2017 Bringing It Home Conference Workshops & Presentations

Workshop Session I
Public Housing Aithority (PHA) Partnerships Access to affordable housing is crucial to ending homelessness. Local public housing authorities are the biggest housing resource for homeless service systems. Learn from PHA leadership and homeless agencies about how to engage PHAs and establish partnerships that increase access to affordable housing. Romonda Gaston
 
David Nash
 

Shirley Wong

Fair Housing for Shelters and Transitional Housing Shelters, transitional housing, and other facility-based projects must comply with the Fair Housing Law. This session will provide an overview of how fair housing impacts program design and policy.

Jeffrey Dillman
Progress Report on Ending Homelessness in NC Communities across North Carolina have implemented significant system changes in order to end homelessness. This session will provide an update on the state’s overall progress on ending homelessness and take a deeper dive into one community’s data.

Courtney Morton
Transitions to Community Living and Olmstead Update Staff from the NC DHHS and NC Housing Finance Agency will provide updates on the Transitions to Community Living program and how these efforts impact housing and services resources in the state. Topics will include updates on Medicaid funding for tenancy support services and the development of a state permanent supportive housing plan. Panelists will share innovations they have learned, including partnering with homeless service agencies to provide housing navigation services.

Jessa Johnson and Jennifer Olson
Workshop Session II
Addressing Gaps Through Lowering Barriers How can my program serve you? Programs are being called on to ensure that individuals with high needs and barriers are being served. Learn how two organizations retooled their programs to serve higher-barrier households, including rapidly re-housing households with zero income.

Branden Lewis
 
Deronda Metz
Ending Veteran Homelessness: Lessons Learned North Carolina has a lot to celebrate around ending veteran homelessness! Forsyth and Cumberland counties have ended veteran homelessness, Durham has ended chronic veteran homelessness, and the NC Operation Home Task Force is committed to ending veteran homelessness statewide. Come hear practical lessons to implement in your community to end veteran homelessness and how to translate these lessons to other subpopulations.

Terry Allebaugh
 
Shanna Reece
 
Tiana Terry
Homeless System Overview Homeless providers work in a world of acronyms, definitions, and ever-evolving best practices and guidance. Come to this session to get caught up on the latest housing lingo and to learn what is on the horizon for our homeless services systems. This session is designed for anyone interested in learning more about the current vision for a system redesign and how individual programs fit in to the larger system design.

Denise Neunaber
Program Design: RRH Performance Benchmarks and Program Standards In 2016, federal partners (the National Alliance to End Homelessness, VA, HUD, USICH, and Abt Associates) released the Rapid Re-Housing (RRH) Performance Benchmarks and Program Standards. The first of its kind, these national standards, informed by the core components of rapid re-housing and promising practices from the field, provide the foundation for ensuring your RRH project meets design and performance standards. Learn how to use the performance benchmarks to evaluate RRH projects as a provider and/or funder to ensure your programs are operating with all of the necessary elements!

Kristi Schulenberg
Resource Round-Up This session will provide an overview of a range of resources your community can use to end homelessness, such as the Supportive Housing Development Program, the Targeted/Key program, HOME, Community Development Block grant (CDBG), Temporary Aid for Needy Families (TANF), Social Security disability benefits, and the Federal Home Loan Bank.

Gwen Belcredi


Stephanie Williams

Workshop Session III
Evaluating Programs to Increase Impact With the limited resources available, CoCs, other funders, and agencies must evaluate their housing investments to ensure that they are making the biggest impact while meeting the needs of those who are homeless in their communities. This session will explore how programs can use outcome data, client feedback, and community data to evaluate program performance.

Sarah Kahn
Fair Housing for Working with Landlords An understanding of Fair Housing Law is essential when working with landlords. This session will cover what to look out for when assisting individuals and families in obtaining and maintaining housing. While many caseworkers have heard about reasonable accomodations, few feel comfortable submitting a request for reasonable accomodation to a property manager or know what to expect if they do. This session will provide an overview of the reasonable accomodation process and practical tips for caseworkers.

Bill Rowe
Non-Profit Capacity Building for Organizations Homeless services providers span the spectrum from small volunteer-driven organizations in rural areas to large organizations that provide standardized services across multiple counties and states. Regardless of your organization’s size, this workshop will take you through a step-by-step process of examining your organization's capacity through the lens of four core domains: Leadership Capacity, Adaptive Capacity, Management Capacity, and Operational Capacity. At the end of this workshop, you will have tools to complete an organizational assessment and to develop an action plan for strengthening your organization's impact on homelessness in your community.

Beth Bordeaux
Rapid Re-Housing as an Innovation Shelters and rapid re-housing programs make natural partners. Shelters can decrease their length of stay by running their own rapid re-housing program or partnering with another organization's program. By becoming housing-focused, shelters are better able to meet the needs of those experiencing housing crises. Learn from North Carolina programs that have developed these partnerships and increased their programs’ ability to serve their community.

Kathy Bragg
 
Lisa Rowe
Legislative Update and Opportunities for Action Presenters will review the potential impact of the President’s proposed budget on homeless services and housing programs, provide an overview of the federal and state funding landscape, and present strategies for how you can influence decisions about funding.

Ehren Dohler and Samuel Gunter
Workshop Session IV
Diversion Creating a diversion program can help lighten the pressure put on emergency shelters, allowing the system and the household seeking help to achieve better outcomes. This session will explore how diversion can prevent households from becoming homeless by creating a different path back to housing. Flexible options are key, including mediation, financial assistance, and short-term services.

Tommy Bednar
 
Kristi Schulenberg
PSH Key Elements & Housing First Permanent supportive housing (PSH) is an effective tool for housing people with disabling conditions. As communities look to PSH providers to serve higher-need populations, many programs in NC want to improve program design and performance. This session will review key elements of the PSH model as described by SAMHSA's evidence-based toolkit and how to increase effectiveness by using a housing first strategy.

Brian Alexander
 
Talaika Goss-Williams
System Performance Measures New System Performance Measures allow communities to view their progress towards ending homelessness from a wider system level. Learn the basics of these measures, what they mean for funding, and how they can be used to drive program and system decisions.

Denise Neunaber
Trauma-Informed Care

Many homeless individuals and families have experienced traumatic life events prior to entering our programs. As homeless providers, it is our goal to ensure our practices and policies stem from a strengths-based perspective and do not re-victimize those we serve. This session wil review key startegies and tools for shelters and housing programs to ensure our staff and agencies are providing trauma-informed care. 

 

Lindsay Caldwell and Jennifer Tisdale
Workshop Session V
Coordinated Entry Coordinated assessment, coordinated entry, coordinated intake-- it goes by many names and means big change for your community. Come to hear about recent updates to HUD requirements and how two CoCs have embraced the challenge of coordinating entry into their homeless service systems.

Ehren Dohler
Progressive Engagement

How much assistance is enough? How much is too much? How can we help households stabilize and serve more households overall by giving flexible levels of assistance? This session will delve into the promising practice of progressive engagement.

Kristi Schulenberg
Redesigning Shelter Providing emergency shelter is an essential component of a crisis response system. Come learn innovative ideas on how to integrate housing first and rapid re-housing approaches into shelter operations and services. This workshop will cover redesigning services and selecting new measures to gauge impact. Liz Classen-Kelly, Vickie Craighead-Davis, and Stephanie Shatto
The Landlord Pitch

Permanent housing programs depend on engaging landlords. This session will explore how to engage and recruit local landlords to support your rapid re-housing and permanent supportive housing projects.Topics also include risk mitigation funds, landlord events, and landlord retention.

Mary Gaertner
 
Jeffrey Rawlings