2018 National Conference on Ending Homelessness and Capitol Hill Day

This year’s National Alliance to End Homelessness Annual Conference in Washington DC held July 22-25th offered an inspired and hopeful view of current efforts to end homelessness, and plenty of opportunity to learn what’s working in communities across the country.

A number of high-profile elected officials turned out for the conference, and Senator Corey Booker delivered a moving keynote speech, underscoring the importance of our work with our country’s most vulnerable populations.

Areas of focus included: racial inequalities, challenges of ending homelessness in rural areas, and ways to advance our efforts to end homelessness among adult individuals. CCEH’s Brian Roccapriore, Sarah Fox, and Mary Ann Haley presented on Connecticut’s successes and strategies, highlighting work in the areas of domestic violence, chronic homelessness, schools, shelter diversion, and family mediation. A Way Home America convened HUD Youth Homeless Demonstration Project grantees, including the Connecticut Balance of State. Connecticut’s own Natalie Garcia from the Youth Action Hub presented on work in our state to end youth homelessness.

Continue Learning

The NAEH conference was packed full of information and best practices. Here are a few ways to gain knowledge from this year’s conference.

National Alliance to End Homelessness

• Conference Presentations will be posted on the NAEH Resources page.
• Conference Key Takeaways blog post by Steve Berg.

CCEH Workshop Summaries

Below are summaries from CCEH highlighting some of the conference’s best sessions on cutting-edge issues of interest in efforts to end homelessness.

• Capitol Hill Day
  On Wednesday, July 25th Connecticut providers held meetings with Connecticut’s Congressional representatives on Capitol Hill to highlight our statewide effort to end homelessness, share our client’s success stories, and advocate for federal homeless response resources.
• Home, Together The Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness
  The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) recently released Home, Together: The Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness.
• Racism & Homelessness Track
  The conference held three sessions on race and racism in homelessness. These sessions were powerful, impactful, and important to the work we do. This article provides the key takeaways from those sessions.
• Working Together Domestic Violence and Homelessness Services Coordination
  Ending homelessness among survivors of domestic violence (DV) requires effective collaboration between the DV system and the mainstream homelessness system. This session highlighted the national best practices for how regions are working together to overcome the challenges of coordinating the two systems, and specifically highlighted the system in place in Connecticut.
  
• Improving Cross-Program Outcomes Through Education and Homeless Service Collaboration
  Partnerships with schools and homeless service providers often allow for faster identification of families in housing crises and link to assistance and resources. 
• How Child Welfare Agencies Can Prevent and End Homelessness
  Child Welfare agencies are vital partners in the work to end homelessness. Often these state level agencies operate outside of the realm of homeless service provision and may only interact with these partners in moments of crises. Coordinating responses with child welfare is crucial. 
• How Self Care Can Avert Staff Burnout
  Stress in the workplace for homeless service providers is a real part of the landscape of day to day work. Tactics to reduce stress and ‘un-pack’ stressful situations were highlighted in this session. 
• How Taking A Systems Approach to Ending Homelessness in Rural Areas
  This session was dedicated to expanding Coordinated Entry in rural areas from a COC perspective.
• The More You Know: The Latest Research on What Works for Youth
  This session analysed how well are we assessing youth and how the assessments inform housing interventions. 
• Two (or Three or Four) Is Company: Creating Shared Housing Opportunities
  Shared housing is a strategy to make housing more affordable and to identify more housing units and opportunities.
• From the Street to Home: Best Practices in Housing-Focused Outreach
  Outreach workers are often working in acute crises situations and with multiple community stakeholders each day. Navigating homeless services with an eye on the goal of housing and using data to help inform the work are important components of outreach.
• Lessons Learned from Multiple Workshops
  Key lessons learned from attending a handful of workshops covering coordinated entry, building strategic partnerships, and more.