meeting continues to move along at a reasonable pace. The Way Home is an affordable, transitional housing option for families in recovery from substance abuse. It is a place where families are nurtured, goals can be reached and the strength of self-sufficiency is gained through hard work, respect, and maintaining personal integrity. The Way Home also provides a playground area for children and their families, a community room for social gatherings and activities, a computer center, and on-site supportive services such as substance use disorder counseling, life skills classes, and support groups.
The updated Community Plan includes nine goals and forty strategies that build upon successful efforts to significantly reduce chronic homelessness, effectively end homelessness among Veterans and make major inroads in reducing family and youth homelessness. In either case, in their request, the speaker must inform the lead agency of which action item they wish to speak about by citing the resolution number, if applicable. Strategy oversight meetings will occur a few times a year and take a deeper dive into the data and work done at the client and programmatic level. As we look to begin the FY23 performance year, we are making a slight change to the required CoC participation meetings tracked for CoC competitions. Transitional housing is temporary housing for the working homeless population and is set up to transition their residents to permanent housing. The purpose of the HMIS forum is to inform the HMIS community about recent data trends, ongoing system-wide activities, and important developments regarding HMIS and our software ClientTrack.
Previous CoC Plans and Other Historic Documents
There is also a tenant council that represents the community in providing program feedback. HMIS allows the aggregation of client-level data across homeless service agencies to generate unduplicated counts and service patterns of clients accessing services. The Department of Housing & Urban Development’s National Data and Technical Standards establish baseline standards for participation, data collection, privacy, and security. The Homeless Management Information System is a computerized data collection tool specifically designed to capture client-level, system-wide information over time on the characteristics and services needs of men, women, and children experiencing homelessness. As lead agency to The Way Home, the Coalition hosts regular forums for CoC member agencies, HMIS participating agencies, and people with lived experience to share information and receive recommendations and input for the CoC Steering Committee.
The application will collect information on the applicant, the applicant's organization, programs, services, access, and more. The information provided may be made available as a resource within our CoC (e.g., on The Way Home website as part of a list of resources for people experiencing homelessness seeking assistance). The Way Home is made up of more than 100 partners from all areas of the community, including homeless service agencies, local governments, public housing authorities, the local Veterans Affairs office, and other nonprofits and community stakeholders. The partners of The Way Home work to make homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring in our region. The Way Home Provider Input Forum is a quarterly meeting in which provider agencies of The Way Home come together to address and discuss what's happening in the CoC provider community.
Transforming lives in a way that transforms our community
Homelessness is a complex issue and effective efforts to solve it require broad community participation. Planning and implementation activities are driven by a series of leadership, planning, and process work groups that operate in tandem to achieve shared relationships, shared thinking, shared action/testing, shared evaluation, and finally shared policy proposals. They also serve as lead agency driven, peer-supported performance management meetings for nearly every aspect of system performance. The Homeless Management Information System is a computerized data collection tool specifically designed to capture client-level, system-wide information over time on the characteristics and services needs of people experiencing homelessness. Among other duties, At-Large committee members should be able to help identify and leverage non-housing funds and expertise in the systems in which they work to help advance the region-wide effort to make homelessness rare, brief and nonrecurring.
The CoC Steering Committee has specific responsibilities as outlined by HUD in the CoC Interim Rule. The responsibilities required by the CoC by HUD in the Interim Rule and assigned to The CoC Steering Committee are outlined in The Way Home Charter.
Please plan to join us in January for The Way Home Steering Committee - Business meeting. The membership of the Steering Committee consists of up to 22 designated seats as outlined in The Way Home Charter. Each Steering Committee member must have the fiscal and program authority of the organization they represent. Since 2011, overall homelessness has decreased by 54% in Harris, Fort Bend, and Montgomery counties. Through faith-based ministry to build a strong foundation for individuals, families and the community.
In the past, the Provider Input Forum has been the necessary meeting for partners to attend for representation purposes. Additionally, agencies will only need to have one representative, either direct staff or leadership, attend. Please ensure that upon registration for the Steering Committee meeting, the person register with your full agency name to receive credit on attendance. While some were figuring out housing, others were addressing the emergency needs for social services, medicine, food, and clothing. This group, seeing the need beyond emergency relief, began calling themselves The Way Home. Business meetings occur throughout the year and focus on administrative tasks, funding updates, implementation updates, and system resolutions.
Speakers may also request to make a public comment during the meeting by using the Q&A feature or chat function in the virtual meeting software. Membership in the CoC ensures community wide commitment to preventing and ending homelessness and must represent a diverse body of stakeholders throughout the entire geographic area of the CoC. The intent is that the CoC be as inclusive as possible, to include the opinions and insights of various parties.
Those interested in becoming formally involved with The Way Home need to complete the partner application below. Each applicant should select a primary leadership contact to complete the membership update/application. The following questions were developed to provide the Coalition for the Homeless, the lead agency to The Way Home Continuum of Care , more information on organizations wishing to become members of The Way Home CoC and participate in membership . We exist to create pathways out of chronic homelessness through permanent, supportive housing in Lower Bucks County and beyond. I’m a recovering addict and I just got done dealing with DHS but lost my parental rights to my son.
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