Sheila Morley, Community, Housing and Human Services, No Phone Number Available
Thursday, June 2, 2016 at 3:43 p.m.
The City’s Community, Housing, and Human Services Department (CHHS) and its community partners continue efforts to serve the needs of Spokane’s homeless individuals and families. Our housing-first emphasis received a boost this Spring, as Catholic Charities’ Rapid Re-housing program (RRH) is serving families in a point-in-time.
That means when a family comes into Catholic Charities with a housing crisis, and they qualify for RRH assistance, they are immediately connected to a case manager to begin their housing search. Previously, a family would be assessed through the Homeless Families Coordinated Assessment program (HFCA) and then get a referral to the RRH program. That process would take anywhere from one to six weeks, depending on agency availability and the ability to contact the client after their original assessment.
This is a huge accomplishment and comes from a lot of hard work. Over the past five months, Catholic Charities staff has worked really hard to streamline processes between HFCA and RRH, implement a very successful diversion program and work with partners to create efficiencies with placement into temporary and permanent housing options. Part of CHHS’ strategic planning was to reduce the time from Coordinated Assessment to Rapid Re-housing. In our last funding round, we asked projects applying for Coordinated Assessment and RRH to develop a process that would reduce the time it took for clients to be connected with RRH. Projects were reviewed and funded based on their plan to meet this goal. CHHS staff continues to work with the providers to implement these strategies and streamline processes to make this a quicker process.
Thank you to everyone who helped to make this point-in-time availability a reality for the homeless families in our community.
