The Colorado Springs Gazette final

County plan to cut homelessness now focuses on measurable goals

Group to roll out updated strategy Friday

BY DEBBIE KELLEY debbie.kelley@gazette.com

A key difference in a new strategic plan to eradicate homelessness in El Paso County is its focus on measuring how well ideas are working. “The board wanted to make sure it’s more action- oriented and accountable, and measurable objectives are being evaluated for improvements,” said Evan Caster, manager of homeless initiatives with Community Health Partnership, the administering agency for the Pikes

Peak Continuum of Care.

“We want to be able to see what progress we’re making.”

The Pikes Peak Continuum of Care, the county’s overarching group working on eliminating homelessness, last week approved a three-year strategy that sets goals to essentially lessen the number of people entering homelessness and the time they’re in the system, and improve those moving back into

housing. The directive also includes better tracking of the effectiveness of local programs in helping homeless people secure housing and other needs.

The updated plan will roll out at Friday’s fall membership meeting for 425 members of the Pikes Peak Continuum of Care, which consists of service providers, advocates, government officials and residents.

The county’s January head count of sheltered and unsheltered homeless people has served as the community’s primary measure of system performance, Caster said, but now, “There are a lot of ways we’re looking at homelessness.”

The document’s three goals are to make homelessness rare by reducing the number of people who become homeless, make homelessness brief by decreasing the duration of time spent in an emergency shelter or on the street, and make homelessness nonrecurring by improving outcomes.

It was created using methods from the National Alliance to

End Homelessness to identify areas of concern, as well as input from public meetings and online feedback.

The county’s last strategic plan was enacted in 2016 with a similar agenda but did not yield useful data on performance, Caster said.

“There wasn’t a lot of follow up and tracking of measures in the 2016 plan,” he said.

To intensify the work, each goal has specific targets. For example, the Point in Time Survey conducted in January 2020 showed 358 unsheltered people on the streets. The goal is to reduce that by 10%, decreasing the number to fewer than 320 people.

The plan calls for community collaboration in many of the identified methods to accomplish the goals.

For example, a homelessness diversion program — an intervention strategy to immediately help people who have lost their homes to prevent them from ending up on the streets or in shelters — could be started using a “flexible community fund for diversion,” with money from the city, private donors and grants, according to the plan.

Improving training, beefing up communication among service agencies, developing a more linear path from the points of entering and exiting the system in the least amount of time possible, and increasing use of transitional housing are among the steps.

Another new focus, Caster said, is reducing racial inequities, including decreasing first-time homelessness by 25% among Black, Indigenous and people of color.

Work will include tracking and analyzing homeless data by race and ethnicity, creating a report on racial inequities, expanding the entry system for services and assessing housing needs, and adding marginalized populations to decision making on funding.

Keeping track of people after they return to housing and regain self-sufficiency is another facet that will show how the community is advancing in addressing the issue, Caster said.

A new data dashboard, at https://www.ppchp.org/ homelessness/data, will help keep the public updated, he added.

The new strategic plan will “help the community really look at the narrative story of homelessness in the community and dig into the ways of how the Continuum of Care is accountable,” Caster said.

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2021-10-27T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-10-27T07:00:00.0000000Z

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The Gazette, Colorado Springs