When you meet one homeless person, well, you’ve met one homeless person. People become homeless for various reasons and their barriers to regaining stable housing are as varied as the persons who become homeless. There is no one size fits all solution to ending homelessness. Therefore, as we move along in 2023, we, along with our community partners, are becoming more rigorous in our data collection, timeliness, and quality, to not only know each homeless person’s particulars that need to be addressed, but to also identify gaps in needed services and, most importantly, upstream causes of homelessness that we can address with our multiple partners and stakeholders. Our aim is to make homelessness rare and brief.
This month we were awarded a grant from the State Department of Community Affair’s Office of Homelessness Prevention to support our data-driven decision making and organizational enhancement by hiring a dedicated data analyst whom, according to the State’s schedule, we will hire by the fall. We have begun our organizational enhancement through the establishment of “walk-in 211 centers,” if you will, to provide access to the County’s system of help in addition to the ability to call 211 to gain access. Check out Coordinated Assessment under Our Programs on this website as well as our Resource tab. Change is here and more is coming. Your help is always appreciated.
