The Fort Worth City Council voted to dissolve the Fort Worth Advisory Commission on Ending Homelessness at its March 20 meeting. However, the city’s homelessness effort is getting its largest focus to date, thanks to a realignment of community governance.
The Continuum of Care (CoC) board of directors is the local planning body that includes organizations working on homelessness in Tarrant and Parker counties. It distributes about $12 million annually in Housing and Urban Development funding to address homelessness.
Together, the Tarrant County Homeless Coalition and the Continuum of Care board set up a group to look at how services for the homeless are delivered in Fort Worth, Arlington, the rest of Tarrant County and Parker County. The process resulted in adding a Leadership Council of the mayors of Fort and Arlington, county judges in Tarrant and Parker counties, and the chairman of the Mayors Council of Tarrant County.
The reorganized and newly populated Membership Council will consist of 26 members.
Five members will represent their municipalities and seven positions will be reserved for executive directors of key community partners in health care, mental health services and education.
Fourteen positions are reserved for business leaders, neighborhood leaders, affordable housing developers, consumers, service providers, faith-based leaders and others who will be appointed by the Leadership Council or nominated by the Membership Council.
The new structure allows the CoC board to move from compliance-based decisions to focus on broad community strategy, including allocations.
The elected officials are not involved in the actual, final allocations, but they are involved in setting policy and approving strategic plans. This particular change was made to ensure that elected officials have more oversight of the homeless system. Some current members of the Fort Worth advisory commission will also be appointed to ensure city representation on the re-organized CoC.
As a result, the advisory commission is no longer needed.
Tammy McGhee, executive director of the Tarrant County Homeless Coalition, said this is a significant milestone.
“It demonstrates the city’s commitment to aligning the community governance around planning for homelessness,” she said. “In 2017, local public officials, the CoC board, and the Tarrant County Homeless Coalition came together to discuss how our respective entities could better align our strategies and resources, and pursue a cooperative, coordinated and collaborative strategy to more effectively address the challenges of homelessness.”
The role of the CoC is to:
– Understand the size and scope of the problem and to design effective strategies and solutions to address the problem.
– Promote funding for efforts by nonprofit providers, for-profit entities and state and local governments to quickly rehouse homeless people while minimizing the trauma and dislocation caused to them and to communities by homelessness.
– Promote access to and effective use of mainstream programs by homeless people.
– Optimize self-sufficiency among homeless people.
“The Fort Worth Advisory Commission on Ending Homelessness and Directions Home have done incredible work over the last 10 years. As we look to the future and continue our goal of making homelessness rare, short-term and non-recurring in Fort Worth, it’s critical that we are strategic and efficient,” said Mayor Betsy Price.
“The current system has multiple boards dealing with homelessness issues and overseeing numerous sources of funding. The restructuring of the Continuum of Care will allow local elected leaders to have more input and align various funding streams, ultimately maximizing the impact.”
Among the first tasks of the CoC will be to create an area-wide strategic plan to end homelessness. This plan will effectively replace Directions Home as the guiding document for ending homelessness.
Directions Home was established as part of the Mayor’s Commission on Homelessness in 2005 under then-Mayor Mike Moncrief. It was part of a 10-year plan for ending chronic homelessness. In 2012, under Mayor Betsy Price, the City Council repealed the resolution and created the Fort Worth Advisory Commission on Ending Homelessness.
“The CoC board of directors is extremely excited about these changes and the level of engagement and passion of all the participants in this year-long process,” McGhee said. “They have committed to effectuating this transition within the next 90 days and are looking forward to working more closely and collaboratively with public officials and communities to create integrated strategies to prevent and end homelessness, and to provide coordination among the numerous organizations and initiatives that serve the homeless population.”
This decision comes on the heels of the county homeless coalition recently receiving fiscal year 2017 Tarrant County/Fort Worth/Arlington CoC funding from HUD. The amount of $12,259,386 is an increase of $935,503 from fiscal year 2016.
HUD CoC funds support 36 projects operated by 12 nonprofit and governmental agencies in Tarrant County. It will primarily fund housing programs for the homeless, including permanent supportive housing and rapid rehousing.
This includes two new projects, two project expansions, and 32 project renewals. In 2017, 3,077 homeless people were served by this funding.
“HUD’s Continuum of Care funding provides vital resources to many programs and initiatives that have proven effective in the fight to end homelessness in our community. The increased CoC funding is a testament to the great work our city, county and nonprofit partners are engaged in,” Price said.
“Affordable, supportive and stable housing is the foundation for economic security. When we move the needle on ending homelessness, everyone in the community sees the positive impact,” Price said.
Along with supporting housing programs, the homeless coalition received three grants to support efforts to coordinate community response to homelessness.
“TCHC is incredibly grateful that we are in a position to bring this money into our community to help house the most vulnerable living on the streets,” McGhee said. “It is a privilege to serve so many agencies doing such impactful work each and every day. And although this grant award is significant, TCHC and our partners need the community’s continued support.”
Nationally, HUD awarded a record $1.95 billion in grants to nearly 7,600 homeless assistance programs, with Texas receiving over $88 million.