September 12, 2022, The Illinois Interagency Task Force on Homelessness

The Illinois Interagency Task Force on Homelessness

Monday, September 12, 2022

3:00 PM - 4:30 PM

In-Person and Hybrid Meeting via WebEx

In- Person:

  • Lincoln Library
  • 326 S. 7th Street
  • Springfield, IL 62701

Virtual:

WebEx

Agenda

  1. Welcome & Introductions
  2. Homelessness in Illinois: Spotlight on Springfield
  3. Public Comments
  4. Leadership Report: Updates from State Homelessness Chief Christine Haley
  5. Agency Announcements
  6. Presentation: Housing Insecurity & Homeless Prevention Dashboard, Inclusive Economy Lab
  7. Closing

Meeting Recording:

https://illinois.webex.com/recordingservice/sites/illinois/recording/8cad07e01504103bb3e69eaabbbbd8fb/playback

Meeting Minutes:

  1. Welcome & Introductions 
    1. Christine Haley, Chief, Illinois Office to Prevent & End Homelessness (IOPEH)
      1. Welcome to the meeting and introductions. Call for any directors. Guest asked to sign in the chats. 
    2. Sol Flores, Illinois Deputy Governor 
      1. Glad to have everyone join the meeting today.
  2. Homelessness in Illinois: Spotlight on Springfield
    1. Josh Sabo, Coordinator at Heartland Continuum of Care
      1. Our continuum covers Sangamon County with Springfield being the largest city
      2. We are a community who have survived on emergency shelters to address homelessness
      3. Introductions of staff members
        1. Shannon Allen, Community Care Coordinator 
          1. Works strictly with the homeless population. Helps with housing, IDs, social security card, birth certificates, mental health needs, anything that they may need, etc.
          2. Works closely with Helping Hands, Contact Ministries, Mercy Communities, overflow shelters in the Springfield area.
          3. I take walk ins by appointments and have daily visitation. I transport them as needed. We go around and help with whatever resources we can.
          4. We deal with crisis situations and calls.
        2. Nick Dotson, Heartland Continuum of Care Housing Navigator 
          1. Administrates the emergency housing voucher program. We are listed in 5th in the state and 51st in the country for utilizing this program. 
          2. Developed a landlord risk mitigation fund for our continuum. It is a partnership between property owners, managers, and service providers. 
          3. The goal is to create and maintain access to housing through the housing first approach to emphasize rapid placement and support in housing. 
          4. Program will reimburse up to $3,000 for fiscal and operational losses for up to two years after moving. 
          5. Policy for persons with lived experience collaboration. Have a policy for paying lived experience individuals to be paid for their expertise. 
          6. We are centering our work with people who have lived experienced homelessness.
        3. Ricky Reese, Lived Experienced Expert 
          1. Introduction. Hired by Helping Hands. 
          2. He is a part of the board to help end homelessness.
    2. About 12 months ago we started a plan to end homelessness. Trying to get people working on the same page and in the same direction. 
      1. 2028 is the plans projection to reach zero ground functioning. A lot of collaboration needed to reach this. Conversations about Housing First direction to move forward.
      2. PIT count in 2022 was 264 households.
      3. Historically has relied on emergency shelters and transitional housing.
      4. In 2010, we received about $650,000 a year. By 2022 that number dropped to about $400,000.
        1. Question: Why did funding go down? Was it due to population lost?
          1. Answer: The HUD CoC program is very competitive. Our CoC was heavily led by agencies. As a community we were supported by agencies. No staff support beyond an HMIS person
        2. Question: When will the plan be available?
          1. Answer: Plan will be available at heartland continuum.com hopefully after Thursday. Draft is available now.
  3. Public Comments 
    1. None at this time.
  4. Leadership Report: Updates from State Homelessness Chief Christine Haley 
    1. Updates related to our work. Our plan, Home Illinois, Illinois plain to end homelessness is available on our website, IOPEH. We have copies of the plan available for public consumption. We will be mailing out copies of the plan. 
    2. We hired our first full time staff for IOPEH. We will be hiring 4 additional positions. 
    3. IOPEH works closely with IDHS bureaus that cover the homeless housing and services implementation. 
    4. Welcoming Illinois: Individuals seeking asylum, mainly from Venezuela. It has been a comprehensive response to provide leadership in the response. IDHS, IDPH, IEMA, IL state board of Education, Illinois Recovery Take Force, and IOPEH are all a part of the response. 
    5. Grants to support Home Illinois: 15 million was allocated to support activities of the plan. 
    6. We can engage directly in pilots. Pilots approved: IL Board of Higher Edu: Homeless Liaison in college and universities. 
    7. Illinois Homeless Technical Assistance and Training Center 
    8. Homeless Prevention: Guaranteed income for homeless families and analysis of our emergency rental assistance program. 
    9. We wanted to include projections in our housing projections. We did reach out to HUD, Nora Lally is the Led HUD TA Provider. 
    10. Two additional meetings scheduled, 9/29/23 Statewide Projections Overview and 11/3/23 Data Analysis & preliminary Statewide Model. We have state employees and community members participating in the projections. 
    11. Unsheltered & Rural Homelessness NOFO. Approximately $322 million available through this Special NOFO. 
    12. We met with the CoCs to see how we can be more helpful. We are looking to provide trainings around community benefits access. 
    13. We have a report that is due in December as an update to our plan to end homelessness. Community Advisory Council on Homelessness would like to provide feedback to us. It is a fast turnover for us. 
    14. A template for your activities will be sent to you from IOPEH. 
    15. Advisory Council will need to advise us the Task Force in the next meeting. 
  5. Agency Announcements 
    1. Kristin Faust, IDHA 
      1. IDHA once a year has a competitive round to fund housing. Application are open right now and due December 16th. You can go to the IHDA website, IHDA.org, to find that. 
      2. You should request a consult meeting pshrfa@idha.org if your agency is considering developing permanent supportive housing. 
      3. I was able to attend the first graduating class from supportive housing academy pipeline. Working with SHIPPA and will be offering a training institute for development. Reach out to corporation for housing. 
    2. John Egan, IL Dept of Family Child Supportive Services 
      1. We said we would reach out to housing authorities for funding for vouchers for youth. 
      2. Applied for 75 voucher each. Vouchers would be for youth who is aging out. 
      3. Next meeting, we will hopefully know if these were funded.
  6. Presentation: Housing Insecurity & Homeless Prevention Dashboard, Inclusive Economy Lab 
    1. Emily Metz, from Inclusive Economy Lab. 
      1. Presentation: Chicago Housing Stability Data Dashboard. 
      2. A research organization who works close with agencies and non-profits on the ground. Focus has been on partnering with stakeholders to help prevent and end homelessness. 
      3. Project background and the type of insights this dashboard can offer. 
      4. Origins of the dashboard during the early months of the pandemic, we were trying to help them in real time housing capsule of what was going on. 
      5. Data insight on who was at the greatest risk of homelessness. 
      6. Eviction expresses a greater likelihood of a home's chance of experiencing actual homelessness. 
      7. Well timed, short term financial/ rental assistance does help to prevent evictions and homelessness. Short term cash and financial assistance can help to reduce the homelessness and stability. 
      8. Six to twelve agencies came to them to helped gather data on the factors that may cause people to be at risk for homelessness. We built a dashboard that helped to bring along many different data sources. (Facing an eviction, lost of work hours, reduce income, being forced to double up, etc.) 
      9. Outreach for assistance and trends in eviction findings. Interactive data dashboard will be sent after this meeting. A few key highlights of the dashboard that can be helpful for meeting needs in real time. 
    2. Tom Rietz, Inclusive Economy Lab 
      1. How this data partnership can help in plans for preventative care. The data dashboard allows us to look at the trends in leading indicators.
      2. Eviction findings, assistance outreach, how to better target funding. 
      3. First graph shows monthly call volume at the homeless prevent call center. Second graph displays the calls turned away for ineligibility. 
      4. Since the eviction moratoria has lifted, eviction filings have stabilized recently. We have maps on where to show our partners to better plan activities and target programs. 
        1. Emily: This is to give you a sense of the trends you can track at the state level. 
        2. We are going to work with Christine and her team at IDHS to identify where evictions are taking place. 
        3. Hoping to have a dashboard that can be released in Spring 2023. This is a preliminary introduction to the dashboard. 
    3. Christine Haley: 
      1. We understand that it would be important for us to prevention of homelessness. Prevention is a key component on addressing someone coming from homelessness. 
      2. What ways are your programs engaging people during financial instability that help them to prevent from becoming homeless. 
      3. Our intent with the Inclusive Economy Lab, is to get data from our stakeholders to add data so we can find out information statewide and not just Chicago. 
      4. Any ideas or pieces that would be important to be included outside of what has been presented today.
      5. Dashboard: https://urbanlabs.uchicago.edu/attachments/cb4f5428ae91b5ef46da5a97fb0884ceb4a6452c/store/5b73587aec6fb397e5fb1e9c590c9e59a3b0538a72a892c35d394e501571/20211222_ChicagoHousingStabilityDashboard.html 
      6. Evictions and homeless prevention pieces are what we are focused on for the dashboard. 
      7. Sources of data will be primary focus to help with the dashboard. The data source varies based on what information is available. Some demographic information is provided, but no questions associated to domestic violence when filing coming through the homeless call center. 
      8. Two areas of the dashboard we are looking to replicate would be the evictions and homeless prevention. 
      9. DHS & IHDA has resources that they can put Emily in touch with for the dashboard.
        1. Question: Does personal constraints mean job vacancies at the agency intake or is it a referral agency?
          1. Answer: It's being able to have a case manager with the capacity to take the referral, to confirm eligibility and submit the paperwork. The call center does a preliminary intake. Sometimes it is not personal but needed to process the request.
        2. Question: Are people being broken down by population in the data?
          1. Answer: It depends on what information is being provided through the call center. None are asked in relations to domestic violence.
        3. Question: Is the dashboard based on eviction filings or heat maps data?
          1. Answer: Both are available to have a better understanding of seeing who may be at risk. Heat maps are very easy to create based on the data.
  7.  Closing