Learn More About

Learn More About: The New Federal Strategic Plan to End Homelessness

BY JUDITH TACKETT

On Dec. 19, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) released All In: The Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness (read it at usich.gov). The plan is built on three foundational pillars: equity, data and collaboration, as well as three solutions pillars, which are housing and supports, homelessness response and prevention.

The federal plan sets an interim goal to reduce homelessness by 25 percent by January 2025 and uses the 2022 Point In Time (PIT) Count as the baseline for that goal.

As a quick reminder, the Point In Time Count is conducted across the nation on one night within the last 10 days for January and really only counts people living in shelters and outdoors, which does not include families that are doubled up with relatives or friends, couch surfers, or people paying for motel rooms as their living quarters. Nashville’s 2022 PIT Count showed an overall number of 1,916 people, a five percent decrease from 2020. In theory, Nashville would have to decrease its literal homeless population by just under 500 people by 2025 to reflect the federal goal. We can do this, Nashville, especially with the recent influx of $50 million in American Rescue Funds designated to address outdoor homelessness in Davidson County over the next three years.

The federal plan clearly states that, “While this is a federal plan, local communities can use it to collaboratively develop local and systems-level plans for preventing and ending homelessness.” I appreciate that, especially since the Nashville-Davidson County Continuum of Care (CoC)* has missed its mark in updating our local strategic plan. But there is still time to do so.

I have submitted my comments to the most recent version of the local strategic plan and pointed out that an updated version should set specific goals, which is something we were not able to do a few years ago because we did not have a functioning database in place. Now that our community has the ability to utilize its Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) and with that has improved data collection and data quality, I argued that we need to focus on population-specific goals. In my recommendation to the CoC, I focused on individuals (including those experiencing chronic homelessness), families with children, youth and young adults and Veterans as main subpopulations.

The federal strategic plan also calls on the need to focus on all populations but lists a multitude of subpopulations and geographic areas (see sidebar). What is more, All In calls for the adoption of a “targeted universalism” framework. What that means is that the federal government, “promotes a universal reduction goal with targeted and tailored solutions based on the structures, cultures, and geographies of certain groups to help them overcome unique barriers.”

In real terms, this means that our CoC should pay attention to ensure our community does not exclusively focus on only one population when it comes to ending homelessness at the cost of another population. The way I interpret this is that if Nashville’s CoC wants to align itself with this framework of targeted universalism, then it needs to ensure that the city’s focus on people in encampments does not result in taking away resources from other populations and avoids overlooking the needs of families with children, or youth and young adults, or people fleeing domestic violence, etc. To be clear, the federal plan puts a specific emphasis on the reduction of outdoor homelessness, and the $50-million temporary investment by Nashville in encampments are new dollars that do not take away anything from other populations.

But the federal plan also focuses on ensuring that all geographic areas are served. While the feds look toward urban, suburban, rural, tribal and other areas, a localized alignment could ensure that all geographic areas within a CoC are included. From my previous columns, you probably have picked up that I am rather critical of the city’s approach to prioritize specific encampments (especially ones that in essence reward neighborhood groups that have been significantly pushing for the criminalization of homelessness) at the expense of an overall outdoor housing plan. I must say though, the city seems to have listened to criticism and is now talking about their outdoor housing plan, a fi rst step that still needs to be followed up by actual actions that reflect the verbiage change.

Overall, an alignment with the federal strategic plan would mean that Nashville needs to implement a collaborative effort that is inclusive but considers that each vulnerable population has required specific considerations and resources.

This is easier said than done because it requires strong coordination and partnerships built on trust (not just money). The good news is, Nashville has already a years-long collaborative history within its homeless service provider community it can build upon. We just need the CoC leadership to truly understand the infrastructure that’s already in place. Please forgive me for harping on this, but that’s extremely important and it also echoes in the federal plan, which says, “[e]nding homelessness requires an all-hands-on-deck response grounded in authentic collaboration.”

The way I read this, we need to ensure we have open and transparent communication throughout the community. With $50 million in grant funding at stake, it is important that we pay attention that Metro does not use funding as a means to force collaboration or (perish the thought!) put pressure on providers when they voice different views and critical opinions.

One thing that is extremely important in the new federal strategic plan is the focus on prevention. While all strategic plans always include references to prevention, I believe this time, the federal government is all in and outlines the importance of mainstream resources and cross-systems coordination to cut down on the pipelines that feed into homelessness (foster care, criminal justice, eviction, etc.).

Furthermore, All In stresses how important applying a racial equity lens is to addressing homelessness, it endorses the Housing First philosophy and it keeps a focus on using data and evidence to make sound decisions.

As a next step, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness will work at the federal level to implement action steps and as part of that identify additional data sources to measure overall impact. Those include the Point In Time Count, the data sets of homeless children collected each year by local school systems, and changes in systems performance measures as outlined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and collected through local Homeless Management Information Systems (HMIS).

As mentioned earlier, my hope is that our local CoC governance board, the Homelessness Planning Council, takes this opportunity to revisit its recent strategic planning effort and updates the plan to set specific goals for subpopulations in alignment with All In: The Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness.

*The federal government defines the Continuum of Care as “the group organized to carry out the responsibilities required by HUD to carry out the components of the CoC Program interim rule and is composed of representatives of organizations, including nonprofit homeless providers, victim service providers, faith-based organizations, governments, businesses, advocates, public housing agencies, school districts, social service providers, mental health agencies, hospitals, universities, affordable housing developers, law enforcement, organizations that serve homeless and formerly homeless veterans, and homeless and formerly homeless persons to the extent these groups are represented within the geographic area and are available to participate.”