Published: Sunday, November 27, 2011, 5:00 AM

By Stephanie Barry, The Republican The Republican

WEST SPRINGFIELD – The citrus-colored façade with the enclosed swimming pool is misleading.

The five-story Quality Inn on Riverdale Street, flanked by billboards and endless traffic, has ceased to be a stopover for tourists and business travelers passing through Western Massachusetts.

The lobby is swarmed at certain hours with mothers and their children, one of several de facto homeless shelters in desperate times for families – and the state.

The Quality Inn stands as a static, sad existence for dozens of mothers who say they’ve been promised more permanent housing by public officials, but now fear they may be stranded as funding for a component of the state’s HomeBASE program ran out.

“I know it’s better than being on the streets. I know that,” says 23-year-old Samantha Claudio. “But, it’s still unsafe for children. There are gang fights. People are selling drugs. I feel uncomfortable here and I don’t want to raise my children in these hallways. So I spend my days when I’m not going to school filling out applications (for employment and assistance). I didn’t think it would be this long.”

After the death of a baby, Ethan Luce, at the West Springfield Clarion Hotel and the severe abuse of two other children staying at a Westfield hotel in 2010, the numbers of homeless families living in motels dropped to around 830 after a onetime peak of 1,079. But, despite calls for legislative change, that number has grown again, with Chicopee and Holyoke topping the list of area communities facing high volumes of homeless families living at hotels.

Legislators are still wrangling with the administration and advocates to find out where to tap money for homeless housing and how best it can be spent, since the need is even more overwhelming than anyone knew.

Click here to read the full article.

EOHHS FY13 Public Budget Hearings- Dec 2nd and 9th – New Location!

The Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS) will be conducting a public hearing on the upcoming Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 budget. Secretary JudyAnn Bigby, M.D., and the Assistant Secretaries at EOHHS are looking forward to hearing the views of members of the community regarding the agencies under their purview.
Friday, December 9, 2011 Agganis Arena at Boston University
Francis D. Burke Club Room
925 Commonwealth Avenue Boston, MA 02215-1204
2:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
The hearing will be tentatively divided as follows:

2:00 to 3:00 Disabilities and Community Services – MCDHH, MCB, MRC, DDS
3:00 to 4:00 Health Services – DMH, DPH, DHCFP, MassHealth
4:00 to 5:00 Veterans, Elder Affairs, Soldiers’ Homes
5:00 to 6:00 Children, Youth and Families – DCF, DYS, ORI, DTA

Friday, December 2, 2011 Department of Mental Health Western Massachusetts Area Office
Northampton Haskell Building
1 Prince Street
Northampton, MA 01061
3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.

The hearing will be tentatively divided as follows:

3:00 to 3:45 Disabilities & Community Services – MCDHH, MCB, MRC, DDS
3:45 to 4:30 Health Services – DMH, DPH, DHCFP, MassHealth
4:30 to 5:15 Veterans, Elder Affairs, Soldiers’ Homes
5:15 to 6:00 Children, Youth and Families – DCF, DYS, ORI, DTA

Written testimony is also strongly encouraged and may be mailed to:
Secretary JudyAnn Bigby, EOHHS
One Ashburton Place, Room 1109, Boston, MA 02108
Or emailed to: eohhshearings@massmail.state.ma.us

The Boston Globe: State Falls Short on Affordable Housing

State falls short on affordable housing

Construction drops over past five years

By Peter Schworm Globe Staff

November 21, 2011

Construction of affordable housing units has stalled across the state over the last five years, and dropped sharply in many Boston suburbs, even as demand soars during a time of rapidly rising need.

Despite a state law that pushes communities to keep 10 percent of housing priced below market rates, Massachusetts’ affordable housing stock fell to 9.1 percent this year, according to state figures. That is down from 9.3 percent in 2006 after steady gains in the five years before that, the figures show.

Levels dropped or stayed the same in more than one hundred communities in the Boston area.

Housing advocates say the growing ranks of people who cannot afford to live in such an expensive region have led to dire shortages and that in some communities more than 100 people enter lotteries for a single subsidized apartment.

“The demand is phenomenal,’’ said Joseph Kriesberg, president of the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations, a coalition of community housing groups. “These are working families who can’t afford the market rates.’’

Affordable housing has suffered from the same calamities that have sapped the economy generally since the collapse of 2008, developers say. Financing has dried up and some government funding is more scarce.

“It’s like a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances,’’ said Lisa Alberghini, president of the Planning Office for Urban Affairs, a nonprofit affordable housing developer. “We’re at a point where all these things are coming to a head, and we’re facing a really grim situation.

Click here to access the full article.

In response to this article Homes for Families‘ Executive Director Libby Hayes issued a letter highlighting the impact of this affordable housing shortfall on homeless families. Click here to access her response.

Amy Schectman of Jewish Community Housing for the Elderly also issued a response to this piece which highlights the affordable housing challenge for seniors in the Commonwealth.

Innovation in the Spotlight: Progressive Engagement

Innovation in the Spotlight: Progressive Engagement

Progressive Engagement is a nationally recognized best practice in addressing homelessness, which provides customized levels of assistance to families and preserves the most expensive interventions for households with the most severe barriers to housing success. Progressive Engagement is a strategy to enable service delivery systems to effectively target resources.

Progressive Engagement refers to a strategy of starting with a small amount of assistance for a large group of people and then adding more assistance as needed. The National Alliance to End Homelessness has featured Progressive Engagement as an important strategy in the national implementation of the HEARTH Act. Based on the National Alliance presentation “The HEARTH Academy System Assessment and Design” from October 2010, we have highlighted key components of Progressive Engagement that could be transferable to the Massachusetts system within the constructs of Emergency Assistance and HomeBASE.

Below is an example of how Progressive Engagement has worked in practice.

For every household which becomes homeless in the community, the system responds with a basic level of re-housing assistance – Rapid Re-Housing 1- which could include:

List of rental vacancies,
Tips about how to find an apartment,
Help negotiating with landlords or friends or family members a person could live with, and
Some financial assistance for application fees, deposits, etc.

If it becomes clear that the household will not exit homelessness with only this much assistance, then additional assistance is provided, which might include short-term rental assistance and case management—Rapid Re-Housing 2.

At this point, a household could be re-housed, but the job may not be over.

If, at the end of a predetermined period of time, it is clear that the family is going to be evicted, then additional assistance can be provided, such as a medium-term or long-term rental assistance and more intensive case management and supportive services.

At some point, it may become clear that the person will never be able to achieve even modest housing stability, in which case you may want to provide a housing voucher (if the issue is primarily economic) or you may look at permanent supportive housing (if the person would not be able to maintain housing even with a voucher).

In a Progressive Engagement approach, the varying levels of rapid re-housing assistance are provided by the same program or agency, which eliminates the need for families to change programs and respects the importance of the family- case manager relationship.

The benefits of the Progressive Engagement model include:

Time to assess the families’ strengths and challenges – you don’t have to be able to predict beforehand how much assistance the family will need to be re-housed.
Scarce shelter and re-housing resources can be stretched to serve more families.
No disruption for the family. Families are not moving from program to program, or even using different caseworkers. From their perspective, they stay a short period of time in shelter, and then are assisted to move into permanent housing. Their level of assistance may be increased or decreased, but their living situation is stable.

This approach also has challenges. It means that as a community, we have to find ways to make HomeBASE and our other rental assistance programs fit around families in our homelessness system. For example, we would need to set aside permanent rental subsidies for people that need them. This also requires that the caseworkers are trained and can recognize when a person has achieved enough stability or when they will need further assistance.

Example of Progressive Engagement:

Progressive Engagement and Our System:

HomeBASE should be flexible enough to offer the Commonwealth the ability to structure rental assistance to meet the needs of families facing homelessness. The practice of Progressive Engagement employs ongoing assessment of household needs to determine the types and levels of rental assistance needed. Progressive Engagement is a model that should be explored and components of the system should be incorporated into the implementation of a reformed HomeBASE and Emergency Assistance system.

The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness identified this Progressive Engagement as a best practice in their federal strategic plan to end homelessness – Opening Doors. Progressive Engagement has been successfully implemented in communities across the country including Salt Lake City, Utah. Click here to access a presentation on the use of Progressive Engagement in Salt Lake City.

Impact of Budget on HEARTH and Next Steps

On Thursday, Congress provided final approval to H.R. 2112, which provides fiscal year (FY) 2012 funding for HUD programs, including McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Grants. President Obama is expected to sign the legislation into law shortly. The legislation provides $1.901 billion for HUD’s McKinney-Vento programs – the same amount as in FY 2011.

So, where does that leave us?

HEARTH Implementation

FY 2011. Now that HUD has issued the interim rule for the Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG) program, a second allocation of funding will soon be available to communities for homelessness prevention and rapid re-housing. To help communities understand the new ESG rule and think about how to use HPRP lessons to best implement the ESG provisions, the Alliance will host a webinar on Tuesday, November 29 at 1 pm ET. To register for this webinar, click here.

FY 2012. In the report accompanying the FY 2012 legislation Congress just passed, it very clearly indicates that Congress wants HEARTH implementation to advance as far as possible this year. The bill includes at least $250 million for the new ESG program. Of this, at least $90 million is expected to go toward the newly-eligible activities of prevention and rapid re-housing. Congress also provided sufficient resources to fund all Continuum of Care renewals, as well as $7 million for the national homeless data analysis project. In its accompanying report, Congress directed HUD to put any additional funding toward the ESG and rural housing stability programs. In addition, Congress urged HUD to publish interim CoC HEARTH Act regulations this fiscal year. To read the full report language, please look at the attached document.

It is still too early to know exactly how much funding this will result in for the ESG program or what the rural housing stability program will look like. It is also unclear whether HUD will run a competition this year. We will keep you updated as we learn more in the coming months about what this means for HEARTH implementation.

Overall Budget Picture

On Friday, Alliance Vice President Steve Berg wrote a blog reflecting on current funding for HUD affordable housing and homelessness programs, and where we go from here. The overall budget constraints are expected to be even tighter over the next few years, especially if the Super-Committee process either fails to produce legislation, or produces legislation that further impacts programs for low-income Americans.

We’re going through a tough period now, and it will require us, working together, to continue to do remarkable things. But remarkable things are the stock in trade for the community of people around the country working to end homelessness. As a result of your efforts over the past year with the new Congress, new decisionmakers are increasingly getting the message that money spent on homelessness produces tangible and profound results, moving toward solutions to a problem that very few people, only a few years ago, thought could be solved. Our commitment to achieving better results every year, and to sharing those results with policymakers, has given us the ability to generate support for homelessness programs in any political or fiscal environment.

**From the National Alliance to End Homelessness**

Workshop: Sustaining your Workforce Program

The Commonwealth Workforce Coalition invites you to Sustaining Your Workforce Program

Thursday, December 15, 2011

9:30 AM to 3:30 PM

Community Teamwork, Inc. in Lowell

In tough economic times, sustaining your workforce program is certainly about funding – but given the competition for scarce funds, it’s also about having strong and lasting capacity to deliver results to participants and employers and funding sources. This workshop will help you assess the strength of your organization in sustaining your workforce programs from a capacity standpoint. Click here for more information.

This training is provided for you at no cost but online registration is required by December 8, 2011. Please follow the registration instructions on second page of attached flyer.

If you cannot open the attached document, please contact Dilia L. Ramirez.

HUD Releases Interim ESG Regulations and Final Homeless Definition

In response to the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing Act of 2009 (HEARTH Act), enacted into law on May 20, 2009, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) published two sets of regulations: 1) interim regulations on the Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG) Program with conforming amendments to the Consolidated Plan regulations, and 2) final regulations on the definition of homelessness used for HUD’s homeless assistance grant programs.

Implementing the New ESG Program & the New Definition

HUD provided an initial allocation for FY2011 ESG grantees earlier this year to allow grantees to renew funding of existing ESG programs. A second FY2011 ESG allocation was released in conjunction with the interim regulations which will allow grantees to provide prevention and rapid re-housing assistance with ESG funds. The second allocation of FY2011 funds is subject to the new ESG regulations.

After the public comment period and revision to the interim regulations, HUD will issue the final ESG regulations. The new definition of homelessness also goes into effect 30 days after its publication in the Federal Register. This means the second phase of ESG funding, as well as the CoC grants awarded under the 2011 Continuum of care competition will be required to use the new definition.

Key Resources

HUD has been working on a number of new technical assistance and training resources to get grantees and partners up to speed on the new requirements.

Be sure to join HUD for its Thursday, November 17 webinar series, Ready, SET, Go at 3:30 ET. HUD is presenting an introduction to the ESG program, including information on the purpose of the program, eligible costs, program requirements, and grant administration. The webinar, which will be delivered a second time on Thursday, is intended to provide viewers with the “big picture,” while future webinars will focus on specific elements of the new regulation. To register for future HUD’s webinars, visit HUD’s Homelessness Resource Exchange.
Sign up for HUD’s Emergency Solutions Grants Program listserv, which will be used to notify ESG recipients and subrecipients, CoC leaders, field office staff, and other interested parties about policy changes and clarifications, program management tools, and other items of general interest regarding HUD’s Emergency Solutions Grants Program and the new definition. To join the listserv, click here or go to HUD’s Homelessness Resource Exchange (HRE) and click “Listservs” in the banner.

** Information from the US Interagency Council on Homelessness**

New York Times: After Months of Making Do, a Mother Is Ready to Once Again Make a Home

November 13, 2011

After Months of Making Do, a Mother Is Ready to Once Again Make a Home

By MARVIN ANDERSON

Elizabeth Johnson-McKinney surprised her son, Xavier, when she told him they were moving to a bigger house.

“I told my son a lie,” she said. “I couldn’t tell him the reality.”

Ms. Johnson-McKinney — homeless, hungry and one month pregnant — was actually moving her family to a HELP USA shelter in Brooklyn.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she recalled. That first night in the shelter, she sat next to her husband, James McKinney, 30, watching her two sleeping children — Destiny Johnson, 3, and Xavier Johnson, 6 — and rummaging through their belongings, reliving their eviction. In April, Ms. Johnson-McKinney, 25, had lost her full-time job as a case manager for Community Access, a social services organization. Her $40,000 salary had been the family’s main source of income.

“We were one paycheck away from being homeless,” she said. “We never thought this would happen to us.”

In May, the financial strain become so overwhelming that they could not afford the rent, and they were forced to leave their apartment in Queens, where they had lived for three years. At the shelter, every possession they owned had to fit into eight bins, the allotted limit. The bulk of their photographs and furniture was trashed or sold as the family began a new life with practically nothing.

“Most people would have given up,” said Fia Sarmi, a caseworker at Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens who helped the family. But Ms. Johnson-McKinney said she had a mission.

“This isn’t our home,” she recalled telling her family at the shelter. “Don’t get comfortable. We’re getting out.”

Every day, she left the shelter — infested with roaches and water bugs, she said, and in need of repair — to take Xavier to school before searching for jobs. The employment hunt turned desperate, she said, because she feared her family members were becoming like some of her neighbors, adjusting to life in the shelter instead of trying to leave.

“We didn’t want that,” she said. “My goal was to get us back to where we were — at home, eating together like a family.”

Click here to read the full article.

Advocacy Alert: Supportive Housing Bill

Below is an advocacy alert from CHAPA:

Dear friends and colleagues,

Please call your State Representative today and ask them to take action to support An Act Relative to Community Housing and Services filed by Representative Kevin Honan to increase the Commonwealth’s focus on supportive housing.

Permanent Supportive Housing reduces homelessness by providing families and indivudals with an affordable home that includes supports and services to enable these residents to maintain safe and stable housing, and avoid the costs of eviction, shelter, poorer health and related healthcare costs. It also enables many seniors and persons with disabilities to maintain independence and avoid more costly institutional living.

An Act Relative to Community Housing and Services, H. 368/S. 1967 will lead to 1,000 new supportive housing opportunities over the next three years and expand the housing opportunities many Commonwealth residents need to be independent and successful. The bill focuses on promoting better coordination among the various agencies involved in housing and services to eliminate silos and deploy existing resources most effectively.

Please ask your Representative to contact Speaker DeLeo and Chairman Dempsey today to indicate strong support for passing H. 368/S. 1967 before the House recesses on November 16th. The legislation passed the Senate unanimously in July and is before the House Committee on Ways and Means. If you’ve already contacted your Representative on this issue, please call back and check in to see if they have a status update.

The bill text is available at: http://www.malegislature.gov/Bills/187/Senate/S01967

Visit http://www.malegislature.gov/People/Search to find contact information for your Representative. Thank you and please don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions.

Click here to access the Supportive Housing Fact Sheet.

Sincerely,

Sean Caron

Director of Public Policy

CHAPA

Introduction to Workforce Development Webinar Available Online

The Commonwealth Workforce Coalition (CWC) has posted their Introduction to Workforce Development Webinar online. In this webinar workforce development expert Geoff Bean walks participants through the complex world of workforce development funding and systems. This is an excellent introduction for those who are new to the field of workforce development and can provide tools for case managers and program staff working with at-risk and homeless households.

The webinar is presented by the Commonwealth Workforce Coalition (CWC) and Commonwealth Corporation and was funded by the Strengthening Communities Fund from the US Dept of Health and Human Services.

The Webinar is presented in five chronological parts of approximately nine minute segments.

Click here to access all segments of the webinar.

One Family Inc. Blog

Welcome to the One Family Right Resources Blog!

Monthly Archives: November 2011

The Spingfeild Republican: Thousands of Massachusetts Homeless Families Still Hotel-Based