MINNEAPOLIS, HENNEPIN COUNTY MINNESOTA. "On the issue of homelessness, there is a magic moment in this country," said Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak standing before a crowd of supporters at the Plymouth Congregational Church to announce the beginning of a 100-day Commission to develop a city-county 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness. "We can do this," he said.

United States Interagency Council on Homelessness Executive Director Philip Mangano, who served as keynote speaker for the event, told the group, "We know what works now. We know how to get the job done. We couldn't say that five years ago, seven years ago, or ten years ago."

Also present at the announcement were Minnesota Housing Finance Agency Commissioner Tim Marx; Director for Ending Long-Term Homelessness Laura Kadwell; Minneapolis City Council Member Gary Schiff; Hennepin County Sheriff Patrick McGowan; United States Department of Housing and Urban Development Field Office Director Dexter Sidney; Minneapolis Public Housing Authority Deputy Executive Director Tom Streitz; Homeless Against Homelessness Advocate Terry Goude; Council Regional Coordinator Daryl Hernandez, and Council Special Advisor Janna Jahn.

The Plan, which is being developed under the sponsorship of Mayor Rybak and County Commissioner Gail Dorfman, will focus on families, single adults and youth. Four co-chairs - Attorney Mike Ciresi, Plymouth Congregational Church Pastor Jim Gertmenian, City Council Member Gary Schiff, and Commissioner Dorfman - will ensure representation from four key stakeholder groups: city and county government, and the faith and business communities. 70 individuals from the community have been appointed to serve on the Commission. "We are not coming together to study the issue of homelessness," said City-County Homelessness Coordinator Cathy ten Broeke. "We've done that. We are coming together to create the strategies and tactics to end homelessness."

Minneapolis and Hennepin County represent the 212th commitment in the nation to commit to a 10-Year Plan. Also on March 28, two other communities - San Mateo County, California and Buffalo/Erie County, New York - marked the end of their planning process by publicly unveiling their 10-Year Plans (see related stories this issue).

Following the kick-off event, members of the Commission participated in a working session led by Director Mangano, who presented Good to Better to Great: Innovations in 10-Year Plans to End Chronic Homelessness in Your Community. The Council toolkit synthesizes the elements of 10-Year Plans around the country that are enabling them to achieve results.

Pictured here at the most recent Project Homeless Connect event in Minneapolis and Hennepin County are, from left to right, Director Kadwell, Ms. ten Broeke, Commissioner Dorfman, Family Housing Fund Executive Director Tom Fulton, Mayor Rybak, and Director Mangano.

SAN MATEO, CALIFORNIA. Two County Supervisors have spearheaded a year-long planning effort that brought together 150 people from the public and private sector to create the 10-Year Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness in San Mateo County. The Plan, called Housing Our People Effectively (HOPE), was unveiled to the community in a ceremony on March 28 following formal endorsement by the San Mateo, California County Board of Supervisors.

On hand for the ceremony were Co-chairs San Mateo County Board of Supervisors President Jerry Hill and Board Member Mark Church. They were joined by County Human Services Agency Interim Director Glen H. Brooks, Jr., Redwood City Mayor Barbara Pierce, BRIDGE Housing Corporation Executive Vice President Lydia N. Tan, Samaritan House Executive Director Kitty Lopez, and United States Interagency Council on Homelessness Regional Coordinator Eduardo Cabrera. Melva Johnson shared her experiences as a parent who formerly experienced homelessness.

The HOPE plan is oriented around two strategies: housing and prevention. "Too often, solutions to the problem of homelessness are applied as a Band-Aid once people are on the street. The HOPE Plan will work on prevention so that families will never have to experience a night without shelter," said Supervisor Hill.

Specifically, by 2015, the Plan calls for:

• 7,900 individual and family households in San Mateo County who have been homeless or at severe risk of homelessness due to extremely low incomes, chronic disabilities and/or other health or special needs, will secure and maintain safe, permanent, accessible, and where needed, supportive housing.
• 4,300 individual and family households will receive short-term assistance to secure or maintain housing.

"The impact of homelessness on the community in terms of the cost of public services, both emergency and on-going, is significant," said Supervisor Church. Those resources can be more effectively used to help transition people from being tax-users to tax contributors, which will have the net effect of improving the quality of life of the county as a whole."

In addition to housing opportunities, the plan will prevent and end homelessness by delivering timely, flexible services to support stability and independence; include system performance standards to track progress and report results; and develop long-term leadership and community will to prevent and end homelessness.

Council Regional Coordinator Cabrera noted the Plan's call to cultivate community champions and leadership, and the commitment to establishing a pilot multi- disciplinary homeless outreach team. "Both of these innovations are emerging best practices that are getting the job done in places as far as Washington D.C., Atlanta, and Dallas, and as close to home as San Diego and San Francisco. It will get the job done here."

Shown here at the ceremony from the left are San Mateo County Housing Director Duane Bay, Supervisor Church, Supervisor Hill, and Mr. Cabrera. (Photo provided courtesy of Moira Birss of the San Mateo County Housing Leadership Council.)

March 28 marked the day that Minneapolis/Hennepin County and Buffalo/Erie County also made 10-Year Plan announcements (see related stories this issue).

BUFFALO AND ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK. Over 50 community stakeholders gathered on the steps of Buffalo City Hall to celebrate the release of the Buffalo-Erie County 10-Year Plan, PRISM: A Community Solution to Homelessness. PRISM stands for Prevention, Resources, and Independence through Housing, Services, and Maintenance. "No one should be homeless, and addressing long-term homelessness is a step - a big, ambitious step - in the right direction," stated Homeless Alliance Executive Director Bill O'Connell, whose organization coordinated the planning effort. "We are talking about a community-wide commitment to making change."

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown called the Plan a reorientation of the homeless service community. He commended the City of Buffalo for "ending, not merely relieving, homelessness." City commissioner of Community Services Tanya Perrin-Johnson and Erie County Department of Social Services Commissioner Michael Weiner were among the many who gathered to support the new Plan.

Buffalo and Erie County's 10-Year Plan is the product of a two-year planning process, working in concert with a national movement toward addressing and ending homelessness through strategic community planning. Input from community data collection efforts, local experts, concerned citizens, homeless and formerly homeless persons, and national trends and best practices all contributed to the final Plan.

The Alliance kicked of its PRISM Project with a large- scale, 24-hour survey of over 1,000 at-risk, currently, and formerly homes individuals. PRISM Project Coordinator Katie McHugh Connolly explained, "The voices of homeless and at-risk persons grounded the development of the plan, and the Alliance is committed to carrying this input through the implementation of the PRISM plan."

LOS ANGELES COUNTY, CALIFORNIA. On March 27, 2006, just days after announcing a countywide $100 million homelessness prevention proposal, The Los Angeles County Chief Administrative Office co-convened about 40 representatives from local, state, and federal agencies throughout Los Angeles County to discuss ways to maximize the use of Federal programs to better serve homeless citizens. The forum was hosted by the Federal Region IX Interagency Council on Homelessness and is the fifth in an ongoing series.

Region IX Council Director Eduardo Cabrera said, "Our work here today is to explore ways in which we can work together to increase access to Federal mainstream benefit programs for homeless and chronically homeless clients, to focus on solutions and results." Region IX's Interagency Council on Homelessness, which mirrors the federal United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, includes representatives from multiple federal agencies engaged in providing housing, programs and services for people experiencing homelessness.

The forum gave local agency representatives an opportunity to share with state and federal agencies issues and challenges to assisting people experiencing homelessness. Topics during the discussion ranged from Section 8, Social Security Disability eligibility determination, transitional housing guidelines, and service issues relating to undocumented immigrants and youth.

Previous forums have been held in San Jose, Salinas, Sacramento, and Oakland.

Forum Facilitator Dennis Stewart, Regional Director of the United States Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service encouraged attendees to be creative, "Let's do the best we can to find creative solutions as we remember that Los Angeles has the highest number of homeless of any large metropolitan area in the country."

Federal agencies represented in the March 27 forum included the United States Departments of Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, and Agriculture, as well as the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration.

WASHINGTON, DC. A new study from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development(HUD) helps explain why some people leave "permanent" supportive housing. The study, Predicting Staying In or Leaving Permanent Supportive Housing That Serves Homeless People with Serious Mental Illness, provides some of the answers as to why formerly homeless people with mental illness leave permanent housing and what happens to them afterwards.

The study examines the experience of 943 permanent supportive housing residents in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania during the years 2001 to 2005. The characteristics of their permanent housing, circumstances of leaving, and the post-permanent housing careers of leavers were identified. The study also focused on the impact of factors associated with leaving permanent housing and post-permanent housing careers, such as the length of the period of homelessness and the degree and nature of disability. The capability to merge Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) data and administrative data in Philadelphia made possible a viable strategy to track over time a highly elusive population - formerly homeless people with mental illness who had left permanent supportive housing.

Three-fifths of those who left HUD-supported permanent housing left voluntarily, either to pursue better housing or to move away from problems they were experiencing in the permanent supportive housing. The remaining two-fifths left involuntarily, having been asked to leave because they violated program rules or because they were adjudged by staff incapable of maintaining themselves in the permanent supportive housing environment. Those who left under positive circumstances were far more likely to move to more stable and independent housing, to stay in that housing over time, and to use fewer mental health services post-departure than those who left more negatively.

WASHINGTON, DC. "The changes we are making in the disability process will greatly improve the quality of service that Social Security provides to millions of disabled workers and their families," said Social Security Administration Commissioner Jo Anne Barnhart. "From the beginning, I have been committed to developing a disability determination process that provides the level of service the American people expect and deserve." Commissioner Barnhart has issued a final rule establishing a new disability determination process which will shorten decision times and pay benefits to people who are obviously disabled much earlier in the process.

The new process uses 21st century technology and creates accountability at every step. "It reflects my goals of improving the accuracy, consistency and fairness of our process and ensuring that we make the right decision as early in the process as possible," said Commissioner Barnhart.

The new disability process provides for:

• A quick disability determination process for those who are obviously disabled. Favorable decisions would be made in such cases within 20 days after the claim is received by the state disability determination agency.
• A new Medical-Vocational Expert System (MVES) to enhance the expertise needed to make accurate and timely decisions. The MVES will be composed of a Medical-Vocational Expert Unit and a national network of medical, psychological and vocational experts who meet qualification standards established by the Commissioner.
• A new position -- the Federal Reviewing Official -- that will review state agency determinations upon the request of the claimant. This will eliminate the reconsideration step of the current appeals process.
• Retention of the right to request a de novo hearing and decision from an Administrative Law Judge if the claimant disagrees with the decision of the Federal Reviewing Official.
• Closing the record after the Administrative Law Judge issues a decision, with provision for certain good cause exceptions to this rule.
• A new body -- the Decision Review Board -- to review and correct decisional errors and ensure consistent adjudication at all levels of the disability determination process. The current Appeals Council will be phased out gradually.

The new rule results from a collaborative effort begun in September 2003 following a discussion between President Bush and Commissioner Barnhart. Since then, Commissioner Barnhart and Agency staff have collected input and feedback from interested groups and individuals including claimants, beneficiaries, representatives from the legal and medical professions, Administrative Law Judges, Agency employees, members of Congress and their staff, and the general public.

Social Security plans to phase in the new process on a region-by-region basis beginning with the Boston Region this summer. The Boston Region is comprised of the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont. Social Security plans to continue to meet with interested parties as the new process is rolled out. For more information about the new regulation visit the website. For more information about Social Security and homelessness, visit Service to the Homeless webpage.

With this issue of the e-news, we continue our coverage of excerpts from statements made by public sector leaders ending chronic homelessness.

The following Words of the Week come from San Mateo, California County Supervisor Mark Church. Supervisor Church serves as Leadership Committee Co-chair of San Mateo's 10-Year Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness, called Housing Our People Effectively (HOPE).

. . . Five years ago when I was installed as a member of the Board, I said: 'We can eradicate homelessness provided we make the commitment to do so, and provided it is recognized as the national issue that it is.' And now, five years later, we are seeing an emerging political will at both the federal and state levels to end homelessness. At the federal level, the Interagency Council on Homelessness was created to assist communities across the country to develop plans to end homelessness. The creation of this new federal agency is a huge step forward, because this is the first time any political will has been expressed at the national level to do something about ending homelessness.

. . . In the past, the county and its providers have acted without an established, coordinated plan that includes the entire community. The Plan we have before us today is the result of a coordinated effort involving all stakeholders. This Plan was developed after nearly a one-year effort involving representatives from all segments of our community - business, health and social service providers, clients, law enforcement, government, education, labor, developers and many more.

. . . Every resident in this county deserves a home and a chance at a better life. The goal is to end homelessness in 10 years by ensuring that accessible housing with support services where needed is available to those who are the greatest in need. We believe that is an achievable goal.

WITH THIS ISSUE, e-News continues its focus on elements of the Title V federal surplus property and opportunities to secure resources to assist persons experiencing homelessness under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.

Under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, federal surplus real estate -land and buildings - can be transferred to eligible non-federal applicants for purposes of homeless assistance. The transfer of properties identified as "Suitable and Available" are listed each Friday in the Federal Register. The Interagency Council's web site includes a link to the latest weekly Federal Register notice. Under "Funding," look for the link to the Title V notice.

Applicants for federal surplus property identify how they intend to utilize the property based on the needs of their communities. Under a new policy, which is expected to take effect this spring, local governments and community organizations will soon be able to use federal surplus property for permanent supportive housing. To date, the use of federal surplus property was restricted to homeless shelters, transitional programs, and services.