Agenda

Sunday, July 16, 2023
3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. | Name Badge Pick-up
Monday, July 17, 2023
8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. | Name Badge Pick-up 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | Pre-Conference Sessions

Bring on the Joy! Leadership Skills to Change the Narrative and Build Will for the Future We Want
You’re here because you know now is our moment to make sure everyone has home. But too many of the people you need to succeed either don’t show up or are actively working against you. Join TheCaseMade in a joy-filled session where we’ll create a vision for an abundant future and teach you some of the will-building skills you need to get people on that journey with you.
Starting Out in the Homelessness Field
Have you only recently begun to work in the field of homelessness, or is this your first national conference? If so, this preconference session will provide you a broad overview of data on homelessness, an introduction to the major interventions and their effectiveness, and an overview of the importance of a community-wide, systemic response to end homelessness.
Alliance Conference 101
This session is designed for first-time conference attendees. Join Alliance staff, experienced conference attendees, and other first-time attendees to get a jumpstart on the conference. Come hear an informal presentation on how you can maximize your time at the conference by taking advantage of conference tracks, different types of sessions, and networking opportunities. Meet other attendees to increase your peer learning opportunities.
Housing First: What Fidelity to the Model Actually Looks Like
Although there is vast evidence of the successes of Housing First, it is increasingly under attack due to misunderstanding of the approach and a lack of recognition of the resources that would be needed to truly bring Housing First to scale. This special “precon” will feature experts from homelessness services sector and the federal government who will offer insight on what Housing First actually means, identify challenges with implementing Housing First with fidelity, and engage in discussion with the session participants what resources and commitments would be required to bring the model to scale.
Advocacy 101: Preparing for 2023 Capitol Hill Day
So much is at stake this year as Congress considers budget caps and spending cuts across a range of domestic programs. This session will help you prepare for Capitol Hill Day and advocate effectively for the people we serve – including talking points, handout materials, and the calendar of meetings that we’ve confirmed with your legislators. Capitol Hill Day is scheduled for the conference’s third day and we need your participation. Learn what will happen in a Hill visit and how to best advocate for this year’s homelessness priorities.
Revisiting Rapid Re-Housing: Strengthening Effective Practices
Decreases in CARES Act funding, coupled with high staff turnover, has created challenges in RRH implementation. This pre-con will offer an opportunity to learn about how to help new and existing RRH programs strenghen the core components of RRH in your systems: finding housing, paying for housing, and staying in housing. Understand approaches that work despite a difficult housing market and discuss lessons learned from implementation across service sectors.
Reimagining our Approaches to Sheltering People
The guidance of people with lived expertise makes it clear that we must reimagine our approaches to sheltering people. Framework for an Equitable Homelessness Response partners have developed recommendations for how communities can pursue such transformation. This includes creating interim housing and sheltering options that are responsive to the needs and recommendations of people experiencing homelessness, with a sustained focus on racial justice and equity. Participants will explore these approaches, learn from organizations about improvements and outcomes they have achieved, and identify steps forward to take in their own communities and programs.
What’s Rest Got to Do With It? Community Care for Racial Equity
If you’ve been feeling the disconnect between your organization’s goals for racial equity and what feels possible in the current environment, join us to be seen, connect, and learn with others in a community space.

Attendees must RSVP for this Pre-conference session. Space is limited.

Tribal Collaborative Forum
Join the Minnesota Tribal Collaborative for a pre-conference forum to learn how a collaborative of six Minnesota tribal nations combine sovereignty, collaboration and data to successfully pursue policy and fundraising goals aimed at preventing and ending homelessness in tribal communities.
12:15 p.m. – 12:45 p.m. | State Prep Sessions
Georgia Alabama New Mexico West Virginia Delaware Oklahoma Wisconsin Nebraska Missouri South Carolina Oregon Washington, D.C.
12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. | Lunch on Own 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. | Opening Plenary 2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. | Peer Group Meetings
Lived Expertise
TBA.
Racial Equity
TBA.
Rural
TBA.
Frontline Staff
TBA.
Local Nonprofit Program Directors and Managers
TBA.
Local Nonprofit Executive Leadership
TBA.
Continuum of Care Leadership and Staff
TBA.
State and Local Government Leadership and Staff
TBA.
National-Level Partners
TBA.
4:00 p.m. – 5:15 p.m. | Workshops I
1.01 Emerging Research: What We're Learning and How We're Learning It
Research on homelessness continues to grow, informing policy and practice. This session will feature a selection of recent studies that are helping to shape the conversation around topics such as unsheltered homelessness and older adults. Panelists will discuss their findings but also how their research designs are being informed by people with lived experience.
1.02 Preventing Family Homelessness: What We Know and What We Can Do
What do we know about preventing families from experiencing homelessness? This workshop will examine the research and explore how local data can reveal opportunities to shape impactful interventions. This workshop will also explore examples of innovative partnerships to reach families at heightened risk of homelessness. Participants will also discuss what is required to assist newly arrived migrant families so they never have to experience lengthy shelter stays or homeless episodes.
1.03 Assisting Older Adults in Homelessness Systems
The traditional way of providing services for people experiencing homelessness must be adapted for an aging population. This means Continuums of Care may need to make modifications to their coordinated entry process. Additionally, shelter staff must often utilize a different set of skills and modify shelter environments and program elements. Further, those who participate in housing programs like permanent supportive housing and Rapid Re-Housing typically need more intensive case management support to age in place effectively. Join us as this workshop highlights practices and partnerships that can support the needs of older adults and those living with other complex care needs.
1.04 Creating Sacred Spaces and Solutions to Chronic Homelessness in the Urban Native American Community
Chief Seattle Club has served the unhoused urban Native American community in Seattle, WA for 53 years. In this session, Chief Seattle Club’s leadership will share history regarding the causes of consistently high rates of houselessness for Native American and Alaska Native people in urban settings. This session will also explore how Chief Seattle Club’s unique model of culturally grounded and community responsive services can serve as a guide to best meet the needs of unhoused Native American & Alaska Native community members, as well as chronically homeless individuals.
1.05 Converging Crises: Informed Solutions to Homelessness and Immigration in New York City
In this session, participants will learn about the interconnectedness of immigration and homelessness in New York City; an innovative legal clinic developed as a solution for asylum-seeking families experiencing homelessness; and the use of trauma-informed care while working with asylum-seeking families with children and refugees. Speakers will then lead an interactive conversation and activity about providing trauma-informed direct-service work with asylum seekers and refugees.
1.06 Transform the Way you Engage Youth with Lived Expertise!
This session is filled with innovative ways for organizations to transform their work in accessing and authentically engaging with youth and young adults with lived expertise of homelessness and other system involvement. This work isn’t new, but it continues to be a vital part of what we are all doing. We know that there should be “nothing about us without us.” In order to transform these youth-serving systems, we need to partner with those closest to the problem.
Transformation Talks
TT1 A Tapestry of Programs Helping to End Homelessness in Grand Prairie, Texas
Programs in Grand Prairie, TX are like a tapestry that is woven together to help our friends exit homelessness. This session will discuss how delivering food to camps, removing barriers to exiting homelessness, and keeping documents safe can all contribute to ending homelessness.
TT2 Addressing Barriers and Creating Partnerships to House Survivors of Gender-Based Violence
Survivors of gender-based violence (GBV) have unique housing needs and vulnerabilities that can make it difficult to find and maintain safe housing. This talk will highlight how to use federal housing protections to support survivors in accessing and maintaining housing, share advocacy tips regarding using preferencing for GBV in housing, and explore how to address concerns that come up for housing providers unfamiliar with the dynamics of GBV
TT3 Are Consumer Choice and Flexible Services the Key to Housing Stability?
Hear two stories of consumers who were successfully served using a Housing First model. Both chose different paths to housing stability, but both were served in a way that honors consumer choice and self-determination. These stories clearly illustrate the connection between housing and mental health. In this talk, hear how close coordination and collaboration between experts in both areas results in a stable place from which consumers can pursue their personal goals and improve their quality of life
TT4 Austin's Storage Solutions for Individuals Experiencing Homelessness
Access to storage is one of the most critical services for individuals experiencing homelessness: to ensure dignity, avoid discrimination, and have the flexibility to engage in the homeless services continuum. This session will cover research of best practices of other cities, co-creation of Austin’s storage program with people with lived experience with homelessness, and operational guidance about running a welcoming, low-barrier storage program for people experiencing homelessness.
TT5 Beyond Trauma-Informed Care: Using Trauma Research to Challenge Biases
This talk will focus on challenging biases by understanding how chronic stress impacts decision making and motivation. It will use qualitative research conducted with youth and young adults experiencing homelessness to illustrate how the chronic stress of homelessness results in individuals decisions being survival focused. This stress results in individuals prioritizing immediate needs, not necessarily long term ones. The talk will also illustrate how human connection and feeling cared about are basic needs that need to be met.
TT6 Building Dignity in the Homeless Community
This presentation will give attendees a look at the real life of the unhoused and is a great chance to become more of a peer than a first responder. This will encourage attendees to relate as a human being who is dealing with a human being, straight across the table. Del Seymour, creator of Code Tenderloin in San Francisco, has worked in this field for over 20 years. This session will encourage self-reflection and encourage providers to grow.
5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. | State Prep Sessions
California Florida Texas New York Massachusetts Pennsylvania Maryland Michigan Illinois North Carolina New Jersey Utah Arizona
5:45 p.m. – 7:15 p.m. | Meet & Mingle Reception 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. | Documentary Film Screening of 'Lift: A Journey from Homelessness to the Ballet Stage'
Tuesday, July 18, 2023
7:00 a.m. – 7:45 a.m. | Yoga & Seated Meditation 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. | Breakfast (including Peer Group discussion rooms) 8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. | Name Badge Pick-up 9:30 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. | Workshops II
2.01 Crafting Strategies to Reduce Unsheltered Homelessness Through Housing: What Are We Learning?
Between 2020 and 2022, unsheltered homelessness increased in 36 states. Systems are grappling with how to respond to this crisis through reorienting systems, adapting policies and procedures, and scaling up staffing and housing solutions. Hear from two communities – one urban, one rural – that designed a systematic framework for their response to unsheltered homelessness. They will discuss the processes they undertook to design their response, and share early successes and lessons learned from their experience.
2.02 Getting New Dedicated Housing Units Online FAST!
What are localities doing to quickly bring new dedicated units online to provide permanent housing for people who have experienced homelessness? This workshop will examine lessons from hotel and motel acquisition and conversion efforts, including what it takes to attract the necessary funding, build political support, and overcome community opposition. Presenters will also examine strategies to capture dormant and underutilized permanent housing units, including properties in Public Housing Authority portfolios.
2.03 Innovations in Outreach Efforts for Unsheltered Populations in Rural Communities
Nearly a fifth of all people experiencing unsheltered homelessness do so in largely rural Continuums of Care. Despite data collection challenges; limited staff or provider capacity; and a lack of overall federal, state, and local resources; rural communities are creating innovative strategies and adaptations to reach people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. Hear from experts about rural-specific policy issues, implementation challenges, and the unique ways some communities are tackling unsheltered homelessness.
2.04 How to Build a Strong Framework for State and Local Interagency Councils on Homelessness
State and local interagency councils on homelessness can support the alignment of programs, policies, and supports to drive progress towards preventing and ending homelessness. Whether new or veteran to world of ICHs, join us to understand the framework, partnership, and results of these councils.
2.05 Beyond Housing First: Ultra-Low Barrier Permanent Supportive Housing
The session will briefly outline two models that exemplify ultra-low barrier permanent supportive housing (PSH) and how/why each was created. Participants will learn how to build broad, cross-sector community collaborations to meet the needs of the longest stayers in homelessness. This session will discuss by-name list efforts, community decision making for prioritizing referrals, collaborative funding applications, and community design for housing the most challenging people. Participants will also develop a broader understanding of financing tools for acquisition, rehabilitation, and critical service provision for this type of innovative housing.
2.06 How to Use Compensation Practices to Build the Power of People with Lived Experience
Join this session as presenters illustrate key elements of persons with lived experience compensation methods in real time, deliver best practices and guidance on the implementation of a meaningful and customized model, and address measurable implications in meeting provider population needs to promote equity and systemic change. This engaging dialogue will focus on compensation structure and value systems based on these categories: collaboration, consistency, flexibility, transparency, and abundance.
Transformation Talks
TT7 Building Support for Housing First Through Empathy and Shared Experience
While many of us have witnessed the benefit of Housing First in our communities, others with decision making authority may not understand it. Often our work depends on packaging convincing arguments to compel different stakeholders to support or fund our projects. The constant undercurrent of that action is influenced by personal life experience that creates subconscious bias and adversely impacts support of our work. What is the great neutralizer to subconscious bias? Building empathy! Come hear about promoting equity, rebutting criminalization, and building political will.
TT8 Create the Space: Empowering People With Lived Expertise in the Workplace
Attendees will learn about best practices on how to engage, support, and retain salaried employees and consultants with lived expertise of homelessness. These approaches include offering comprehensive training, equitable pay, and other resources (like professional development) to help people with lived expertise thrive in the work environment. The goal is to create a work culture where people with lived expertise are empowered to show up as their full authentic selves.
TT9 Creating and Managing Successful State and Local Advocacy Coalitions
In recent years, ‘collaboration’ and ‘advocacy’ have been at the top of the list for buzzwords used when discussing the housing & homelessness crisis in the United States. But how do you actually pull off policy-oriented coalitions in a way that is sustainable and meaningful? Instead of providing you with a vague step-by-step process that makes coalition building sound easier than it is, this presentation will tell the story of the real-life, voluntary, statewide Hoosier Housing Needs Coalition.
TT10 Creative Continuum of Care Funding: An Incubator for Federal Funding
In this session, learn how to utilize Continuum of Care (CoC) funding and municipal partnerships to create an incubator for local nonprofits getting started in Rapid Re-Housing. Come learn how to provide a safe space for organizations in your community to get their feet wet in federal funding while maximizing community capacity, filling funding gaps, and increasing services beyond the usual suspects.
TT11 Exploring Upstream Work to Prevent Family Homelessness
Homelessness has significant impacts on families, particularly children. Mary’s Place has been exploring ways to reduce trauma through homelessness prevention. In this talk, we will highlight the work underway with Notre Dame’s Lab for Economic Opportunity to understand the most effective model for preventing family homelessness. We will share about our project, the research design and the models that are being tested as well as an overview of what we hope to achieve with the study results.
TT12 From Advocacy to Action: Utilizing Legislation to Address Homelessness
Recent legislative victories significantly increased New York City-administered voucher access and mandated clinical mental health services in all family shelters. Using these examples, this presentation will explore how coalition building, press, and direct lobbying guided by lived experience led to legislative success. Participants should walk away with an understanding of successful strategies and best practices to advocate for systemic change in their communities.
11:15 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. | Plenary with Lunch 1:30 p.m. – 2:15 p.m. | Spotlight Sessions I
S1.01 Combatting the Criminalization of People Experiencing Homelessness
Cities and states across the nation are ramping up policies aimed at arresting, ticketing, and forcibly displacing people who are experiencing homelessness. One example is a coordinated effort by the Cicero Institute to enact criminalization laws in numerous state legislatures. Learn from advocates and providers who have successfully pushed back against these negative proposals, as well as strategies to counter ongoing threats.
S1.02 Exactly What is Housing Problem-Solving and Why Does It Even Matter?
Housing problem-solving is a person-centered, housing-focused approach to explore creative, safe, and cost-effective solutions to quickly resolve a housing crisis. As a philosophy and approach, housing problem-solving differs from historically marginalizing practices: it focuses on authentically partnering with people to resolve their housing crisis in an empowering way. Hear from communities who have implemented problem-solving as a system-wide approach, how they navigated buy-in challenges, and what their success to date is.
S1.03 Federal Policy Discussion: Understanding Short-Term Threats and Long-Term Opportunities
Explore the dangerous federal policy proposals that could threaten efforts to prevent and end homelessness. This session will shed light on why it’s important to weigh in and speak up about the harm that these proposals would cause. Hear from Alliance policy experts about opportunities from Congress and the Administration that would have the greatest impact on our national efforts to end homelessness.
S1.04 Living Under the Rainbow: A Spotlight on Harm Reduction and Serving LGBTQ Youth in Hawaii
This session will provide a snapshot into Hawaii’s LGBTQ community, the intersection of homelessness, and the importance of utilizing harm reduction principles in services. The session will include brief insight into the role of mahu in Hawaii society, an overview of Hawaii Health & Harm Reduction Center’s innovative programing that serves LGBTQ youth community experiencing homelessness, and the personal story from a member of the community. This interactive session will also feature a Q&A segment.
S1.05 Day Shelters as Rural Navigation Centers
Rural and geographically diverse CoCs face unique challenges in addressing unsheltered homelessness. Join Flood Ministries of Kern County, CA, for lessons learned from piloting two-day shelters to provide the region’s unsheltered population with basic services, housing navigation, and connections to coordinated entry and other services as needed. Learn how this model could be incorporated in other communities.
S1.06 Engaging Faith Communities Without Compromising Best Practices
Faith based organizations and individuals hold enormous influence over homeless services as service providers, funders, donors, and key community stakeholders. However, some can be resistant to best practices around harm reduction, housing first, and trauma-informed care. In this session, we will discuss ways to strengthen relationships with religious communities to promote, rather than sacrifice, best practices.
Transformation Talks
TT13 From the Streets to Street Outreach: A Peer's Journey to Serving Others
Joey Nieves experienced a personal transformation that took him from early childhood trauma, incarceration, addiction, and homelessness to leading a street outreach program that assists more than 600 unsheltered people a year. Using his lived experience and training as a Certified Recovery Peer Specialist in South Florida, an area hardest hit by the opioid epidemic, Joey will share insights and experiences from the front lines of street outreach that will inform and inspire audience members.
TT14 Her Voice Can’t Be Silenced
When Sketch Oppie was homeless, she had no voice and didn’t even feel like a human being. It took a village to help her be human again. Come hear how she’s found a seat at the table by participating in her city’s Housing and Community Development Commission and has challenged the way the system works. Hear how she went from having no voice to being the voice of change.
TT15 Housing Justice Requires Amplifying, Not Weaponizing, #BlackGirlMagic!
Black Girl Magic is a movement celebrating the achievements, resilience, and power of Black Women. But #BGM is weaponized when unrealistic expectations are placed on Black Women, when challenges are dismissed, and we drown in performative allyship or faux inclusivity. Organizations, especially those with missions rooted in justice and equity, must recognize that #BGM still requires seeing Black Women, acknowledging structural racism, and the need for intentional efforts to amplify, not weaponize, #BGM.
TT16 How to Improve Your Homelessness System as a Unified Funding Agency
TBA
TT17 How Can Community Clinics Improve Access to Housing Services?
Health care organizations are well-positioned to connect patients experiencing homelessness with housing partners. But the approach matters. For example, should an intervention leverage the organization’s comprehensive data or in-person contact? This presentation describes the reach and effectiveness of strategies implemented in a rapid rehousing program at Kaiser Permanente and discusses key lessons learned, including resources and settings for success.
TT18 Increasing Community Outreach Through Podcasting
It is estimated that 1 out of 5 internet users listen to podcasts, and engagement in this medium is only expected to increase in the next decade. This session provides the fundamentals of podcasting, from equipment and editing, to posting and promotion. It will also discuss how to create content that is engaging and relevant for your target audience. Finally, it will examine how producing content through this medium can serve as an effective form of outreach to your clients and donors.
2:45 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. | Spotlight Sessions II
S2.01 Compassionate Encampment Management and Resolution
What are the key principles for creating compassionate and humane strategies for responsing to and resolving encampments? Learn how advocates and allies are educating policymakers, members of the media, and neighbors to alleviate the pressure clean encampments. Hear about what’s working, what’s not, and what your community can do.
S2.02 Preventing and Ending Homelessness for Youth Exiting Foster Care
The Foster Youth to Independence (aka FYI) voucher program provides dedicated housing assistance to youth exiting foster care who are at-risk of homelessness or have become homeless after exiting care. Learn how your community can facilitate access to this critical resource to support youth’s transition to stable housing and reduce inflow into your system.
S2.03 Activating Housing Partners: How to Get PHAs and Developers Invested in Your System
This session will explore how to partner with agencies that bring the housing resources to the table, including public housing authorities and affordable housing developers. Speakers will explore successful examples of collaboration between housers and homeless system partners, lessons for how to build partnerships and consensus between these entities, and strategies for approaching challenging areas of divergence.
S2.04 Are We On Our Way to Housing Justice?
Be a part of a community conversation about what it means to work toward a future that is rooted in housing justice. Join us to explore topics as expansive as our dreams of decommodifying housing and making it a human right, and as concrete as what we can do now to shift our most basic activities to advance equity in housing opportunities, overcome NIMBYism, and get us to a place of justice.
S2.05 Domestic Violence Housing First
The Domestic Violence Housing First (DVHF) approach focuses on getting survivors into stable housing as quickly as possible, and providing the necessary support as they rebuild their lives. This session will review the primary components of DVHF; the impact of flexible funds; the benefits of survivor-centered advocacy; and the importance of community engagement. Presenters will provide an overview of key findings, lessons learned, and longitudinal evaluation from DVHF pilot and demonstration projects.
S2.06 Incorporating Housing & Homelessness into Your Emergency Response Model
Emergency Management Departments (EMD) are in a constant state of readiness, prepared to activate quickly to coordinate resources and create situational awareness among response and local agencies as emergencies arise. Learn how Riverside County CA’s EMD incorporated a Housing and Homelessness Branch into its model and significantly increased shelter capacity and care to unsheltered residents in all recovery efforts.
Transformation Talks
TT19 Is There Really an App for That?
Outreach teams need the tools to swiftly and effectively respond to non-emergency reports about unhoused individuals. Join this talk to learn how the County of San Mateo developed an award-winning Geographical Information System (GIS) solution that revolutionized the way response requests related to homelessness are processed and tracked. Learn how this innovation streamlines workflow to outreach staff and provides a centralized data repository with visual reports.
TT20 Partnering with Higher Education on Student Homelessness
As communities increasingly come to understand the scope of student homelessness, learn how Service Navigators partnered with a large community college district to serve this often-overlooked population. Presenters will share how this partnership helped boost access to food, housing services, and other basic needs not only for traditional community college students, but also for older adult vocational learners.
TT21 Promoting Whole-Person Fulfillment in Rehousing and Reducing Recidivism
Human needs are dynamic, overlapping, and depend on geography and culture. Yet, our current service system is mostly focused on housing and rarely addresses the other essential aspects of the human condition. Learn about opportunities to support personal growth and healthy, supportive social interactions that can help prevent returns to homelessness.
TT22 Rural Success: Reducing Unsheltered Homelessness
Serving unsheltered youth in a rural environment isn’t easy. Yet, one small rural community’s Rapid Re-Housing program is achieving an 85% to 90% success rate maintaining housing after 6 months in permanent housing. The session will share what was done, how attendees can implement a similar model, and the importance of building relationships and trust with the client to produce lasting empowerment.
TT23 Safe Parking: Means to Engage and House Individuals Residing in Vehicles
Several communities are evaluating Safe Parking programs, but best practices are still emerging. Learn how the City of Santa Rosa’s Safe Parking program has created an effective alternative to congregate shelter for people residing in vehicles. This program has lessened the impacts of vehicle encampments on the community, connected residents with wrap-around services, and achieved permanent housing placements to 20 people in its first year.
TT24 Spotlighting New Housing-Insecure Groups: Refugees and Newcomers
For most of resettlement history, refugees and newcomers had a straightforward entry point into long-term housing. In recent years several variables, from affordable housing shortages to rising rents nationwide, have left refugees stranded in temporary housing or homeless. To achieve housing equity, advocates must be conscious of this new housing insecure subgroup. Learn more about this growing subset of the housing insecure population from Church World Services’ Refugee Housing Solutions project.
3:45 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. | Workshops III
3.01 Homeless Services Reimagined: Sharing Power with People Most Impacted for Transformation
Structures and power dynamics often perpetuate racial disparities in homelessness and other sectors. But the tide is shifting on historical power imbalances in efforts to address homelessness. Explore how system leaders are learning to share power and co-design transformed systems in partnership with people who have lived expertise of homelessness.
3.02 Thinking Outside the Box: Creating Opportunities Amidst the Affordable Housing Crisis
As the housing affordability gap continues to widen, it has become more challenging to quickly connect people exiting homelessness into permanent housing. Learn about creative strategies to overcome this crisis, such as master-leasing, shared housing and room rentals, and boarding houses.
3.03 So, Where Are The Landlords?
Finding housing remains critical to our work, yet communities are reeling from the current housing shortage and skyrocketing rental costs following the pandemic. Despite these challenges, many communities have continued to have success in building their landlord portfolios through creative engagement strategies. Come learn how to adopt them in your community.
3.04 When Finding a Job is the Hardest Job
Employment is a key determinant of housing security. However, it remains challening to secure high enough wages to afford rent and other essentials is, particularly for those emerging from homelessness. How are homeless services organizations successfully connecting people to long-term employment opportunities? How do they use programs to help people return to work after extended unemployment? Learn from representatives of homeless services organizations with successful employment programs what their biggest challenges are and what they need from their partners to bolster their efforts.
3.05 But There’s No Housing! Engaging Landlords and Acquiring Units in 2023
This session will bring together providers across the country to discuss partnering with the private housing market to rehouse people and finding innovative solutions. In Los Angeles County, we cannot get enough partners in the private market: subsidies are underutilized, landlords are more risk averse than ever before post-COVID, and employees are burning out. Speakers from Union Station Homeless Services hope to spark a lively, productive discussion on this relevant topic.
3.06 Data Driven Approach to Triaging at Coordinated Entry
Continuums of Care are struggling to replace the VI-SPDAT with more equitable assessment approaches. This session is intended as a sharing and learning session to help Continuums of Care CoCs think through how to validate their replacement tools so that they don’t end up with an approach that is no better than what they had before.
Transformation Talks
TT25 Strategies to Offset Decreased Autonomy When Using Master Leasing
Master leasing can be used to engage rental market property owners to prevent and end homelessness. However, the leasing strategy inherently decreases autonomy for tenants with subleases. Join this talk to learn strategies to increase self-determination and offset decreased autonomy, and, to sample community indicators to measure impact for minoritized communities.
TT26 The Complexities, Burdens, and Blessings of Homelessness
Let’s GET PERSONAL! This session highlights many of the complexities, burdens and blessings that I experienced as I lived through homelessness. I discuss the racial inequities faced by African-Americans and the disabled, overcoming the stereotypes and the many faces of homelessness. It is my hope that attendees will emerge with a stronger commitment to the importance of the work that they do in the fight not only to end homelessness, but to empower both those needing assistance and each other.
5:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. | HUD SNAPS Q&A 5:15 p.m. – 5:45 p.m. | State Prep Sessions
Virginia Washington Minnesota Ohio Louisiana Maine Nevada Connecticut Tennessee Iowa Colorado Rhode Island
6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. | Game Night & Karaoke
Wednesday, July 19, 2023
7:00 a.m. – 7:45 a.m. | Yoga & Seated Meditation 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. | Breakfast 8:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. | Name Badge Pick-up 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. | Round Table Discussions 9:30 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. | Workshops IV
4.01 Equitable Organizations Require Leaders of Color, Too!
Our homeless response won’t be equitable unless our organizations model equity. This must include representation and belonging in leadership so that our sector does not lose the talents and insights of those who have dedicated their careers to this mission, or next generation of leaders. Let’s talk about strategies to recruit, promote, and elevate Asian American, Black, Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian, American Indian, and Hispanic/Latino(a) individuals in management, organizational leadership, and system leadership.
4.02 Utilizing Medicaid to Meet Healthcare and Housing-Related Social Needs
As health care organizations increasingly seek ways to address housing insecurity as a means to improve health outcomes and reduce costs, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have outlined how states may address social determinants of health through flexibilities available under current law. This includes housing-related services and supports. This workshop will cover the healthcare needs and barriers of individuals experiencing homelessness and options available through Medicaid to address their care and housing-related social needs.
4.03 Revisiting How We Do Coordinated Entry: Recent and Emerging Research
For about a decade, Coordinated Entry has been a critical component of homeless services systems. Over that time, various conversations have emerged about the benefits and challenges associated with implementation. This session will highlight recent and emerging research in the space. Insights will focus on such areas as the value of collaboration within CE, case conferencing, and transitioning from the VI-SPDAT.
4.04 In Search of Harmony: Building Systems to Improve Data Quality and Utilization
Data is critical to informing the work of homeless response systems and policymakers alike. Learn about frameworks and best practices for linking individual-level data within states and across systems to improve data quality and utilization and better serve people experiencing homelessness.
4.05 Adequately Funding Services that Allow Supportive Housing Tenants to Thrive
Decades of data shows supportive housing allows tenants to thrive. Yet, our industry is struggling: tenants often don’t know their service providers; journalists often feature projects in decline; policymakers are moving people into institutional settings as quick solutions. This session will consider a culprit: the absence of adequately-funded services designed to serve highly marginalized populations. How much should it cost to fund evidence-based services? Selected experts and the audience will discuss.
4.06 The Path to Recovery: Overdose Prevention in Permanent Supportive Housing
With the rising number of fatal drug overdoses occurring while using alone or at home, it is imperative that the homeless services field innovate tailored solutions that incorporate overdose prevention into permanent supportive housing. This panel presentation and Q&A will explore various research, tools, and practices (such as naloxone distribution programs and overdose prevention rooms) to help save lives and ensure that integration of overdose prevention will transition from novelty to best practice.
Transformation Talks
TT27 The Invisible Crisis: Identifying and Addressing Rural Homelessness
Rural homelessness rises from the same issues that lead to and sustain homelessness everywhere: poverty, trauma, behavioral health disorders, domestic violence, and lack of hope. But identification is complicated, due to wide-open geographies, lack of reliable transportation, deeply rooted stigma, and pride. Coupled with lack of rental housing and services, the issue becomes difficult to address. The session will provide tips and examples for seeing and responding to rural homeless.
TT28 Transitional Housing for Youth: What Have We Learned?
Transitional housing programs for youth experiencing homelessness have been operating for over 30 years but with little evidence on how these programs affect youth outcomes. This talk will synthesize findings on youth outcomes and program experiences from a wave of recent evaluations, including outcomes after youth leave programs. Differences in experiences across racial, ethnic, and gender identities; innovative uses of administrative data; and further research needs will be discussed.
TT29 Value Added: Making Lived Experience Work
The courage to come forward with accepting my own journey has opened doors to incorporate my own lived experience into the development and review of programs serving those experiencing homelessness. Come listen to my path from career beginnings, to encountering homelessness, becoming a homeless services provider, and securing a Lived Experience Analyst position. Personal and program lessons will be shared, from contemplating disclosure, to being valued for the experience I bring to help others.
TT30 What Makes a Well-Coordinated System?
Based on lessons learned from over 200 interviews from homeless service and partner systems across California, this session will highlight what makes a system well-coordinated.
TT31 What’s the link? Housing First, COVID-19, and Drug Use Cessation Among People Who Inject Drugs
How did Housing First impact substance use among people experiencing homelessness who inject drugs during the pandemic? In this talk, powerful case examples from a qualitative study will be presented, demonstrating the crucial link between housing instability and risky substance use. Several participants reported decreased drug use as a direct result of access to secure housing, highlighting the effectiveness of the Housing First model, particularly during a period of social disruption.
TT32 Words Matter: What We Say and How We Say it is Key to Ending Homelessness
What we say and how we say it is key to ending homelessness. The language we use to communicate about homelessness, services, and inviting our neighbors to envision and collaborate on behalf of a future in which everyone has a safe place to call home are as important as bricks and mortar. Our words create the foundation of our collective ability to engage and enroll consumers on behalf of a future in which their dreams can come true and strengthen partnerships that actually build community.
11:15 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. | Closing Plenary with Lunch 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. | Capitol Hill Day