Rapid Results Team Updates – Day 50

Fairfield County (Individuals)

The Team reports it is doing awesome, with strong team morale and great progress to date. So far they have housed 49 individuals, with many being leased up within 10 days after their initial meeting with Navigators.  That’s almost 1-a-day!  Getting the “Coordinated Navigation” group up and running was a bit of challenge, but once roles and responsibilities were clarified the progress started moving along smoothly.  The next major challenge is instituting a process for diverting individuals and creating partnerships with key providers in each community.

Fairfield County (families)

10 Families housed, 80+ families have been matched to housing programs.   The community has virtually eliminated its backlog for assessment using block scheduling and outreach days in Stamford, Norwalk and Bridgeport. Wait times have been reduced from 2 months to a week or less, and in many cases, to a day or less. The team also has eliminated its shelter wait list, through a combination of increased use of diversion strategies and prioritization of urgent cases in need of immediate shelter.

New London County

The community has housed 60+ individuals and created a single, community-wide housing placement team. The group is meeting on a weekly basis and works to pair high-priority individuals with the most appropriate housing solution available at that time.  The process is based on the community’s process for families as well as some of the best-practices from New Haven’s system.

Windham

The team was able to consolidate and “clean” their registry. In doing so they discovered that there are approximately 20 Chronically homeless individuals. Six of these individuals have already been housed.  The biggest focus right now: identifying these folks and getting them document ready for approx. 21 units of PSH becoming available by end of May.  The community has decided to hire on a new staff person as case manager for most of these folks.

 Hartford

Hartford’s team has housed 14 chronically homeless individuals and made over 40 conditional matches to available housing units. The Greater Hartford Document Fair will be taking place on May 8th (9am-3pm). Thus far, they have commitments from many agencies who will be on site to offer assistance to those in need of Photo ID’s, birth certificates, social security cards, Verification of Disability and other documentation required for housing programs.  The 100 Day Team has also been working with 211 to improve the order and type of questions that 211 asks callers that are experiencing a housing crisis.  Many agencies have moved to drop-in hours instead of appointments to conduct initial assessments, in order to shorten the time it takes from entering the shelter system to getting housed. These efforts have also helped decreasing the no-show rate for assessments.