Orange County homeless community : Orange County, North Carolina : an action-oriented community diagnosis : findings and next steps
Creators: name: Stephens, Erin
name: Kohnowich, Sasha
name: Davis, Rebecca
name: Larwa, Jennifer
name: Brown, Andre
Publisher: name: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
Year: 2006

description: From September 2005 to April 2006, a five-member team of graduate students from the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education in the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill conducted an Action-Oriented Community Assessment (AOCA) in Orange County, North Carolina of persons who are homeless in the county. An AOCA examines the quality of life, community capacity, and strengths and needs of a community. The purpose of this process is to include community members and service providers in identifying the needs and challenges of the community, as well as the strengths and resources, which may influence the development of effective interventions. Two preceptors affiliated with the county’s Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness, Billie Guthrie, Housing Coordinator at OPC Area Program, and Stan Holt, Homeless Coordinator at Triangle United Way, guided and mentored the students throughout the entirety of the project. The students volunteered, attended committee meetings, reviewed secondary data, and conducted in-depth interviews with 32 community members, 16 of which have experienced or are experiencing homelessness. Additionally, the student team collaborated with J-Quad & Associates LLC, a consulting firm that had been hired to assist the community in composing the Ten-Year Plan. They transcribed and analyzed 12 focus groups conducted by J-Quad as well as the 32 interviews. This information was used to identify the community’s most common reoccurring themes. The students presented its findings at a community forum held on April 27, 2006, at A.L. Stanback Middle School in Hillsborough, North Carolina. For the forum, the student team worked to bring together homeless/formerly homeless community members, service providers, and other residents to address the how the community can work together to address homelessness in the most valuable way. The immediate action steps and long-term recommendations for the Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness that were generated at the forum are listed below: Lack of affordable housing, combined with non-livable wages, creates a barrier to ending the cycle of homelessness. Action Steps: 1. Develop an incentive program for those in the private sector which will encourage them to create more affordable housing units. In exchange for funding a percentage of affordable units or giving money to an authority for affordable housing, businesses will be allowed to build more expensive units. 2. Generate a list of key business people and policy makers (aldermen, town council, John Edwards/Poverty Center) who should be invited to the meeting. 3. Invite those individuals to a meeting to propose the incentive program. 4. If adequate interest in the program is expressed at the meeting, contact the media to publicize the plan. Recommendations: 1. Increase the minimum wage. 2. Change zoning requirements to allow for more affordable housing units. 3. Form an authority to manage affordable housing units in the private sector. 4. Create more flexible eligibility criteria for affordable housing units and rental subsidies. 5. Secure more funding for cooperative housing models like Weaver Community Housing which generate their own income. 6. Revisit the definition of “affordable housing” in ordinances to consider those that live below 80% of the area median income. Inadequate access to essential resources creates a barrier for homeless persons to secure jobs. Action Steps: 1. Generate a list of telecommunications providers (Verizon, Cingular, etc) in the area. 2. Research potential options (used cell phones, prepaid cell phones, donation of minutes. 3. Approach these businesses and ask for donations. Also discuss what they are willing to contribute to the effort and what they may gain in return (good publicity etc.). People who are homeless do not have relevant skills training and employer support to become employed, remain employed, and plan for the future. Action Steps: 1. Seek out funding for educational expenses. 2. Work with Community Resource Court to clear criminal records. 3. Provide home business training resources. 4. Explore if it is possible to set aside a certain number of jobs for the homeless and look into developing an inter-departmental study of homelessness at UNC. Recommendations: 1. Develop resource manual of community services available (including self-employment training). 2. More computers with internet access at the shelters. 3. Job program for homeless that sets aside jobs for the homeless. Inadequate transportation services create a barrier to sustaining employment and accessing services. Action Steps: 1. Identify resources and create community resource guide for transportation in Orange County. 2. Help to obtain transportation through auctions held by the police departments in the state. Recommendations: 1. Subsidize shuttles vans for the shelters. 2. Access state cars through auctions to be assigned to the shelters. 3. Provide additional funding to shelters to allow money to be set aside for transportation. Stereotypes of homelessness create tension between homeless persons and the surrounding community. Action Steps: 1. Create action group that works to increase community awareness of the individual faces/stories of homelessness. The group will decide on the format of the message, and collaborate with various community groups (media, civic, church, university, restaurants) to help educate the community and encourage participation. 2. Each group member commit to volunteering and/or 1:1 time with people experiencing homelessness. Recommendations: 1. Educate the public on the individuality of homelessness. Community partnerships need to be strengthened to ensure successful service provision. Recommendations: 1. Compile a master list of providers and services provided specifically for homelessness issues. 2. Make the Orange Book more accessible and user friendly (change from pdf format to something more searchable). 3. Recommend creation of a “hub”, or one place to go for resources. Services are available, but only to those who are regularly using or know how to navigate the service delivery system. Therefore, many who are homeless “slip through the cracks.” Action Steps: 1. Create a bilingual pocket-sized resource guide for homeless persons, with a version with pictorial representations to accommodate those with lower literacy. Recommendations: 1. Increase outreach workers who can establish informative relationships with persons who are not connected to services. Use case managers or train those formally homeless, students, and community volunteers to do the outreach. Homeless individuals’ unique ways of achieving success are often limited by standardized eligibility requirements and delivery structures. Recommendations: 1. Create an advocacy program, incorporating volunteers, to support community members as they seek services. 2. Increased innovative/flexible funding, potentially through community fundraising, to provide specialized services not included in grants or federal funding. 3. Increase communication among service providers to increase knowledge of existing services, decrease work-related frustration, and facilitate supportive relationships. The lack of collaboration in discharge planning and a lack of appropriate facilities burdens service providers and limits success for the homeless population. Action Steps: 1. Have service providers who are using the housing first model or a model similar to the housing first model, document their outcomes both successes and failures and report back to other service providers possibly at a Community Initiative meeting. 2. Have service providers to document inappropriate discharges and send their concerns to their legislatures. Recommendations: 1. Have training for service providers about the housing first model. 2. Make more efforts to support Club Nova because it is a successful housing first model and it is facing hard times. 3. Discharge people into more stable and rehabilitative environments that shelters cannot always provide; however, there is a lack of these places. 4. Create more affordable and transitional housing for people to be discharged to. 5. The county needs to focus their resources on high risk individuals who consistently utilize institutions to help them become more stable and prevent them from returning to these institutions. More prevention strategies are needed that target families and individuals at risk of becoming homeless. Action Steps: 1. Speak to key players about raising the living wage. 2. Have the new Boys and Girls Club work with children in foster care to give them a positive environment to interact in and provide mentors. Recommendations: 1. Adjust the city and county’s living wage to be more livable. 2. Identify high risk individuals and get them comprehensive/wrap around services. Possibly create teams of church members and service providers to work together to help out individuals so that no one person or organization is not stretched too thin allowing them to pool their resources. 3. Create transitional housing for people who are being discharged from certain institutions who need more structure before trying to live on their own. 4. Ensure foster children stay connected to services as they “age out.” 5. Strengthen emergency services need to help people out with rent, utilities, car, etc. 6. Offer financial classes or counseling to people about how to budget their money. In addition to these action steps and recommendations, this document provides information gathered through secondary data sources, one-on-one interviews, community focus groups, and community observations by the student team. Ideas about homelessness and how the county can address it were varied in some respects, but many common viewpoints were identified. In a county with an abundant amount of resources, the team found that most of the tools needed to address the issue are present. However, it will require a united effort to properly use those tools and reduce homelessness in the county. This AOCA document is meant to serve as a catalyst to change within the community. It presents an overview of the project, overview of the problem, findings from primary and secondary data sources, the methodology and limitations of the data collecting process, an overview of the community forum, and conclusions and recommendations for next steps of action. It is the hope that the next steps of actions in this process will begin to eliminate the culture of reliance on the shelter system by those who are homeless. The student team presents this document as a resource and reference for the citizens of Orange County and hopes that it will serve as a supplement and compliment to the work already underway in addressing the issue of homelessness. The student team thanks the people of Orange County, North Carolina for all of their dedication and wishes them much success as they continue to strive to end homelessness in the county.