CoC Strategic Work Plan Online Learning Clinic Rapidly House Youth

Have you had a chance to review our Continuum of Care Strategic Work Plan? If you want to be part of the solution, in making homelessness rare, brief and nonrecurring in Dallas and Collin Counties, we encourage you to carefully review the plan. Whether you are a professional or lay leader, a case manager or a volunteer, a program director or an advocate, there is bound to be something you can help with.

Over the next few weeks, we will be posting a series of blog posts, which we are calling the CoC Strategic Work Plan Online Learning Clinic. Each post will drill down into another aspect of the plan, to encourage you to get involved, and help us make measurable progress in ending homelessness. To maximize your learning and your ability to make an impact, we recommend you carefully read the entire first page now. Then review the entire page or pages that the individual blog post pertains to, as you read each post.

 

We will start with Goal V on page 6: Rapidly House Youth. We have already made great progress on the first action item: Develop youth housing and services resource guide/web based/smart device application. Our Resource Development VISTA, Victoria Jackson, completed our Youth Services Directory, we posted it on our website, and she sent a hard copy to each middle and high school in Dallas and Collin Counties. She is currently working on the web based version.

Victoria Jackson

MDHA’s Resource Development VISTA

We are already planning for how we can make progress on the seventh action item: Develop more accurate methods to conduct census of homeless youth. Stay tuned over the next few months, especially during our See Me Now event, which focuses on youth homelessness, for more information on how you can help us with just that.

One of the most important things to remember about this specific item, the entire goal, and Goal IV on page 5, is that homelessness, specifically when it refers to youth and children, has more than one meaning. Therefore, counting youth and children experiencing homelessness will produce more than one number.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) defines homelessness more narrowly, while the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) defines homelessness more expansively. HUD’s more narrow definition is due to the legislators’ desire to more carefully target scarce funding for homeless housing programs. DOE’s more expansive definition is due to the legislators’ desire to err on the side of caution and provide services in the educational environment to a broader set of students.

The method of counting itself is also different, for much the same rationales, under each definition. We conduct an annual homeless count, and track numbers throughout the year through our Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), to arrive at the most accurate numbers we can, under the HUD definition. School districts ask families to self-report whether they are homeless, typically during school registration, and by aggregating these self-reports, school districts arrive at the numbers under the DOE definition. 

Mark Pierce

 Dallas ISD District Homeless Liaison (Courtesy of the Dallas Morning News)

Therefore, it is quite normal to see school district numbers, such as those discussed by Mark Pierce, Dallas ISD District Homeless Liaison and MDHA board member, in this excellent article from earlier this year, that dwarf the numbers we report. It’s not because we disagree; it’s because we are talking about different definitions. Indeed, that is why, once again, this action item, this entire goal and Goal IV are so important. Along with our counterparts in other American communities, our CoC is committed, to continuing to build and develop a homeless response system that serves the unique and different needs of homeless youth and children, whatever definition they fall under.

To that end, among other things, we, as a community, must do what is called for in the fourth, fifth and sixth action items under this goal, namely, gather and report ISD homeless youth data, expand youth drop-in centers, and link these to the rest of the homeless response system. This way, working hand in hand with our partners, area school districts, family and youth homeless services and shelters, as well as mainstream services, we can and will strike a blow against family and youth homelessness, in all its manifestations.