Heading Home Hennepin: The Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness in Minneapolis and Hennepin County

1. Heading Home Hennepin:The Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness in Minneapolis and Hennepin County Presented by: the Hennepin County and City of Minneapolis Commission to End Homelessness

2. Principles guiding our thinking: • All residents deserve safe, decent, and affordable housing. • Shelter is not housing. • Providing services without housing doesn’t end homelessness. • Homelessness costs more than housing.

3. Principles guiding our thinking: • Data is important. • Prevention is the best solution. • Ending homelessness requires a collaborative community-wide response. • Ending homelessness is attainable.

4. Evidence of Nationwide Success (Reductions in Homelessness) • Denver: 11% • New York: 13% • Miami: 39% • San Francisco: 41% • Philadelphia: 50%

5. Vision By the year 2016, all persons facing homelessness in Minneapolis and Hennepin County will have access to safe, decent, and affordable housing as well as the resources and supports needed to sustain it. Our mission is to effectively end homelessness over the next decade.

6. Recommendations: Major Goals • Prevent Homelessness • Provide Coordinated Outreach • Develop Housing Opportunities • Improve Service Delivery • Build Capacity for Self-Support • Implement Systems Improvements

7. Prevent Homelessness • Recommendation One: Expand Hennepin County’s Family Homeless Prevention Assistance Programto serve 3,600 households/year.

8. Prevent Homelessness • Recommendation Two:Adopt a zero tolerance policy for discharging people from public systems into homelessness. • Youth from foster care, juvenile corrections, and child protection. • Adults from corrections, hospitals, in-patient treatment, and the military.

9. Prevent Homelessness • Recommendation Three:Increase conflict resolution and other services for at-risk youth and their families. • Recommendation Four:Prevent and end homelessness for refugee individuals and families.

10. Provide Coordinated Outreach • Recommendation One:Develop a 24/7, coordinated system of outreach to those on the streets in Minneapolis.

11. Provide Coordinated Outreach • Recommendation Two:Increase medical outreach and access to primary care and mental health services. • Recommendation Three:Increase number of youth outreach workers to suburban schools.

12. Develop Housing Opportunities • Recommendation One:Preserve current stock of affordable and supportive housing. Create 5,000 new “housing opportunities” for youth, singles, and families with children and provide the support services they need to maintain housing stability.

13. Develop Housing Opportunities

14. Develop Housing Opportunities • Recommendation Two: Promote housing opportunities that create more locational choice and TOD (Transit Oriented Development) for homeless singles, families, and youth. • Recommendation Three:Develop and maintain good landlord relationships to enhance capacity for utilizing existing private housing market.

15. Develop Housing Opportunities • Recommendation Four: Increase the support that homeless families receive from the neighborhoods/communities into which they are moving by piloting a family community support program with local faith communities.

16. Develop Housing Opportunities • Recommendation Five: Increase the number of homeless and at-risk youthreceiving housing assistance and supports. • Recommendation Six: Expand our ability to rapidly re-house more single adults, underserved families, and youth through Hennepin County’s Rapid Exit Program.

17. Develop Housing Opportunities • Recommendation Seven:Track and effectively communicate vacancies in existing affordable and supportive housing for youth, singles, and families with children. • Recommendation Eight: Reduce barriers to developing a variety of housing options.

18. Improve Service Delivery • Recommendation One:Connect people to services they need to escape homelessness. • Opportunity Center • Increased access to veterans’ services

19. Build Capacity for Self-Support • Recommendation One: Connect homeless adults with living wage jobs. • Recommendation Two: Connect homeless and at-risk youth, ages 16-21, with post-secondary education, job training, and employment.

20. Build Capacity for Self-Support • Recommendation Three: Enhance the “financial literacy” of singles, families, and youth. • Recommendation Four: Ensure that eligible individuals and families apply for the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Working Family Credit.

21. Build Capacity for Self-Support • Recommendation Five:Increase access to transportation for youth, families with children, and single adults so they can keep appointments, maintain or find employment, and go to school.

22. Implement Systems Improvements • Recommendation One: Improve effectiveness of current shelter system. • Recommendation Two:Improve collaboration among family providers throughout Hennepin County.

23. Implement Systems Improvements • Recommendation Three: Enhance truancy interventions for at-risk and homeless youth. • Recommendation Four: Enhance cultural competency across the system to ensure access to quality services for all groups. • Recommendation Five: Offer increased access to financial assistance for youth.

24. Implement Systems Improvements • Recommendation Six: Support state andmetro-wide regional efforts to end homelessness. • Recommendation Seven: Recommend to the City of Minneapolis and Hennepin County an annual legislative agenda that supports the goals of this plan. • Recommendation Eight: Develop a system to track and evaluate progress of Ten–Year Plan.

25. Implementation • Executive Committee • City/County Coordinator to End Homelessness • Cultural Competency/Consumer Feedback Team • Finance/Public Affairs Team • Evaluation Team

26. Financing Plan: Phase I (2007-09)

27. Successful implementation of our Ten Year Plan will also… • Significantly reduce the number of shelter beds in our community. • Eliminate panhandling and other nuisance issues through providing prevention and outreach services. • Lead to safer streets, since less police time will be spent dealing with issues of homelessness. • Greatly reduce recidivism rates. • Result in all-time low rates of youth prostitution and teen pregnancy. • There will be no homeless children in our public schools.

28. Successful implementation of our Ten Year Plan will… Change the paradigm • from managing homelessness to ending it; • from funding programs to investing in the community; and • from serving people to partnering with them to achieve self-sufficiency.