The Ad Hoc Committee on Homelessness began meeting in October 1999. An ordinance from the Toledo City Council set out the purpose of the Ad Hoc Committee as to “advise and recommend the best practice of a comprehensive, coordinated and inclusive approach for homeless providers and funders of homeless services to maximize and leverage existing resources so as to strategically address the problems of homelessness in the city of Toledo.”

After hearing testimony from clients, providers, funders, participants in the HUD Continuum of Care process, and others, the Ad Hoc Committee recommends that Toledo align its efforts around the following community goal regarding homelessness:

To end and prevent homelessness by increasing our community’s capacity to address root causes through sustainable systemic change involving coordinated decision making, resource development, and funding.

In order to accomplish this goal, the Committee recommends the following strategic actions:

1. Develop a rigorous, thorough, and ongoing process for collecting and disseminating information about the homeless and the homelessness service system in Toledo, resulting in three distinct data sets:
   a) A point-in-time analysis of the current extent of the problem and the current investment (of funds and services) in addressing the problem.
   b) Ongoing tracking of how many people are using homelessness services, at what locations, and for what purposes.
   c) Ongoing collection and sharing of case management data to serve clients in a more holistic, comprehensive manner.

2. Develop a strategic plan for comprehensive services that end and prevent homelessness in Toledo.

3. Establish a service provider committee to design and implement a Service Provider Capacity Development Plan that will enable them to deliver more effective services on a more coordinated and efficient basis.

4. Create a “triage” arrangement at the point of client intake to ensure easy access for clients and accurate, timely, coordinated services.

5. Strengthen follow-up services and permanent housing options in order to end recurrent episodes of homelessness and repeated cycling of individuals through the service system and/or the jail.

6. Facilitate individual and collective funding and resource development, with an emphasis on identifying new sources of funding, in order to pursue all previous recommendations.

Readers will get a much better sense of the details and value of each recommendation by reviewing the discussion of these strategic actions on pages 8-10 of the full report.

In order to implement and accomplish the strategic actions to reach the community goal, the Committee makes the following recommendations for the establishment of a community governance structure:

• The governing body should be designed as a cross-organization collaborative involving leading representatives of clients, providers, and funders of homelessness services; local government agencies; the business community; and other major local institutions (such as the hospital, education system, justice system, and others).
• The cross-organization collaborative should have paid staff or consultant support to devote full-time effort to the tasks required to accomplish the action recommendations.
• The cross-organization collaborative will need start-up funding of approximately $75,000 - $100,000 to establish and support the collaborative as it develops a business plan and related budget and begins implementing the strategic actions.
• A host organization will need to be identified to serve as the fiduciary for the budget and the official employer/contractor for the staff support.

In order to ensure that immediate and ongoing action occurs to implement these recommendations, the Ad Hoc Committee is willing to remain involved in this process to accomplish the following tasks:

• nominate to City Council the first group of individuals to serve on the cross-organization collaborative.
• outline the necessary contents of the business plan (such as timelines and budgets for the strategic actions) that will need to be developed by the cross-organization collaborative.
• develop a list of potential host organizations for the governing body that have a confirmed interest in being the host.
• transition all responsibility for the recommendations from the Ad Hoc Committee to this community governance body after the above tasks are completed.

Finally, we strongly recommend that the Ad Hoc Committee on Homelessness be re-convened twice in the coming year to attend open meetings with the Housing, Neighborhood Development, Health and Community Relations Committee of the Toledo City Council to review the progress being made on this report’s recommendations.

The Collaboratory for Community Support
7423 Hickory Ridge Drive
Ypsilanti, MI 48197-9487
Phone: 734-623-4952
www.thecollaboratory.us
e-mail: jcrubicon@aol.com

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