The Central Coast Collaborative on Homelessness (C3H) Policy Council voted on Dec. 14 to consolidate its services with Home For Good Santa Barbara County, a community-led action plan aimed at ending homelessness that will effectively replace C3H.
The vote signals an effort to improve the core functions of C3H, an alliance of government agencies and nonprofits that have been working together to reduce homelessness and its impacts in the area for years, according to Home For Good.
The model includes a public awareness campaign to engage the public in advocating and volunteering, the use of data and the investment in evidence-based solutions to homelessness, and the engagement of both public and private funders and the business community.
While many of C3H’s services will still exist through the Home For Good model, led by United Way, Home For Good will give new funders and philanthropists an opportunity to work with existing city and county partners more efficiently through the Home For Good Santa Barbara County Funders Collaborative.
Hospitals, foundations, county departments, businesses, and community members will be able to volunteer and donate to the effort against homelessness, according to Emily Allen, program director for veteran and homeless programs at Northern Santa Barbara County United Way.
“So it’s bringing more funders together to look at, ‘What are the solutions?'” Allen said.
Allen said the Home For Good model will continue using C3H’s collaborative outreach method, and C3H staff will remain employed through the merge. United Way, which was already the fiscal agent for C3H, was also chosen as the lead agency in creating Santa Barbara County’s coordinated entry system, a geographical system that connects homeless families and individuals with housing and other services.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently mandated that all communities have working entry systems as of Jan. 23, 2018. United Way has been working on its coordinated entry system since Nov. 30, but for years has been using a similar system��”the vulnerability assessment and index, which tests how likely a person is to die on the streets.
“And the idea behind that is that we need to know who is experiencing homelessness by their names, and we want to match people with the appropriate resources,” Allen said. “We also want to prioritize people who really need it. So it’s using resources wisely.”
The new entry system will actually match homeless families and individuals most in need with necessary resources, Allen said, and will be equally accessible to individuals living in all areas of the county.
“It’s about making the system more streamlined,” Allen said. “And faster and better.”
This article appears in Dec 21-28, 2017.
