Committee Minutes

City of Grand Forks
10-Year Plan to End Long Term Homelessness
Minutes from Meeting #1 - August 22, 2007; 2:00 – 4:00 p.m.
City Council Chambers – Grand Forks City Hall

Mayor Brown opened the meeting by welcoming everyone and thanking them for their dedication to ending long-term homelessness. Mayor Brown reiterated the message in his recent State of the City Address that, as a community, we must focus on the whole continuum of housing, making sure that there are safe and affordable housing opportunities for everyone, and most especially for those who are homeless. He added that homelessness is an issue that can and must be addressed and the goal of this group is to put together a plan to pool our resources and strategies. Introductions of everyone present were made (see attached list).

Peggy Kurtz introduced Mary Magnusson, Executive Director of the North Dakota Coalition for Homeless People. Mary distributed a handout (see attached) with a glossary of terms and said that long-term homelessness and chronic homelessness are almost interchangeable but have important differences. Chronic homelessness includes single adults while long-term includes single adults and families (with or without children). She said that in 2006, North Dakota’s emergency shelters were full an unprecedented 95% of the year. The numbers of people being turned away because of full shelters and no available housing vouchers is the highest that agencies have ever seen, as is the number of homeless families. All across the state, rental housing is unaffordable, unacceptable, or just plain non-existent. The public cost of long-term homelessness keeps getting higher. She stated studies have shown that there are three subgroups of homelessness - 80% who are temporarily homeless; 10% who are episodically homeless; and 10% who are chronically or long-term homeless. It’s this last group that consumes more than 50% of the resources in any community. Mary told the group that the failure to have a plan is a plan to fail. Successful plans have the following in common:

1. Ownership – from both providers and local government
2. Public/private partnerships - stakeholders coordinating together in strategic planning
3. Consumer driven strategies
4. Written similar to a business plan, establishing baselines and benchmarks, practices, and budgets
5. Cost benefit analysis – used to reveal the savings to the community by implementing the plan
6. Prevention/Intervention – strategies to close the front door to homelessness and open the back door to escape from homelessness
7. New ideas, what works – implementing innovative ideas and “best practices” for permanent supportive housing such as Housing First
8. Assign accountability – for implementing strategies
9. Defining traditional and non-traditional funding sources
10. Update on ongoing basis – have a procedure in place to monitor and update the strategies on an ongoing basis

Mary reviewed the Point in Time process, saying that it began in North Dakota about five years ago as a HUD requirement but has grown since that time. Surveys of homeless people are taken by agencies across the state on one day in January of each year, then the numbers are analyzed by DH Research in Fargo. From this data, we can better see who is homeless, what their issues are, and how better to serve them. Mary added, for every adult you count as homeless in the Point In Time survey, there is one more “hidden” adult; for every child counted, there are 2.7 more “hidden”. Mary said that it’s important to note that the estimations on numbers of homeless have been fairly accurate when compared to actual numbers.

Peggy Kurtz introduced Jessica Thomasson, former City of Fargo Senior Planner. Jessica stated that cost benefit analysis may be the “new compassion”, adding that there is a drive at the State level to put together accurate costs of homelessness and thereby reveal the dollar savings to communities when long-term homelessness is addressed. She said, in order to address long term homelessness, we need to know the problem, close the front door, open the back door, and build the needed infrastructure. She cautioned that ending long-term homelessness is not the same as ending poverty; it’s a very focused look at the small percentage of homeless people that fit into the long term or chronic category; which is: homeless for a year or more, or more than three times in four years. Since new funding sources may be scarce, Jessica said we need to think of how to use old money or resources in a new way.

Peggy Kurtz, of the Office of Urban Development, gave a PowerPoint presentation on homeless facts and figures (see attached). Throughout the presentation, she encouraged those present to “shout it out”, or speak up as what they are seeing in their respective service areas. The following is a summary of comments made during the presentation:

Add/Revise List of Inventory of Services and Housing:
· Dave Sena (Northlands Rescue Mission) – add Mission to inventory of Transportation services
· Gerri Anderson (NEHSC) - Duane Dornheim House has 9 beds
· Include Ryan House (1 bedroom apts)

JoAnn Brundin (St. Vincent de Paul)
· need second chance housing or housing of last resort
· how do we quantify spending to prevent homelessness versus intervening after someone is homeless

Deb Johnson (Prairie Harvest Human Services)
· is a growing problem of transitional youth with SMI (serious mental illness)
· could use this plan as an educational tool for the community
· hidden homeless are out there, is a misconception that it’s not a problem
· need to describe the importance of partnerships that blend together to make programs work
· losing one piece of the money can effective “kill” a service

Sue Shirek (Police Dept.)
· concern for families drifting back and forth from reservation to city; child’s school and family life is interrupted; not stable. No permanent place to call home.

Discussion on question of what are unmet needs:
· Permanent supportive housing for families
· Second chance housing – for people with criminal records, bad credit, bad rental history, etc. (JoAnn Brundin, St. Vincent de Paul)
· Aging population (Gerri Anderson, NEHSC)
· Single fathers with custody (Karen Schelinder, RRVCA)
· Accessible housing
· Resources for utilities, deposits, etc.
· SRO’s & support for children transitioning into adulthood – prevent before becoming homeless
· Brain injury population (Gerri Anderson, NEHSC)
· Housing for sex offenders

Pat Berger (United Way)
· community perceives social service providers as duplicating services, which is a fallacy (duplication is not the same as redundancy)
· need inventory of other (non-mainstream) funding sources; identify local resources

Keith Gilleshammer
· each agency should identify the service they provide, what they see as shortcomings in those services, and how to fill them
· think about the ACT model – team of medical, psychiatry, counseling, etc., that goes to people in need of services, instead of having people come to the various appointments
· HUD’s definition of chronically homeless is a barrier
· High counts are not equal to high costs – keep these separate

Terri Keehr (GF Public Health)
· how many at Mission are transient homeless? Dave Sena replied about 50%
· Need housing, but also supportive services

Questions brought up:
· How to identify people as homeless if they don’t see themselves as homeless?
· How many people are on the brink of homelessness – one rent payment away from losing their housing?
· How many dollars now are going into housing?
· How many people would be homeless without the services in place today?

Peggy thanked everyone for attending and contributing to the discussion. The next meeting will be on Thursday, September 20th, starting at 2:00 p.m., again in the Council Chambers at City Hall. The meeting adjourned at 4:00 p.m.
Respectfully submitted by Peggy Kurtz, Office of Urban Development