CE - Ending Homelessness
Housing ends homelessness. Someone becomes homeless when they lose their place to stay and have no other place to go than the streets or an emergency homeless shelter. The person’s homelessness ends when they become housed again. In Racine we have something called Coordinated Entry (CE), which brings together agencies that work with people experiencing homelessness to help move them out of homelessness and into housing. HOPES Center is proud to be an active participant in Racine’s CE system.
As Racine’s street outreach program, HOPES serves people who are literally homeless and living on the streets. Street outreach is one of the inflows into Racine’s Coordinated Entry System. Other inflows agencies include our local shelters for adults (HALO, Women’s Resource Center, Burlington Transitional Living Center) and the veterans’ programs in Union Grove. All of us work with people who are considered literally homeless and are able to refer them to the coordinated entry housing prioritization list.
CE’s housing prioritization list is managed by our colleagues at the Institute of Community Alliance. It is actually two lists that are used simultaneously. One is in Racine’s Homeless Management Information System (HMIS). HMIS helps manage information, facilitate services, referrals, and connections. The other list is for people who are fleeing domestic violence and people who, for whatever reason, don’t want to be entered into HMIS. CE’s housing list prioritizes households based on needs and the length of time homeless, as well as making note of special populations, such as veterans, families with children, youth, victims of domestic violence, and people who are chronically homeless. During the pandemic, factors related to risk of COVID-19 infection were also added.
HOPES is also an outflow agency in the Coordinated Entry system, because it has one of Racine’s housing programs for people experiencing homelessness. Our rapid rehousing program houses individuals and families with children. When we have an opening in one of our rapid rehousing projects, André Batts, our housing case manager, contacts the CE administrator. He tells her what type of opening we have and asks for the next household prioritized for that type of housing. The CE administrator consults the lists, assigns a household to the project and gives André contact information so that they can get connected and start working together to look for an apartment. The household might be coming from any of the inflow agencies (HALO. Women’s Resource Center. Burlington Transitional Living Center, Union Grove, or our own Street Outreach program).
Our CE work doesn’t end there. Racine has a team that meets twice a week with representatives from all of the inflow and outflow agencies involved in CE. (It used to meet here at HOPES until we switched to zoom meetings during the pandemic.) We review all of the pending cases of households who have been prioritized for housing. Case managers give any updates on progress, we collaborate in looking for housing solutions in challenging cases, and we celebrate together when someone has moved into their unit and is no longer homeless. Outside of these meetings, André also coordinates with the shelter case managers for people who are in shelter and our street outreach team helps facilitate connections between people on the streets who have been prioritized for housing with one of the other agencies.
We say that HOPES helps people end their homelessness. The emphasis is on helps. We work hand and hand with people experiencing homelessness and we collaborate closely with our coordinated entry colleagues. Together we change a lot of lives for the better and CE is a major strength in our community’s efforts to so.