Week 2 Journal Reflection Paper (for Dr. NoorFatima)

New Public Service in Action: The National Effort to House the Homeless

Deidre L. McLay

October 22, 2016

Abstract

This paper describes the national approach to homeless services by the HEARTH Act, the U. S.

Interagency Council on Homelessness, and the Monterey and San Benito Counties Continuum of

Care. It emphasizes how the resulting collaborative effort is an example of New Public Service

in action.

Introduction

The New Public Service (NPS) approach to public administration provides a framework

for reaffirmation of democratic values, citizenship, and service to the public interest. Its

practitioners want citizens and public officials to work together to make things work and to do

something of societal value (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2015). The national effort to prevent and

end homelessness in the United States is an example of NPS in action. It embodies the

description of NPS from Denhardt & Denhardt (2015):

Government acts, in concert with private and nonprofit groups and organizations, to seek

solutions to the problems communities face. In this process, the role of government is

transformed from one of controlling to one of agenda setting, bringing the proper players

“to the table” and facilitating, negotiating, or “brokering” solutions to public problems

(often through coalitions of public, private, and nonprofit agencies). Whereas,

traditionally, government has responded by saying “yes, we can provide that service” or

“no, we can’t”, the New Public Service suggests that elected officials and public

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managers should respond to the requests of citizens, not just by saying yes or no, but by

saying such things as, “Let’s work together to figure out what we’re going to do, then

make it happen.”(86)

Government homelessness policy incorporates principles of public-private partnerships,

community collaboration, and performance measurement to pursue solutions to challenges that

are difficult to solve without comprehensive approaches. Homelessness is widespread and

caused by many things. There is no single solution to house the homeless, but many. By using

the team approach advocated by NPS, progress on ending homelessness is happening.

The lead federal agency on housing the homeless is the U.S. Department of Housing and

Urban Development (HUD). A major source of homeless services funding is the HUD

Continuum of Care (CoC) program. This paper will describe how federal legislation has

influenced the response to homelessness, what the HUD Continuum of Care is, its mandate for

geographic area-based teamwork between government, non-profit and private organizations

offering housing services to homeless people, the extent of homelessness in Monterey County,

California, and how the HUD Continuum of Care program has been implemented in Monterey

County, California. It will also comment on how the Continuum of Care model is influenced by

the ideas of collaboration, community involvement, and serving the public good that are

emphasized in the New Public Service school of public administration.

Background: The HEARTH Act

The Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act

was enacted in 2009 to overhaul the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s

(HUD’s) homeless assistance programs. It revised the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance

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Act which was originally passed in 1987 and updated several times since then. The HEARTH

Act brought the underlying framework into alignment with actual practice and prepared for

future development. The HEARTH Act codified a shift in emphasis from evaluating a group of

individual programs in a community to adopting a systems approach (Berg, 2013). The primary

systems approach for addressing homelessness in a geographic area is the Continuum of Care

(CoC).

The HEARTH Act consolidated HUD’s homeless grant programs by consolidating the

Supportive Housing, Shelter Plus Care, and Single Room Occupancy grant programs into one

grant program: The Continuum of Care (CoC) program. Local continuums of care are

community-based homeless assistance planning networks and they are the entities that apply for

funding from the CoC grants. CoCs had existed since 1995 and the 2009 Act essentially codified

the practices that had evolved over time (Berg, 2013).

As listed in the HEARTH Act Interim Rule 24 CFR Part 78, the responsibilities of a CoC

are:

1. Operate the Continuum of Care,

2. Designating and operating a Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), and

3. Continuum of Care planning.

Additionally, the HEARTH Act directs local CoCs to be involved in the coordination of

other funding streams and resources, not only CoC grants, in order to achieve the goals of

Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness.

Background: The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness

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Established in 1987, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH)

includes the heads of nineteen Federal departments, agencies, and offices essential to addressing

homelessness. The USICH staff itself consists of about twenty people (USICH, 2015).

The Bush Administration revitalized USICH in 2002 when it announced the goal of

ending chronic homelessness. The USICH staff subsequently encouraged communities to

develop plans to end homelessness in ten years and hundreds of communities adopted such plans

(Berg, 2013). In 2009, the HEARTH Act confirmed the mission of USICH:

Coordinate the Federal response to homelessness and to create a national partnership at

every level of government and with the private sector to reduce and end homelessness in

the nation while maximizing the effectiveness of the Federal government in contributing

to the end of homelessness.

Acting on this mission, Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End

Homelessness was first published in June 2010 by USICH. It was the nation’s first

comprehensive Federal strategic plan to prevent and end homelessness. The plan was amended

in 2012 and in 2015. In its FY15 Performance and Accountability Report (2015), USICH

emphasizes what it does:

…a model of successful interagency collaboration…and local engagement. Our ability to

inform Federal policy and to represent and communicate Federal strategies and policy

priorities directly to state and local stakeholders (sic). USICH does not administer

programs or have regulatory authority; rather, our tools for advancing good governance

are through innovative collaborations and strategic engagements that drive smart,

efficient systems change among our partners and stakeholders. Our focus on data and

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performance measurements seek to maximize several billions of dollars in targeted

homelessness funding by providing a foundation for evidence-informed practices. (4)

Application: Effect of National Level Policy on Homeless Services in Monterey County, CA

So how has activity at the national level affected local homeless services in Monterey

County, California? Is there even an issue with homelessness in Monterey County? One of the

most obvious local impacts of Federal level activity comes from the improved data collection

about homelessness in response to legislation that mandates a biennial-point-in-time (PIT) count

of homeless people on a specified day in January. The resulting reports on the extent and

demographics of homeless people in a given geographic area are useful for public education,

monitoring progress from count to count, supporting competitive applications for grant funds,

and for making decisions about allocating resources.

In 2015, the point-in-time snapshot counted 2,308 homeless people in Monterey County,

with 1,630 of them unsheltered. People in emergency shelter or transitional housing are

considered “sheltered” homeless. “Unsheltered” homeless are those living on the street, in

abandoned buildings, in vehicles, or encampment areas. The overall count shows a decrease

from the 2,590 in 2013. A follow-up survey recorded sheltered and unsheltered homeless, age,

gender, race/ethnicity, duration of homelessness, first time homelessness, health conditions,

incarceration history and use of services and assistance. It also counted subpopulation data for

chronically homeless, veterans, families, unaccompanied children and transition-age youth

(Applied Survey Research, 2015). All of the different pieces of information are useful in making

plans and executing programs to end homelessness. The data also show the wide variety of

people and circumstances that constitute the local homeless population.

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In 2011, Monterey and San Benito Counties merged their efforts into a single Continuum

of Care (CoC). Motivated by the 2009 HEARTH Act, the CoC developed a new 10 Year Plan to

End Homelessness called Lead Me Home (LMH) (CHSP, 2012). The plan was created with

input from local Counties’ Departments of Social Services, Behavioral Health, Public Health,

Public Housing, the Business and Civic Community, Law Enforcement, Justice, Community-

Based Service providers, affordable housing developers, and local elected officials (CHSP, CoC

Charter, 2012, p. 2). The LMH CoC is a year-round collective planning body of stakeholders,

coordinating community strategies, policies, and activities toward ending homelessness (CHSP,

CoC Charter, 2012, p. 3).

Another impact of the Federal legislation for homelessness is that only one entity in a

CoC can submit the annual application for CoC grant funds. The intent is for the local CoC to

prepare a regionally coordinated input that will result in more competitive applications, targeted

at priority needs of the local area. The Leadership Council of the CoC designates the

organization that takes the lead on submitting the annual application to HUD for CoC grants.

The choice for this role in the LMH CoC is a non-profit organization, the Coalition of Homeless

Services Providers (CHSP) (CHSP, CoC Charter, 2012). The choice of a non-profit in the lead

role is the most frequent choice nationwide, and of those, most are human service nonprofit

organizations vice faith-based nonprofits and church organizations (Valero & Jang, 2016).

The annual grant competition is complicated and requires a high level of coordination

and data reporting, so having an experienced organization lead the effort increases the likelihood

of success. The application includes sections on CoC engagement and coordination, coordinated

entry, process documentation, project capacity, performance measures, Homeless Management

Information System (HMIS) implementation, bed coverage, point-in-time count, strategic

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planning objectives, CoC policies and other written standards. In 2015, CHSP reviewed 14

renewal applications from transitional housing programs, rental assistance programs, and

permanent housing programs and assisted the applicants in meeting HUD guidelines for

submission (CHSP, Impact, 2016). On March 8, 2016, HUD awarded $1, 870, 864 in initial

funding to programs in the LMH CoC geographic area. (CHSP, 2016).

The planning, coordination, and educational outreach activities of the LMH CoC often

result in formal documents to establish policy and inform network participants. Often, the

documents are required to be prepared and shown as evidence to HUD that the local CoC is

complying with the directives in the HEARTH Act and CoC Interim Rule. Table 1 lists some of

the documents.

Table 1. Homelessness Services Documents

2009 HEARTH Act US Congress

2012 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness

Lead Me Home

LMH CoC

2012 LMH CoC Governance Charter,

Policies and Procedures

LMH CoC

May 2012 Homeless Management Information

System (HMIS) Governance,

Policies and Procedures

CHSP

February 2016 Monterey County Homeless

Services Resource Guide

CHSP and Community

Action Partnership (CAP)

September 2016 Coordinated Assessment and

Referral System (CARS) Policies

and Procedures Manual

CHSP

Ongoing http://www.chspmontereycounty.org

Various updates, training material,

documents

CHSP

CHSP: Coalition of Homeless Service Providers. LMH CoC: Lead Me Home Continuum of Care

Another result of the HEARTH Act is it is forcing the use of centralized data tools for

improving the effectiveness of homeless networks and for standardizing and improving quality

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of data collection and reporting. For example, establishing an HMIS is mandatory if a CoC

wants to compete for certain types of federal funds (CHSP, HMIS, 2012). Each CoC is

responsible for selecting an HMIS software solution that complies with HUD’s data collection,

management, and reporting standards. Through their HMIS, a community can collect

information on programs serving the homeless and use the data as part of annual needs analyses

and to establish funding priorities. Coordinated entry processes are required in each CoC.

Coordinated entry is a consistent, community wide process to match people experiencing

homelessness to community resources that are the best fit for their situation. People are entered

into the network at one participating location and do not have to travel to multiple locations

seeking assistance. Participating programs agree to accept referrals based on priority need

calculated from a standard triage assessment survey (CHSP, CARS, 2016).

The HEARTH Act incorporates performance oversight by the U.S. Congress by requiring

the Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) from HUD on the extent and nature of

homelessness in the United States. The AHAR draws on data reported in HMIS and in the

annual CoC grant applications (HUD, 2016).

All three of these requirements, HMIS, coordinated entry, and AHAR, represent

centralized direction and guidelines, with decentralized execution that allows tailoring at the

local level, but mandates enough standardization to allow meaningful nation-wide reports and

comparisons.

Application: Homelessness Planning and Collaboration

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A key idea of NPS is to seek the public interest by building a collective, shared notion of

the public interest and creating shared responsibility (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2015, p. 42).

Another key idea of NPS is to serve citizens, not customers.

The public interest is the result of a dialogue about shared values rather than the

aggregation of individual self-interests. Therefore, public servants do not merely respond

to the demands of “customers”, but rather focus on building relationships of trust and

collaboration with and among citizens. (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2015, p. 42)

NPS emphasizes teamwork and advocacy and interacting with citizen groups as well as being

responsive to elected officials and legislation on how to develop and execute policy. By creating

the USICH and the CoC program, the HEARTH Act shows itself to be an example of NPS ideas

in a current response to an important public administration issue: preventing and ending

homelessness.

In Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness, USICH

leads its list of objectives with the theme of “Increase leadership, collaboration, and civic

engagement”:

Objective 1: Provide and promote collaborative leadership at all levels of government and

across all sectors to inspire and energize Americans to commit to preventing and ending

homelessness.

Objective 2: Strengthen the capacity of public and private organizations by increasing

knowledge about collaboration, homelessness, and successful interventions to prevent

and end homelessness.

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The way the national strategic plan was created honored the NPS approach to public

administration. Input was gathered from over 750 regional and state interagency councils, from

mayors, congressional staff, local leaders, advocates, people who experienced homelessness, and

from many more. An interactive website gathered comments on the plans themes from the

public (USICH, Opening Doors, 2015). Clearly USICH considers itself a facilitator of a network

of concerned and knowledgeable partners, working together to determine and share best

practices to achieve shared goals. As President Barack Obama wrote in the 2010 edition of

Opening Doors:

And preventing and ending homelessness is not just a Federal issue or responsibility. It

also will require the skill and talents of people outside of Washington—where the best

ideas are most often found. Tremendous work is going on at the State and local level—

where States, local governments, nonprofits, faith-based and community organizations,

and the private and philanthropic sectors are responsible for some of the best thinking,

innovation, and evidence-based approaches to ending homelessness. These State and

local stakeholders must be active partners with the Federal Government, and their work

will inform and guide our efforts at the national level.

This is New Public Service in action.

By design, each local Continuum of Care is a combination of government, non-profit,

private, faith-based, and church organizations working together to address various facets of

providing services to the homeless and eventually ending homelessness. The LMH CoC has a

process for outreaching to the community, creating partnerships with key stakeholders including

mainstream agencies, and conducting annual strategic planning. They provide a large amount of

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information on the CHSP website, www.chspmontereycounty.org, making it easy for a member

of the public to learn more about their activities.

Conclusion

The response to homelessness by the HEARTH Act, USICH, and the LMH CoC illustrate

the principles of New Public Service as a collaborative effort between government and citizens

to address a difficult issue where public values are in play. An integrated approach to allocate

available housing services under specialized government programs to the most needy homeless is

a better way to operate than each provider acting alone. The Monterey County-San Benito

County LMH CoC is doing what it can with the limited resources in the area under the targeted

grant programs that serve specific subcategories of homeless people. However, the most

underserved homeless people are those without a special category (substance abuse, HIV, mental

illness, disability, veteran, mother with dependent children, youth) who are working or willing to

work or have some income, but can’t find affordable housing in the area where the job is! So,

the housing needs of “the hidden homeless” need to be solved through more efforts to create

affordable housing. Affordable housing is not a homeless service, but its absence in a

community will ultimately lead to more people who are homeless and who don’t qualify for

services under targeted programs. The public perception that all homeless have “something

wrong with them” should continue to be countered with data that accurately portrays the

categories of homeless.

Housing the homeless is an ongoing effort and more public discussion, more education,

more sensing and guiding community values, more exchange of facts about the myriad of

programs available, the gaps in services, and what can be done to add resources and adjust policy

to end homelessness is needed.

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Recommendation

Homelessness is a tough topic and communities need to keep talking about it and taking

action on many fronts to prevent and end homelessness. It is an example of an area of concern

that can’t be solved by government alone, or by the private sector alone, or by the non-

profit/philanthropic sector alone. All of the elements of the community must come together to

find and implement solutions.

As Katherine Theoni, executive officer of the Coalition of Homeless Services Providers

says, the greatest obstacle to ending homelessness in Monterey County is the lack of affordable

housing. “That realization is sinking in. We are working with county government and various

jurisdictions to start that work, but how we get from here to there is complicated, expensive, and

time consuming. And what we can do in the meantime is also critical to make sure that we’re

able to provide services to as many people as we possibly can in this community” (Evers, 2016).

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References

Applied Survey Research. (2015). Monterey county homeless census & survey. Watsonville, CA:

Author. Retrieved from http://www.appliedsurveyresearch.org

Berg, S. (2013). Policy briefs: The HEARTH act. Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development

and Research, 15(1), 317-323.

Coalition of Homeless Services Providers. (2016). Coordinated assessment and referral system

(CARS) policies & procedures manual. Monterey, CA: Author. Retrieved from

http://www.chspmontereycounty.org

Coalition of Homeless Services Providers. (2016, March 14). HUD awards almost 2 million

dollars for Monterey/San Benito county homeless programs. Retrieved on September 28,

2016 from http://www.chspmontereycounty.org/news/

Coalition of Homeless Services Providers. (2016). Impact: Highlights of our work during 2015

and 2016. Retrieved on September 28, 2016 from

http://www.chspmontereycounty.org/impact/

Coalition of Homeless Service Providers. (2012). Lead me home: The game plan for housing

homeless people in Monterey and San Benito counties. Monterey, CA: Author. Retrieved

from http://chspmontereycounty.org

Coalition of Homeless Services Providers. (2012). Monterey & San Benito counties’ CoC

governance charter, policies and procedures. Monterey, CA: Author. Retrieved from

http://www.chspmontereycounty.org

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Coalition of Homeless Services Providers. (2016). Monterey county homeless services resource

guide. Monterey, CA: Author. Retrieved from http://www.chspmontereycounty.org

Denhardt, J. V., & Denhardt, R. B. (2015). The new public service: Serving not steering (4th ed.)

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Evers, J. (2016, April 19). Monterey county homelessness: Trying to define the problem.

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Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing: Continuum of Care Program;

Interim Final Rule, 24 CFR Part 578, 77 Fed. Reg. 147 (July 31, 2012)

Jang, H. S., & Valero, J. N. (2016). The role of nonprofit organizations in homeless policy

networks: A research note. Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research.

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U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. (2016). An introductory guide to the

annual homeless assessment report. Washington, D.C.: Author. Retrieved from

https://www.hudexchange.info/

U. S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. (2015). Fiscal year 2015 performance and

accountability report. Washington, D. C.: Author. Retrieved from https://www.usich.gov

U. S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. (2016). Fiscal year 2017 congressional budget

justification. Washington, D. C.: Author. Retrieved from https://www.usich.gov

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prevent and end homelessness. (as amended 2015). Washington, D. C.: Author. Retrieved

from https://www.usich.gov