Agenda

1.01 Understanding and Responding to Unsheltered Homelessness
Nearly half of homeless individual adults are unsheltered, yet surprisingly little is known overall about this population – its characteristics, how long people are homeless, what works to end their homelessness, and where they go when they exit. To end unsheltered homelessness, we need to understand it. Learn what is known about the population and solutions, and how to use data to better understand the situation in your jurisdiction.

1.02 No Need to Reinvent the Wheel: Rapid Re-Housing For Individual Homeless Adults 
Homeless individuals receive a disproportionately small amount of rapid re-housing, even though data shows that it works extremely well for them, including those with disabilities. Learn how to tap into established knowledge about rapid re-housing practice to help homeless individuals, even those who are unsheltered, have criminal histories, lack of income, or have no employment history.

1.03 Innovations in Housing: Working Outside of HUD to Create New Opportunities
HUD is typically thought of as the source of funding for affordable housing development. But more recently, establishments like hospitals and insurance companies are investing in housing, and local governments are getting more involved. Learn more about these new investments, how they got started, and how CoCs can partner with these types of funding sources.

1.04 Homelessness and Workforce Systems Speed-Dating: Making the Perfect Match
Though they are natural partners in ending homelessness, CoCs and public workforce systems often lack meaningful connections. In the face of time-limited housing resources, linking individual homeless adults to living-wage jobs is critical to maintaining housing. Examine systemic responses to increase employment and income—while reducing racial disparities—through enhanced coordinated entry, innovative funding sources, and workforce partnerships.

1.05 Identifying and Implementing Behavioral Health Strategies with Special Attention to Race
Mental health and substance use disorders disproportionately affect people experiencing homelessness—racial trauma confounds these effects. Explore solutions that prioritize how to address the mental health challenges exacerbated by homelessness, and partnerships that provide integrated services for better outcomes. Also learn the scope of services needed to ensure that the trauma among homeless African-Americans is adequately addressed and that disparities in the homelessness system are avoided.

1.06 Special Considerations: Homelessness Among Undocumented Individuals 
When people who are undocumented become homeless, their level of risk – especially to trafficking – increases exponentially. Explore homelessness among individual adults who are undocumented; understand the current legal landscape and how it affects what homelessness systems and providers can do; and learn the most effective ways to find and serve undocumented individual adults, including those being trafficked.

1.07 Overcoming Legal Barriers
Criminal records, outstanding bench warrants, and child support court orders are among many legal issues that can impede a person’s ability to attain employment and escape homelessness. Examine innovative ways to help homeless adults overcome legal barriers while preventing them from facing new challenges due to the criminalization of homelessness.

1.08 Coordinated Approaches to Ending Youth Homelessness 
Boosted by HUD's Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program, the response to youth homelessness is becoming more systems-focused. Learn how YHDP communities are partnering with Youth Action Boards to ramp up their crisis response, implement innovative interventions, enhance coordinated entry and access, and connect to mainstream resources.

2.01 Approaches to Encampment Resolution
Examine how different communities have tried to close encampments in ways that were positive both for their residents, and for the community. What were the goals and strategies? How did they help various sub-populations like drug users, immigrants, and people with mental illness? What were the outcomes? Learn what worked and what did not and share your own experiences.

2.02 How to Quickly Ramp Up Shelter Capacity
Communities with large unsheltered populations are experimenting with ways to quickly ramp up shelter. Hear about the benefits and challenges of different options and considerations about design elements, cost-effectiveness, managing NIMBYism, and matching every bed with a housing strategy. The discussion will include examples such as navigation centers, pop-up shelters, sprung structures, lowering barriers at existing shelters, and creatively using existing buildings.

2.03 Three Best Practices to Connect Jobseekers Experiencing Homelessness to Employment
Supported employment, trauma-informed care training for employers and workforce partners, and employer engagement are critical components of effective employment programs for individual adults and youth. Learn about best practices in these areas, including implementation strategies that can specifically help reduce racial disparities.

2.05 Longer-Term Crisis Housing Models for Individual Adults
What role do longer-term crisis housing models like bridge housing, transitional housing, and the TH-RRH joint component play in a community’s crisis response? Who are the people for whom these models might be needed? Hear how providers and systems leaders are answering those questions and using their data to use longer-term crisis housing in the most strategic ways.

2.06 Critical Connections: Engaging Unsheltered Adults
Unsheltered adults are often difficult to engage. What new models are providers testing to work with adults who have remained largely outside of the homeless service system? What are the key skills that frontline workers should possess to successfully engage and connect them to shelter and housing? How can programs ensure that engagement strategies are racially equitable? Examine the answers to these questions and explore how to improve outcomes.

2.07 Section 811 Housing Vouchers: New Opportunities for Individuals with Disabilities
HUD’s award of new Section 811 housing vouchers for nonelderly people with disabilities has literally opened the door for more chronically homeless individuals to be housed. Hear from some of the CoCs awarded the new vouchers and explore the importance of cross-sector partnerships. Importantly, understand how the new vouchers can be used to help those in permanent supportive housing “Move-On,” creating space for more chronically homeless people to be housed.

2.08 Preventing Homelessness for Youth Exiting Foster Care  
What are the most effective tools to help youth exiting foster care avoid homelessness and achieve stable housing? Which foster youth are at greatest risk of homelessness and how can more intensive case management and housing support be mobilized to support them? Learn about the promise of extended foster care, improved discharge plans, and evidence-based case management approaches to reduce homelessness for young adults exiting foster care.

3.01 Are Sanctioned Encampments a Good Idea?
Is it a good idea to sanction outdoor encampments? How can "safe parking" play a role for people who are living in unsheltered situations? Discuss the legal, moral, political, and practical considerations of sanctioned encampments and other types of outdoor programs. If encampments are sanctioned, what is their role, what should their goals be, and how long they should be in place? Consider how providers interact with encampments, how the homeless response system could respond, and learn about costs of sanctioned encampments versus other interventions.

3.02 Assessing Shelter Capacity
Is more shelter the answer to unsheltered homelessness? If so, how much more? How can communities increase turnover to make better use of the shelter they have? Since shelter, alone, is not the answer, how does it link directly to housing? Explore the right-sizing and proper role of shelter in ending homelessness among individual adults.

3.03 Designing Adequate Services in PSH for Highly Vulnerable or Disabled Individuals 
As communities prioritize their highest-need people for permanent supportive housing (PSH), programs are finding that they need to have different staffing, different and more intensive services, and the involvement of outside service partners. Discuss ways to re-design services in PSH for higher-need participants; re-think how PSH units can be designed to allow for better monitoring and communal engagement for older adults and chronic substance users; and explore better service coordination and partnership across other systems.

3.04 Tailoring RRH Responses: Taking Populations and Geographies into Account 
Everyone experiencing homelessness needs the core components that RRH provides: help finding housing, help paying for housing, and help staying in housing. Discover how RRH providers are tweaking the model to make it work for youth, survivors of domestic violence, and in rural areas.

3.05 How Diversion Techniques are Helping Avert Homelessness and Facilitating Self-Resolution 
Diversion is an approach that helps people seeking shelter identify and access safe alternatives to shelter entry. Problem-solving conversations can also be used to facilitate self-resolution so people exit homelessness more quickly. Learn the key components of diversion and self-resolution, examine how it is being used to assist adults, and understand its impact in reducing homelessness and demand for shelter.

3.06 Designing Coordinated Entry Systems and Prioritization to Better Serve Individual Adults 
CoCs are struggling to find ways to end homelessness for individual adults who are not prioritized for housing interventions. Participate in a discussion on designing coordinated entry systems that utilize a more dynamic way to manage system resources to help avoid the often unintended consequence of coordinated entry: non-chronic, unsheltered, individual adults end up falling to the bottom of a community’s queue. Discuss how communities can design coordinated entry systems and analyze data to address how to more equitably distribute resources when other homeless populations are prioritized over individual adults.

3.07 Identifying and Mobilizing Community Resources to Expand Shelter Options 
How can existing community resources, including faith communities, social service organizations, and the unused bedrooms of local residents, be used to expand shelter options for individual homeless adults? Examine how these resources have been leveraged to reduce unsheltered homelessness, including the homelessness of youth in rural communities. Explore how providers and advocates built support for their use.

3.08 Building State Medicaid and Housing Agency Partnerships
Medicaid and housing agencies serve an overlapping population: people experiencing homelessness, people with substance abuse and mental health issues, people with complex needs, and so on. Learn about communities that have formed co-partnerships with state Medicaid agencies and local housing groups to align health and housing initiatives. Hear how they have worked together to identify resources to create additional opportunities for services.

4.01 Helping Everyone Go Home: Resolving Homelessness for People Who Aren’t Prioritized for a Housing Intervention
Homeless individuals are often the people who get the least assistance to exit homelessness, despite being the majority of a community’s homeless population. How can we ensure that people who may have lower vulnerability get access to the help they need? Discuss progressive engagement strategies, problem-solving and housing crisis resolution services for people who won’t be matched to a housing intervention such as RRH and PSH, and partnering with other systems to access other types of assistance.

4.02 Integrating and Coordinating Outreach Efforts 
It is not uncommon for multiple providers – across multiple systems— to be engaging in outreach to people living outdoors. How can those efforts be better coordinated to increase the impact of outreach and make better use of staff? Find out the strategies localities are adopting to improve the effectiveness of outreach through improving communication and coordination of efforts across disparate systems.

4.03 Targeted Shelter: When to Specialize? 
Communities with a dire shortage of emergency shelter for individual adults may find it difficult to justify operating specialized shelters serving discrete subpopulations. Explore the perceived merits of specialized shelter serving subgroups such as , youth, women, domestic violence survivors and  individuals with intensive support needs.  Learn how to use data to assess the need for specialized shelter and discuss how disparate groups can be appropriately served across shelter programs when specialized shelter is unavailable or unneccessary.

4.04 Opioid Use Among Homeless Individuals
Amid the homeless crisis and opioid epidemic, local agencies and service providers are challenged to balance appropriate medical care, maintain public health, and use a Housing First approach. Learn from various communities about innovative strategies to address the intersection of homelessness and Opioid Use Disorder in both rural and urban areas.

4.05 Making Housing the Primary Goal of Emergency Shelter Services
The only assistance many homeless individuals will receive is emergency shelter. That’s why it is so important for shelters to have a singular focus: helping every person get housing. This workshop will address the critical steps in making the transition to a housing-focused shelter including philosophical, operational, and practice shifts.

4.06 When the Closest Shelter is 100 Miles Away: Unsheltered in Rural America
From the frozen tundra to Appalachia, addressing rural unsheltered homelessness is often a lesson in overcoming extremes. Learn the latest research on the extent of unsheltered homelessness in rural America. Hear about innovative strategies to improve outreach across vast rural geographies and to connect people experiencing homelessness to non-traditional local shelter options.

4.07 Partnering with Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) to End Individual Adult Homelessness
From providing local leadership to dedicating subsidized housing resources, PHAs can be essential partners in the fight to end individual adult homelessness. Discover how to build strong connections to a local PHA and how PHAs can prioritize their waitlists, administer CoCs, and leverage housing and services resources on behalf of people experiencing homelessness.

4.08 The Family Option 
The home of a family member may be a viable permanent housing destination for many adults, particularly young adults and people with disabilities who may be unable to live independently. Learn how family-finding and family intervention help adults reconnect and achieve stability as secondary tenants.

5.01 Principles and Practice: Housing First, Harm Reduction, and Crisis Resolution
Housing First, harm reduction, and crisis resolution are three important and inter-related strategies that communities will need to build an effective response to sheltered and unsheltered homelessness. Understand the principles behind these strategies, the skills needed to implement them, and how to use them together to improve a crisis response system.

5.02 Second Chances: Ending Homelessness for Formerly Incarcerated Individual Homeless Adults 
People returning from jail or prison disproportionately become homeless. Hear about recent research that shows the intersection between reentry and homelessness is starker and more racially disparate than previously thought. Understand how to improve housing outcomes and prevent homelessness among formerly incarcerated adults, with a special emphasis on preventing racial disparities in the process. Learn how homelessness and corrections leaders are working together to reduce both homelessness and recidivism.

5.03 Public Employees Reach Out: Partners in Ending Street Homelessness
First responders and library and park staff may have more interaction with unsheltered people than homeless staff do. Discuss strategies to build relationships with these sometimes non-traditional partners. Learn about getting on the same page, appropriate roles, ensuring racially equitable approaches, and enhancing each other’s resources.

5.04 A Systemic Response to Individual Adult Homelessness in Rural Areas 
Limited services and housing, overwhelming geographies, and transportation barriers can forestall a systems approach to ending homelessness in rural areas. Learn how providers and CoC leaders are building crisis response systems through coordinated entry, data tracking, and partnerships with mainstream programs. Also, hear about the strategies they use to reduce racial disparities that are more pronounced in rural America.

5.05 Win-Wins on Unsheltered Homelessness: Humane Solutions, Visible Results  
To truly end unsheltered homelessness, communities must balance the needs of people who are on the streets or in encampments with the needs and responsibilities of elected officials, housed neighbors, and business owners. Discover how this difficult balance CAN be achieved with strategies that are both effective AND show quick progress. Learn how to create partnerships with BIDS, respond to neighbor concerns, and create a suite of responses that engage community and city leaders and meet everyone’s needs.

5.06 Experimenting with Innovative Subsidy Models
The housing safety net does not currently meet the needs of people living in poverty. While rental assistance programs like Rapid Re-housing have proven effective at ensuring an exit from homelessness, people may need more help once in housing or be ineligible for longer-term support like PSH. Find out how communities are experimenting with targeting low-income households facing an immediate housing crisis with alternative subsidy programs.

5.07 Thinking Outside the One-Bedroom Apartment Box: Non-Traditional Affordable Housing Options 
Individual adults are the largest group of people experiencing homelessness, and almost half of them are unsheltered. Few will be able to afford their own apartment, so new options must be found. Explore the possibilities of shared housing with one (or more!) roommates and re-visiting options like single-room-occupancy units, boarding houses, residential hotels, or worker “dorms.” Learn practical tips for overcoming barriers to such housing and making it happen in your community!

5.08 Peer Support for Individual Homeless Adults 
Peers can be critical in the full spectrum of work with homeless individuals. Learn from the experts how peers are being used to improve outcomes through their work on outreach teams, in permanent supportive housing, and to reduce isolation. Examine the evidence base and training necessary for successful peer interventions.

6.01 Lowering Shelter Barriers for People Who Are Unsheltered 
Many unsheltered people report staying outside because of the high entry barriers and extensive rules and restrictions in shelters. Discover how to become a low-barrier shelter, focus on services rather than rules, maintain safety for staff and residents, and be compliant with HUD’s Equal Access Rule. Models like the Navigation Center will be examined.

6.02 Data Collection on Unsheltered Homelessness for Continuous Performance Improvement 
What data should a community examine to better understand the needs and trajectories of its unsheltered population and determine which interventions are most effective at moving them out of homelessness? Discover how to use HMIS and other data to better understand the trajectory of individual adults experiencing unsheltered homelessness, the in-flow into homelessness, and to assess for potential racial disparities to inform the system’s approach to better serving this population.

6.03 What Caseworkers Should Know
Harm reduction principles, trauma informed care, and cultural competence are among the core competencies expected of caseworkers and peer specialists. Explore common and emerging evidence-informed practices that are improving the effectiveness of case management and identify opportunities to promote ongoing training and skill development for frontline staff.

6.04 Housing and Service Options for Older Adults 
Older adults are one of the fastest growing groups of individuals experiencing homelessness. Yet complex health conditions, criminal justice histories, and severe racial disparities complicate the ability to connect them to housing and services. Explore the housing, service, and funding strategies employed by nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and adult protective services to end homelessness among older adults.

6.05 Law Enforcement Partners Can Help End Individual Adult Homelessness: Here’s How!
Like people experiencing unsheltered homelessness, police are on the streets 24-7. Find out how interactions between police and homeless people on the streets can be positive rather than negative, the role that law enforcement outreach teams can play, the appropriate relationship between law enforcement and provider staff, and how to promote racially equitable law enforcement responses to homelessness.

6.06 How to Find, Engage, and Motivate Landlords
Individual homeless adults seeking housing confront the triple whammy of high rents, low vacancy rates, and poor tenant histories. Those of color face the additional challenge of racial discrimination. Learn the most innovative practices to build partnerships with landlords to ensure that all clients can find and stabilize in their own permanent housing. Understand the keys to landlord acceptance of Housing Choice Vouchers (Section 8).

6.07 More than an Acronym Salad: The Importance of WIOA, SNAP E&T, WDBs, BIDs, and Medicaid for Jobseekers Experiencing Homelessness
Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act programs, SNAP Employment and Training, Workforce Development Boards, Business Improvement Districts, and Medicaid provide or administer more than basic work supports, food assistance, and health care. Nationwide, these federal funding sources and local partners are supporting employment, education, and job training services for people experiencing homelessness. Explore how homelessness services and public workforce systems are relying on them to reduce homelessness among individual adults.

6.08 Tailoring Outreach to Highly Vulnerable Subpopulations 
While unsheltered homelessness is dangerous for all people, certain groups — women, youth, older adults, people living with a disability, and individuals who are being trafficked – may be at particularly heightened risk. Discuss how to target outreach services to highly vulnerable subpopulations so they can be connected to safe shelter and housing options. Reliance on peer outreach will be among the strategies explored.