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Ending Homelessness—Developing Partnerships Between 

HUD Continuums of Care and Disability, Aging and Health 

Services Providers

August 29, 2022 | Webinar Transcript

LORI GERHARD: Hi, everyone! We will get started in a few minutes. I know we 

have folks joining the room right now.

Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. We are going to get started in a few 

minutes. There are a few more people joining today's webinar.

We have a very full agenda. I think we will go ahead and get started. I know there 

are still people going into the room.

Hello, and welcome to the Housing and Services Resource Center's webinar, Ending 

Homelessness – Developing Partnerships between HUD Continuums of Care and 

Disability, Aging and Health Services Providers.

Today we will learn about the HUD continuums of care, or CoC, and coordinated 

entry systems, and hear from colleagues in disability, aging, and health sectors who

are part of continuums of care and the benefits of these partnerships. Thank you so 

much for joining us. Next slide.

My name is Lori Gerhard, and I'm the Director of the Office of Interagency 

Innovation at the U.S. Administration for Community Living, an agency within the 

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. I will be serving as the facilitator for 

today's webinar. It's a privilege to have so many here with us.

Your active involvement with us is essential to have an engaging discussion, and I 

want to thank everyone for introducing themselves using the chat. We continue to 

learn from our presenters and all of you who participate in these webinars. It will 

take all of us working together to achieve our collective goal to increase housing 

stability, and help those who are experiencing, or at risk of, homelessness to be 

able to – or those who may be living in an institution – to obtain and maintain 

stable housing and the services they seek, to fully participate in the community.

Before we start, we would like to address a few housekeeping items. This meeting 

is being recorded, and by staying to participate, you are consenting to the 

recording. All attendees’ microphones have been muted for audio quality. One 

hallmark of our webinars is active participation from attendees. Please frequently 
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use the chat to make comments, and submit your questions anytime in the Q&A 

feature in the Zoom dashboard.

You may email a question or comment to hsrc@acl.hhs.gov.

We have reserved time to address your questions during the session. If you are 

participating via the YouTube livestream, please submit your questions by emailing 

us at hsrc@acl.hhs.gov.

You can also use the chat, or email if you have a technical issue, or comment for 

other attendees. Next slide.

Before we start with the presentations, I would like to tell you about the Housing 

and Services Resource Center, or HSRC. It is a partnership between the U.S.

Department of Health & Human Services, or HHS, and the U.S. Department of 

Housing and Urban development, also referred to as HUD.

Every state and community has a number of agencies, organizations, and programs 

helping people access housing, and supportive services, but the housing and 

services systems are often siloed. Stronger cooperation between these systems 

would enable more people with disabilities, older adults, and people experiencing 

homelessness to achieve housing stability, live with dignity and independence in the 

community, and avoid homelessness and costly institutional care.

The Housing and Services Resources Center, HSRC, brings together our federal 

agencies and technical assistance providers to cultivate, strengthen, and support 

cross-sector partnerships in communities, states, and across the federal 

government that bring together housing, homelessness services, aging and 

disability services, health, including physical health, behavioral and mental health, 

and public health services.

After the webinar, we hope you will look at the HSRC website at 

acl.gov/housingandservices.

At the end of the webinar, we will share an email address so you can be in touch 

with us and get periodic updates. Next slide.

The HSRC serves many sectors: each with its own unique terms, policies, and 

practices. Today's webinar brings together the homelessness continuums of care 

and coordinated entry systems and the disability agencies and health systems to 

share the approaches they have helped to work together, and talk about how these 

partnerships benefit the people we serve and their organizations.

It's been interesting developing this webinar as we are discovering the 

homelessness continuums of care and coordinated entry systems, and the Aging 

and Disability Resource Centers, no wrong door systems, Centers for Independent 

Living, Area Agencies on Aging, and community hubs are developing very similar 

systems.
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Working to bridge together the array of housing options programs, funding streams 

and services to help those we serve obtain or maintain stable housing services and 

live full lives in the community.

Today we will focus on becoming familiar with homelessness continuums of care 

structures and coordinated entry systems, and identify opportunities in disability, 

aging, and health and other service networks to build and/or strengthen 

collaborations to reduce homelessness and increase housing stability among those 

we serve. We are in for a real treat today as we hear from national experts and 

colleagues in Florida and Virginia who will share their experiences and strategies 

about how they are working together to serve people who are experiencing 

homelessness or at risk of homelessness.

We will learn about the continuums of care from HUD and the Corporation for 

Supportive Housing, or CSH.

It is my distinct pleasure to introduce our national expert presenters, and with us 

today is Sharon Springer, who is a Senior Program Specialist at the Office of Special 

Needs Assistance Programs, also known as SNAPS, at the U.S. Department of 

Housing and Urban Development, and Marcella Maguire, who is the Director of 

Health Systems Integration at the Corporation for Supportive Housing, or CHS.

The floor is yours. Next slide.

MARCELLA MAGUIRE: Thank you, and thank you to the folks at ACL. We are so 

excited to have this conversation today and excited to set the ground here for what 

is our continuum of care program and what are the homeless systems for the aging 

partners in your community and give you key and basic information. Your partners 

on the housing side, if you're looking for local partners who address homelessness, 

older adults, and people with disabilities. These partnerships are really important,

and we highlight the partnerships that overlap geographically. Some of them are 

working in Tallahassee. and the CoC is working in Tallahassee. We will highlight 

them.

And they have different skill sets and different funding streams they manage, and 

it's important to understand the complementarity of these partnerships here. And 

our goal here is to end homelessness for older adults and people with disabilities. 

Next slide, please.

We will talk about why people are experiencing homelessness and why it's more 

likely people who are aging or low income and people with disabilities are 

experiencing homelessness, and Permanent Supportive Housing and evidencebased practices to address their needs, and we will talk about what roles 

continuums of care play in creating supportive housing, and bringing together 

community-wide efforts around ending homelessness.
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We will talk about why partnerships are necessary to end homelessness and why 

none of us can do this alone. We need partnerships, and we will hear from some 

successful partnerships locally about how they came into being.

Homelessness, I thought about it, and I've been in this field a long time, it's a game 

of musical chairs. There are 16 people out there and four chairs. That means only 

one in four of the low-income renters who need housing assistance can access that 

assistance.

The cost of living is going up, we said for ourselves and communities, it's far 

outpacing incomes and income supports, and we have a very limited number of 

affordable housing options for people on fixed or low incomes. That is the case for 

most people who are aging, many people who are aging or disabled.

We have a lack of social safety net and see people with domestic violence, histories 

of abuse, these have been challenged by their community and family members, and 

have these very separate systems that grew up in very different – what Lori said, 

homelessness is an issue, let's talk about the program we built there. All of you out 

there are experts on let's have services and supports for people who are aging and 

have disabilities, let's build a public health sector.

Though systems do not talk to each other and collaborate, we are here to talk 

about why that's important and support it to build these partnerships at the local 

level.

Who cannot access it? It's not random, people of color and aging have a difficult 

time navigating [...] systems, and even if they cannot there is not housing out 

there, and just a word for folks who work in entitlement systems, Medicaid is an 

entitlement system and Medicare is an entitlement system. In theory if you can 

prove your disability to the state, you are entitled to services. There is no such 

entitlement on the housing side, when the budget is used up, the budget is used up 

and there are no more resources.

That builds a very different system. Next slide, please.

I want to center the conversation around equity and talk about how 

disproportionately impacted communities of color are by homelessness and housing 

instability, and increasing housing costs in our community. In people who identify 

as Black or African-American, 39% of all people are experiencing homelessness, 

and 53% of people experiencing homelessness are members of families with 

children, only 12% of the US population, [...] clear equity issue and there has been 

a lot of research and certainly not ended over the last couple of years.

For Native American, Alaska Native, Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian populations, 

each of those groups separately accounts for 1% of the U.S. population, yet they

are 5% of the homeless population, 7% of the unsheltered population.
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In contrast, 48% of people experiencing homelessness are white, rather than 70% 

of the U.S. population. You can see the vast inequities and the need for strategies 

that supposedly target the need and unique needs of these communities.

People identifying as Hispanic or Latino can be of any race, 23% of the homeless 

population are only 60% of our population overall. All non-white groups are 

overrepresented experiencing homelessness, and we need to center studies as we 

work to end homelessness and these long-standing disparities.

This really talks about how homelessness is increasing among those who are aging 

over the last couple of years. And chronic homelessness, we will talk a bit about 

that, it's a late Baby Boomer phenomenon and we see the Boomers are in the 58, 

59 and up range, and how that's impacting.

Sheltered homelessness is increasing, the percentage of people increasing 

homelessness who are aging is increasing as well, lots of challenges. In this 

population we see people who have been homeless for a long time, chronic 

homelessness, and we are also seeing a lot of people homeless for the first time. 

They have been working low-wage jobs, not able to save, not able to meet the 

rising cost of housing in our communities.

This increase we talked about and the increases in housing costs, all of them were 

documented projections before COVID, and we expect with COVID the challenges 

will be even greater.

For people with disabilities experiencing homelessness, we know that they are 

significantly overrepresented among those experiencing homelessness or housing 

instability. They are more likely to experience it than a person without a disability.

HUD requires local systems and continuums of care that Sharon will talk about to 

do a point-in-time count, counting them, we find 1/4 of them have a disability, 

when I say disability I made this public, this could be physical or intellectual, or 

people with serious mental illness and people with substance use disorders, people 

with any combination of all of those or at least one of those above.

People experiencing disabilities are more likely low income and therefore, especially 

with the rising costs, likely to be homeless. Next slide, please.

You heard me mention chronic homelessness, and this is a very specific term in 

HUD. There are many programs within the continuums of care that are only 

available to people experiencing chronic homelessness, and the definition includes a 

disability, again, all of those we talked about, as well as long-term homelessness.

This is a year, continuous, or four episodes in three years, each of those episodes 

has to add up to at least one year for homelessness. It can be a person who is 

living and [...] a domestic violence situation, or a person living in shelter, or 

unsheltered living on the streets, cars, parks, other locations not meant for human 

habitation. I am proud to say 2007's the patterns of individuals with chronic 
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homelessness have decreased by 8% and that was in the earlier part of the decade 

between 2019 and 2020, this number increased by 15%.

We will talk about veterans. There is a decrease in veterans’ homelessness in the 

middle of the last decade because resources were targeted to veterans or the 

Veterans Administration Supportive Housing Program.

Next slide, please.

So, what is the solution to affordable housing?

SHARON P SINGER: I think we are getting a lot of requests to slow down. It's a 

lot to take in. We are working very consciously of only having a few minutes, but I 

think you are definitely getting a number of asks.

MARCELLA MAGUIRE: Thanks for jumping in there. Permanent Supportive 

Housing is an intervention that combines affordable housing assistance and what 

makes that, and volunteer supportive services, that helps to address the needs of 

people with disabilities.

The services are housing-focused and designed to build independent living skills, 

tenancy skills, helping people budget and deal with landlords, helping people be 

good neighbors, and also connect people with community-based health care, 

treatment, employment, and other services.

Supportive housing services sees them very much as a whole person care 

coordination model. With the investments in permanent supportive housing, we 

have seen the decreases we talked about, and there is research, and always happy 

to share, that has demonstrated that supportive housing can increase housing 

instability and improve health.

We are talking specifically about people with disabilities and people who are aging, 

or the chronic homeless population, than the other people experiencing

homelessness. Many just need an affordable housing option, for a lot of folks that 

are aging or have disabilities, Permanent Supportive Housing.

Acute-level services, shelters, hospitals, jails, prisons, nursing homes, and other 

institutions people are hoping to return to the community. Next slide.

Supportive housing is an evidence-based solution that is affordable and 

independent and aligns well with the Olmstead mandate and the letter and the 

spread of the law. And these services are flexible, voluntary, and tenant-centered 

and housing-focused, and there may be additional services, behavioral health 

services. Different programs target different operations, and you may need services 

there. From a values perspective they aligned very well with all of the work of home 

and community-based services and all the work you are doing out there.
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Case management is a term that means different things to different people – case 

management in the housing world and homelessness world means a very low 

caseload, one to 10, one to 20, hands-on support, very focused on assisting the 

individual, very different from what case management means in many of the 

disability and waiver programs. Your caseloads are much higher there.

Next slide, please. With this, I pass it over to Sharon from the Department of 

Housing and Urban Development.

SHARON P SINGER: Thank you for setting the stage looking at the data that has 

been gathered to show where we are at this moment. I am from the Special Needs 

Assistance Programs Office, and if you look at the legislation, we are called the 

Homelessness Assistance Grants, and this is a quick snapshot of our programs. The 

largest, by far, is our continuum of care program.

Right now we have our competition, which is open. I have assumed people on the 

call who are very visibly working towards the September 30 deadline, that is $2.8 

billion and the biggest competition in all of government, I believe.

We have block grant funds that are geared – it used to be called the Emergency 

Shelter Grant, it was changed to the Emergency Solutions Grant in 2009 with the 

HEARTH Act, which put into place more formally this continuum of care structure I 

will talk about.

Continuum of care is about funding Permanent Supportive Housing, which Marcella 

just talked about, Rapid Rehousing, for people who have less of a long-term need 

for support and with a few months of support could be stable and, in addition, 

supportive services.

Obviously, with COVID, I would say there’s probably a lot of new examples of 

collaboration that has happened between the health system and housing, and 

homelessness.

Our ESGCB fund was almost $4 billion in the CARES act and is still being spent. 

Right now, we have a special NOFO which is for people who are unsheltered or in 

rural areas. We have a youth demonstration project.

There is a lot going on in our office, lots of new acronyms for you to learn. You can 

go to the next slide.

Just taking a quick look at the slide, just talks about the priorities of this year's 

NOFO and usually it is pretty similar, last year's was pretty similar.

And using a Housing First approach, making sure people do not have to jump 

through hoops to get to housing. That had historically been the way a lot of 

programs approached getting into shelters, being sober, being compliant with 

medication, and that shift away from setting – being a low barrier to entry and 

helping people to get into housing, and address whatever needs are there.
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I would also point out Priority Five as partnering with housing, health, and service 

agencies, which is many of the groups on the call today.

There are nine priorities on there you can see. These will be shared with you 

afterwards. You can go to the next slide.

So, it's a little confusing. A continuum of care is the body that helps to apply for 

those funds that are also called continuum of care. It is a little confusing. This body 

is a group of local government, non-profit, and other entities that work on a range 

of housing and services, as well as – and it's really required to bring community 

partners together.

That is written into the rule, the Continuum of Care Rule from 2012, which is 

requiring that they bring together the hospitals, the health providers, the veterans 

groups, people with the lived experience being part of these conversations. So, it is 

really meant to bring people together. Thank you for spelling out NOFO there are a 

lot of acronyms on both sides.

As mentioned, there are a lot of parallels to how this work is being done in a 

community setting. It's meant to be collaborative. It does not have to be a local 

government body, it could be a non-profit that is the collaborative applicant that 

pulls people together, both about the CoC funding but about addressing 

homelessness as a community.

What are your non-sheltered numbers? What are your numbers of people with 

disabilities? What are the gaps in services and housing and how can you work with 

these local partners to address them? We can go on to the next slide.

I will skip this, but I will say there are different activities. For example, unsheltered 

outreach can be done through different funding sources. There are a range of 

funding sources, ours, although it's a large amount, there are local, state, local, and 

non-profit partners that fund these projects and are required to be partners in 

terms of match and in terms of collaboration.

What I would say is, annually, HUD does require that communities gather what 

they call a "point-in-time count" and if you are interested in getting involved in your 

community, that is a great place to start. It is one or two nights in January, where 

they both look at who is in the shelter that night, but also, who is out on the street 

to try and engage them for housing and services, and to understand those needs.

Obviously, January 2021, it was not a requirement to do these outreach, 

unsheltered counts. So, our data is little bit off for last year.

Let's go on to the – and just to say back to the continuum of care and collaboration 

is if you are not already a partner with your continuum of care, please reach out. 

On our website, on the HUD website, you can easily find who the leader is and to 

contact them to be invited to meetings, and to find ways to collaborate more fully.
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If you could go to the next slide... Very quickly, I know we are running over, there 

are different categories of homelessness across the federal government that can be 

challenging to navigate.

To enter Permanent Supportive Housing, for example, or to enter shelter, you 

would need to be either literally homeless, living on the street, in shelter, 

someplace not meant for human habitation like a car, or at imminent risk of 

homelessness, which is 14 days out. We do talk about other federal statutes, and 

each community has some flexibility as to whether or not to use those, again, the 

CoC should be partnering with the schools, with the hospitals, with the Area 

Agencies on Aging, to try and find ways to work together.

Obviously, people who are attempting to flee domestic violence are -- automatically 

pulled into the system regardless of where they have come from. We do have a 

separate definition for at risk of homelessness that is rather lengthy. I did put this 

in the notes. When you get slides, you can see more detail.

For example, to come into Permanent Supportive Housing, as Marcella said, you 

need to have a disability. And to be prioritized by your community. That will be my 

last slide. The next one.

I am the lead for the Office on Coordinated Entry, and this is a policy that was put 

into place in 2017, and asked communities by 2018 to have this in the works.

HUD requires communities to have this system of inflow, both to try and prevent 

people from coming into homelessness and divert them to stable housing through 

other resources, often what we call "mainstream resources," but when people come 

through the info of the system, there are different stages.

Historically, this has been very disorganized and random as to who got into 

housing.

The goal is to be more equitable and make sure it is person centered and people 

are getting these services and housing that they need. And that works within the 

system.

To make sure that the most vulnerable are assisted first, and that people exit to the 

type of services that match them. At the bottom, the outflow might be Permanent 

Supportive Housing, Rapid Rehousing, some very few transitional housing programs 

but that could be one, or for the housing may be with a Section 8 voucher, it may 

be some – or a low-income tax unit, or a senior program for low-income seniors.

There are a range of possible places for people to come out. There are other slides 

we have hidden but will be available to you to talk more about this. This is meant to 

be not just about housing, but also about services.
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If someone is potentially coming into Permanent Supportive Housing, they may 

need assistance from a range of community partners. It is to make sure those 

partnerships are lined up. So that the household is successful in that housing and 

can remain there for as long as needed.

I know there's a lot more to say, but I will pass it off. I think you will hear from 

some local communities that can talk more in detail about how to make this work.

LORI GERHARD: Thank you, Sharon and Marcella, for that exciting overview of 

homelessness, continuums of care, our CoCs, and coordinated entry systems.

We’ll change to our Florida and Virginia partners to talk about the benefits of these 

partnerships. It is my privilege to introduce Jackie Fortmann and Johnna Coleman,

who is the Executive Director at Big Bend Continuum of Care in Florida.

Joshua Gemerek, who is the Senior Vice President of Housing at Bay Aging, and 

Angie Alley, who is the Assistant Director for Housing Services at Bay Aging, an 

Area Agency on Aging in Virginia.

We will ask them to provide backgrounds on partnership efforts, and we will turn it 

over to Jackie to get started.

JACKIE FORTMANN: I am Jackie... this is a Center for Independent Living in North 

Florida. We have a bunch of programs. The one we are focused on today is our 

Homeless Services Department. This is a pretty new department for us. That 

consists of a director, which is me, and two full-time staff members who are 

dedicated to street outreach and identifying unsheltered individuals experiencing 

homelessness.

Their mission is to engage and build trust with homeless individuals with the hopes 

of getting them into housing, and in the meantime, provide them with necessities 

while they are unsheltered. The 2021 point-in-time count identified 91 unsheltered 

individuals, and 52 is a typo, it's actually 197 chronically homeless individuals in 

2021.

I did pull the 2022 stats for that, too. There is 164 unsheltered, with 153 of them 

being chronically homeless for the 2022 point-in-time count.

With the current cost of rentals and inflation, it's more and more people that will 

become homeless. Next slide.

Our population target are individuals with disabilities who are homeless or

unsheltered, and we help by providing food such as ready-made meals, snacks, and 

drinks; those basic necessities that I mentioned, which are clothing, shoes, sleeping 

bags, portable showers, hygiene items, backpacks, flashlights, etc. Transportation, 

bus passes, they can get to where they need to go and attend the appointments 

that we all need to go to.
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Referrals. We refer in-house assistance with Social Security, and other benefits, and 

we provide information regarding local shelters, food banks, CareerSource, mental 

health, substance abuse treatment, and so on.

We provide case management, assessing their housing needs, (Indiscernible), 

coordinating, and monitoring the delivery to meet the needs of the program 

participant.

We have Rapid Rehousing funds to assist people with documentation and assist 

people with individuals to move, whether that's to, you know... regular housing, or 

prepare them for Permanent Supportive Housing, which was mentioned before, too.

Johnna, were you going to go over the slide?

JOHNNA COLEMAN: We partnered with several programs, and Ability1st. 

We are working with them through our CoC, which has the largest – we have the 

largest... not population with the largest area coverage, I'm sorry, for Florida. We 

do cover eight counties.

The majority of individuals experiencing homelessness are located within Lyon 

County, Tallahassee area. I have seen people talk about the rural areas that they 

just do not have the resources, and hopefully we are able to address some of those 

through our NOFO and partnerships with agencies such as Jackie's program. Being 

able to reach those people in those rural counties for us will be critical.

We do partner with other – specifically other agencies such as our Capital City 

Youth Services, that services youth; the Kearney Center, which is our largest 

emergency shelter; our homeless coalition, they service our Rapid Rehousing; and 

emergency shelter for families; and the refuge house, which is our domestic 

violence shelter, and they also offer transitional housing.

And also, some crisis support lines. We have Ability1st working with our systems 

and we work with them through a CoC, HUD CoC-funded for individuals who have 

chronic homelessness with the PHS program, and we have a PHS programs for 

families.

Our partnership is unique, and we definitely know there is a need for us to partner 

with agencies that specialize in assisting individuals with disabilities. Next slide.

JOSHUA GEMEREK: Thank you very much. I'm Joshua Gemerek. Can we go back 

to the previous slide? If you do not mind, thank you. Just to give folks the 

overview.

Bay Aging is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation, and we are headquartered in the 

town of Urbana in the northern peninsula region of eastern Virginia. I wanted to 

give you a geographical scope there or idea, or context. 
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Formed in 1978, for 44 years, we have been providing services with the mission of 

-- serving clients, and you can see Bay Health, Bay Housing, and Bay Transit here.

We are an Area Agency on Aging and Community Action Agency certified by the 

state of Virginia.

This puts us in a unique position to provide services to older adults and alleviate 

issues of property. For the health, housing, and transportation, and how those 

interact, and preserving this independence, it's very important. Next slide, please.

So, not gonna go through all the services, but I do want you to have an idea of the 

scope of the services that we offer, because they all achieve this theme of 

independence. In our in-house services department, we are offering things like 

Meals on Wheels delivery, home care, adult day care, active lifestyles centers with 

congregate dining and nutrition opportunities, and a Veteran Directed Care program 

that operates at a multiple state area, helping veterans stay – nursing home eligible 

– stay independent. Next slide, please.

With the transportation and housing, the transportation is public transportation. It's 

important for securing and preserving independence for folks experiencing 

homelessness, folks in-house and everyone in the community.

It's available because it's public transportation and available for everyone at a low 

cost. As you can see on the list, we offer transportation that allows people to go to 

medical appointments, and we are an on-demand response. They pick you up at 

your door, and they take you to work, you may be shopping, anywhere you would 

like in the area.

We have fixed routes. We have a variety of single-family and multifamily housing 

programs that are integrated and work in a variety of levels to prevent 

homelessness.

On the single-family housing side, we are making low-income homeowners’ homes

more energy-efficient for weatherization assistance. We have an emergency home 

repair program. It can cover and make repairs to low-income homeowners’ homes, 

critical repairs.

We partner with local governments and Community Development Block Grants 

fixing up whole neighborhoods and providing new housing to low-income owners.

We are the Housing Choice Voucher Program Section 8 administrator for many local 

governments in our local areas in every service region.

We have developed and currently operate numerous mental health communities 

that are mostly age restricted, not exclusively, but for the most part they are age

restricted and income restricted, and this supportive housing we have developed is 

important in preventing homelessness.
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We have close to 400 units under management at 12 distinct properties. We have a 

menu of homeless solutions programs, Rapid Rehousing, homelessness prevention, 

housing navigation, for recruiting landlords and engaging with landlords, and we 

are the coordinated entry point of contact and operate that hotline.

That is an important entry point for all of our services. We manage HMIS data, that 

is Homeless Management Information Systems, and we act as the lead agency for 

what we call the Local Planning Group, but it operates like a continuum of care, or 

CoC. We fall underneath the state of Virginia Department of Housing & Community 

Development. We fall under that and operate our local planning group.

It really operates the same way as any other CoC. Quickly I will say, we have 

implemented a number of homelessness prevention add-ons, possibly, or 

augmentations to our programs. We have a homeless preference for all of our 

rental housing, a system that HUD approved formally, very proud of that.

We offer emergency housing vouchers and Voucher Choice program, and we have a 

team of managers that will handle the folks and get them set up in the housing we 

are operating.

To give you a flavor of the services we offer, we have embraced that.

We will talk more about that a little bit more.

ANGIE ALLEY: Good afternoon, I'm Angie Alley. In the essence of time, since most 

everything has been covered, the Bay Aging service team provides coordinated 

entry and works with these partners. The list of potential examples of partners that 

we have in our continuum of care are on the slide right here.

Josh mentioned our homeless preference, and that's been really successful for 

placing our senior folks into Permanent Supportive Housing, and another thing we 

found was necessary is we had folks having difficulty assimilating once they were 

placed in our apartment communities.

We formed a transitions team and that's comprised of our case managers and 

service coordinators who work on-site at our apartment communities.

Sometimes, folks need a little extra help and a team of folks that can come up with 

some creative ways to help them out. That has been a successful program for us.

I wanted to make sure we added that to our list. Thank you!

MARCELLA MAGUIRE: Thank you, everyone, for this. I want to acknowledge in 

the chat, there is a lot of discussion and people who are both people themselves 

experiencing homelessness, and challenged, and cannot meet the needs, cannot 

find housing, cannot find services; also people who run programs, who are also 

trying to assist with far too few resources. You will not have the answer to all of 
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those questions here, etc. Please keep putting them in chat and making your voices 

heard.

We will work through all the questions we can to answer them. I wanted to 

acknowledge that.

Our first question is a basic one: How did your partnership start? How did your 

partnership build? Josh, you are a AAA as well as CoC. I hear incredible 

partnerships happen in Tallahassee with the Big Bend CoC. How does this all start? 

Let's start with Jackie and John.

JACKIE FORTMANN: I've only been with Ability1st for two years. Johnna has been 

with the CoC as long as I've known her. Maybe she will have more insight on how 

Ability1st, how that partnership started. I originally – ever since I got my degree, I 

worked in homelessness.

I initially started working at the CoC to make sure my clients were on the 

supportive housing list and getting them housed. That is initially how I met Johnna. 

Maybe they can speak to how the relationship originally formed.

JOHNNA COLEMAN: Long before me, I came in 2016, long before me they were 

working with Big Bend Homeless Coalition with the collaborative applicants. They 

worked to form our first program, and they first took over a program, was an 

individual program and there was a need for where Ability1st... (Static) and 

therefore, apply for PSH.

They brought on a family program for PSH and to house 13 families through PSH, 

and since Jackie and I have been on, we have worked to develop with them a Rapid 

Rehousing program, as well as street outreach. That is how we connected. 

MARCELLA MAGUIRE: For Josh and Angie, what about up in Virginia?

JOSHUA GEMEREK: Thanks for asking. For me, it's a story that always excites me. 

I always like talking about it. Our partnership really began about 10 years ago in 

our region. It went from no activity with any programs serving those experiencing 

homelessness, and there was a real void.

One of our big 10 service areas, one of our counties had a Resource Council 

meeting monthly. We had a subcommittee, and I was a member at the time, and it 

was really a discussion thing. From that, we had some key folks at different 

domestic violence shelters, the Department of Social Services, the Community 

Services Board, a couple of smaller community-based organizations. We began 

talking and talking.

We received a grant from the National Coalition on Homelessness, the Community 

Change grant that allowed us to hire a consultant. We developed bylaws, we 

became – we went to the – we covered the 10-county region, and we gained 
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approval from the Department of Housing & Community Development to be seen, 

or by Bay Aging, to act as the lead agency.

It was an interesting concept at the time. Everyone was reluctant to jump – we 

want to be the agency; nobody had a burning desire to do that. It was a new thing 

and new direction.

Bay Aging was serving the 10-county area already through all those other programs 

I spoke about: transportation, health, and housing.

A lot of folks in the room were looking at us – tacitly approving us, seeking that 

leadership role, and we do take that very seriously. We did acknowledge the need 

existed, and then it would – it would complement the existing programs and all that 

housing I was talking about the rental housing communities, and folks were already 

moving into those properties that had previously been homeless.

Were not necessarily making it a formal thing. All that happened, and now Bay 

Aging is the lead agency, and we manage the point-in-time, coordinated entry, 

HMIS. I am very proud of that history. I hope that helps! Angie, if you have 

anything...

ANGIE ALLEY: I think you covered it, Josh. Thank you.

MARCELLA MAGUIRE: Let me ask one question here – what qualities do you each 

look for in your potential partners, and what you need to successfully collaborate 

and/or create the change you are each working towards making? I saw a lot of 

comments in the chat where people said, I'm from the homeless system and try to 

reach out to s, I cannot get a response, I'm in the aging, and trying to reach out to 

the homeless district, and I cannot get a response.

From the homeless world, please, they are in the middle – Johnna, I'm shocked and 

thrilled you are with us, they have a competition for their funding due in September 

and have another NOFO, notice of funding opportunity for unsheltered and [...] due 

in mid October.

On the homeless side, keep trying and calling – I want to hear from you all, what 

do you need from those partners?

JOHNNA COLEMAN: I am answering my emails and getting tons of questions and 

we have things to do tomorrow.

I can say that what we look for in a partner is someone who is actually serving our 

population. We will look for a mission that aligns with our mission, and making sure 

the agencies we partner with have the ability to provide low-barrier, and housing 

focused – Housing First focused programs.

So, those are largely the things we are doing. At this time, we are definitely looking 

into capacity building, as we have noticed a lot of our agencies are kind of over it. 
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(Laughs) To have reached a point where they have just come to the end of their 

capacity, and we are looking to build some capacity within our community.

At this point, it's a pivotal time to start building those new relationships with 

agencies and organizations that you have not already been working with.

MARCELLA MAGUIRE: Jackie, what about from your end? What do you need from 

a partner?

JACKIE FORTMANN: For us, learning from our partners, what services they have 

to offer, you know, identifying gaps in our services, and how that can help us.

And learning about all the specialties so that we can give that information to our 

staff, and they can be aware of all the resources so when they get a client, they 

know, here, here, here. They know exactly where to send that client for everything 

that they need.

Definitely keep communicating with those partners, because things are always 

changing. But just making sure that we have the resources to give to our staff, to 

give to the consumers.

MARCELLA MAGUIRE: Josh and Angie, we have two minutes before have to hand 

it back to Lori to close us out. What do you look for in partners?

JOSHUA GEMEREK: Angie, do you want to say anything on those? What do you 

think?

ANGIE ALLEY: Think the other ladies did a great job in covering the types of 

things that we look for in partners. I want to add something that might be of 

interest to folks, something we do to keep our partners engaged. We do a weekly 

newsletter and a once-a-month landlord newsletter. That can be anything from hot 

topics, or housing information, and just keeps us engaged and in touch with them 

on a regular basis.

That has been helpful for us in maintaining those relationships over the long-term.

MARCELLA MAGUIRE: Maintaining the relationships over the long term. So true! 

With that, Lori, back to you.

LORI GERHARD: Thank you very much. Thank you for all the questions, and we 

will respond back with a frequently asked questions document to respond to these 

questions. We are sorry we are getting a little short on time, but it's clear, there is 

so much interest in this topic that we need to develop a few webinars and 

opportunities for technical assistance.

Watch your emails and newsletters for that. If we move on to the next slide – we 

want to announce information about a free training our colleagues at the Centers 
17

for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, have made available. This is available for 

anyone who serves people who are experiencing homelessness.

You can access this training. There is a link on the slide. You can also access it by 

creating a free account at www.train.org, and the course provides trainees with the 

knowledge and skills needed to ensure public health protections and recognize and 

respond to public health emergencies among people experiencing homelessness.

Upon conclusion of the course, those who take the course will be able to take action 

to form partnerships with homelessness organizations and ensure people 

experiencing homelessness are represented in public data and analysis, and tailor 

public health interventions and measures for people experiencing homelessness.

We want to thank our colleagues at CDC for developing this training, and it's an 

excellent training, and encourage everyone to take it. If we move on to the next 

slide, we would like to highlight two key studies we released today. These case 

studies feature Bay Aging in Virginia and various partners and include approaches 

to promote housing stability and strategies to address homelessness, and we 

encourage you to visit our website and look at the What's New section to view 

these key studies.

If you registered for today's webinar, we will send out the links to this information. 

We have additional resources on the slide here. They are the HUD landing page for 

the continuums of care or CoCs, there is a link to the HUD point-in-time counts, 

and a link to the HUD Housing Inventory Chart, or HIC, which is a homeless-related 

program, and in your community.

And the HUD Continuum of Care Board. You can see where your continuum of care 

might be in your community. If we move on to the next slide... these learnings will 

be put into the chat, and we also make them available in the materials you will 

receive from this webinar.

We would like to ask you to take a few minutes to respond to our five questions, 

and rate different aspects of today's webinar, for your feedback is so important. We 

have a lot of information to cover and getting as much to everyone as possible. And 

help you facilitate partnerships. Let us know how we can do this better. We read all 

the comments we receive.

Please take time to fill out the survey form. On the next slide, we want to hear from 

you, the Housing and Services Resource Center, it is all of our Housing and Services 

Resource Centers.

Email us at hsrc@acl.hhs.gov about what your technical assistance needs might be, 

website suggestions, and tell us about your own cross-sector partnerships. We use 

this information to help develop our faculty for future technical assistance 

materials.
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Next slide. Finally, we want to thank today's speakers, our colleagues at HUD, 

thank you so much, Sharon, for your presentation, and your preparation. The ACL 

housing team, especially our colleague who at the last second put together the

YouTube livestream. Thank you so much.

We want to thank Mission Analytics and USAging, who are the contractors for 

HSRC, [...], our interpreter, and Nick, our CART specialist, and their role in today's 

webinar. We are grateful for everyone for joining us. Thank you for sharing all of 

your information in the chat; it encourages us to work together to help people get 

stably housed. 

Thank you, and have a wonderful afternoon!