SAN DIEGO (KUSI) – Two of the region’s newest elected officials and five civic leaders with experience in housing and homelessness have joined the Regional Task Force on the Homeless’s (RTFH) Continuum of Care (CoC) Advisory Board of Directors.
County Supervisor Nora Vargas and San Diego City Council President Pro Tem Stephen Whitburn have assumed the elected official seats on the board, which were recently vacated by County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher and former City Councilmember Chris Ward, respectively.
In November 2020, the RTFH separated its board of directors into a policy advisory board and a new, financially oriented board more akin to traditional nonprofit boards. By doing so the RTFH created a stronger governance infrastructure for the organization tasked with leading the region’s efforts to end homelessness.
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The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has awarded the Central Massachusetts Housing Alliance Continuum of Care $7.2 million to continue funding programs aimed at fighting homelessness in Worcester County.
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Organizers of the Point-in-Time count of people experiencing homelessness in Denver, Boulder and the seven-county metro region have called off the 2021 count for unsheltered people. A count of the sheltered population only will take place on Feb. 25.
The annual survey of people experiencing homelessness is mandated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and is a major source of data, providing a snapshot of the scale, experience and demographics of regional homelessness. The data is also used to secure funding and service resources. Organizers in Fort Collins say they will conduct a full Point-in-Time count for their region later this month.
Los Angeles County’s annual homeless count is a civic ritual bringing thousands of volunteers together in a common cause. It is also a reckoning with the shortcomings of all that’s been done to salve the county’s most perplexing human crisis.
So its cancellation this year due to the risk of spreading the coronavirus has had a multifaceted fallout a loss of civic engagement, uncertainty over how much the COVID-19 pandemic has added to homelessness and, possibly most consequential, the potential loss of federal dollars that would be triggered by a higher count.
But for those who see sharp and timely data as a keystone in the fight against homelessness, the hiatus has created an opportunity to reimagine a process that is inherently blunt and slow.