1) Review responses from renewal projects regarding issues IRC identified at their last meeting

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1 Continuum of Care Independent Review Committee (IRC) IRC Meeting Minutes August 15, 2017 Attendees: Natalie Michelback (MFA), Charlie Ward (Good Shepherd Center), Bobby Sisneros (, Dept. of Family & Community Services), Debbie Johnson (Tender Love Community Center), Patrick Scott (APS Title One), Lisa Huval (NMCEH), Lisa Maury (NMCEH) 1) Review responses from renewal projects regarding issues IRC identified at their last meeting The IRC requested responses from each of the agencies that operate ABQ CoC funded projects regarding issues they had identified at their last meeting. Each agency provided a response to the IRC request. Lisa Huval asked for any questions or concerns about responses provided. There was a concern noted about Bernalillo County Renee s Project. Lisa suggested that the IRC discuss that project under agenda item #3. 2) Review report from CAS/HMIS Special Review Committee The June 14 th meeting minutes for the Special Review Committee (SRC) were shared with the IRC. The SRC evaluates the HMIS and Coordinated Assessment System (CAS) grants for both the ABQ and BoS CoC s and provides recommendations to each IRC regarding renewing funding. The SRC is comprised of agencies that use HMIS and CAS. Because the agencies that the SRC members represent have projects that are CoC funded, and therefore also ranked during the evaluation and ranking process, the SRC does not participate in ranking or final funding decisions. Lisa Huval asked members of the IRC to review the minutes and share any questions or concerns. The SRC recommended renewing funding for all HMIS & CAS projects. No questions or concerns were raised. 3) Make final decisions on whether to renew or reallocate projects NewLife Homes NewLife Homes (NLH) spent the bulk of its original CoC grant for Sundowner on acquisition and development. A specific number of units at Sundowner are designated for chronically homeless households. NLH has a small renewal grant of $42,800 to provide services to participants in those units. NLH has struggled to fill these units with chronically homeless households or collect appropriate documentation to show that households are chronically homeless. NLH has been awarded project based vouchers (PBV) from the Housing Authority to serve homeless households. Once the PBV contract is in place, which should be soon, NLH plans to notify HUD that they no longer wish to operate these units as CoC units. Lisa Huval notified the executive director of NLH, John Bloomfield, that the IRC may decide to reallocate the funds to ensure that they stay in the CoC. John did not oppose reallocating the funds. Bobby Sisneros motioned to not to renew the Sundowner grant and to reallocate the funds. Natalie Michelback seconded the motion. There was no discussion and the motion passed unanimously.

2 Bernalillo County Bernalillo County Renee s Project was notified during the FY16 Renewal Process that they would need to spend down at least 90% of project funds for FY16 in order to be renewed in the FY17 CoC application cycle. At the end of the FY15 grant term 22% of funds were not expended. The IRC asked for a review of spending for previous grant years. For FY14, 61% of the project funds were unexpended. For FY13, 56% of the project funds were unexpended. For FY12, 30% of the grant funds were unexpended. At times the project has been underspent because the project was serving fewer households than indicated in the project application. Renee s Project has made changes to their eligibility criteria and adopted a Housing First approach and now generally serves the number of households indicated in the project application. Another reason the project has been underspent is because the rental assistance budget in the project application requires the applicant to request full Fair Market Rent, even though project participants pay 30% of their income toward rent or the units they rent are sometimes less than FMR. This means that after the project reaches the number of households it committed to serving in the project application, there are often additional funds left. Many projects use these additional funds to house additional households but Renee s Project has generally not done so. Bernalillo County provided a letter in advance of the IRC meeting outlining their plan to fully expend the grant in the future. The letter explained that County would now be willing to serve additional households in order to fully expend the grant because they could transfer households to one of their other housing programs if it appeared they were on track to overspend the grant, which has been the main concern in the past. Lisa Huval indicated that she had checked in with the County several times over the last 12 months to reiterate that the grant must be expended and to offer technical assistance if needed. The IRC members discussed several options regarding Renee s Project including: - Not renewing the project and reallocating all funds to a new project. The IRC asked what the process would be for reallocating these funds to a new project. Lisa Huval explained that there was currently a RFP out for new projects. The IRC would score the proposals at the August 30 th meeting. The highest scoring project(s) would receive either bonus or reallocated funds. - Reducing the grant to the amount that was expended for the FY15 grant. This would mean that the project would have to lower the number of households served from 6 to about 4. The IRC discussed the fact that this might be a heavy administrative burden for such a small number of households and might not address the underlying problem. - Renew the project for another year at the full funding amount. Several IRC members stated that they felt the County had multiple opportunities to address the underspending issue, and felt they had a responsibility to reallocate the funds to another entity that could fully expend the grant.

3 Lisa Huval indicated that the current grant term does not end until June 30, 2018, and it should be possible to move households to other Bernalillo County housing programs during that timeframe. The IRC noted that under the current selection process, Bernalillo County would still be eligible to apply for and be considered for new CoC projects in the future. Debbie Johnson made a motion to renew funding at the full amount for one more year. No one seconded her motion. Charlie Ward made a motion not to renew Renee s Project and to reallocate all of their funds. Natalie Michelback seconded the motion. There was no discussion. The motion passed with four ayes and one nay. Review SHC s voluntary reallocation of Homeward, Pathways & Sevegram to a new PSH project Supportive Housing Coalition (SHC) currently has 3 scattered site housing programs that have leasing funds. For leasing funds, leases must be between the landlord and the agency administering the project. SHC was co-signing the lease with the participant, but was informed by HUD that this is not allowed. SHC does not want to be on the lease without the participant. SHC has requested to reallocate their three PSH with leasing funds (Homeward, Pathways and Sevagram) to one project that uses rental assistance funds. For rental assistance funds, the lease must be between the landlord and the program participant. Patrick Scott motioned to allow SHC to reallocate Homeward, Pathways and Sevagram to a PSH rental assistance project. Bobby Sisneros seconded the motion. There was no discussion and the motion passed unanimously. 4) Create final ranking of projects. The annual renewal demand (ARD) for the ABQ CoC is $5,628,584. Tier 1 funding, which is generally considered safe, is 94% of ADR. Tier 2 funding, which is required to compete nationally with other Tier 2 projects for renewed funding, is the remaining 6% of ARD plus the amount available for bonus projects, which is also 6% of ARD. Projects in Tier 1 are usually considered safe. In a previous meeting, the IRC established the process for ranking projects. How to rank the new SHC project that is being funded through reallocation Lisa Huval proposed averaging the score for each of the three projects that are merging into a new project to rank projects. There was no objection to this proposal. Should Transitional Housing (TH) projects continue to receive automatic spot in Tier 1? In previous years, HUD automatically gave TH projects in Tier 2 fewer points than permanent housing (PH) projects in Tier2. The IRC responded to this scoring system by placing high performing TH projects in Tier 1 automatically, to protect the funding. This year, HUD is not scoring Tier 2 projects on whether

4 they are TH vs PH. The housing outcome for TH projects tends to be lower than Rapid ReHousing (RRH) and Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) projects because of the formula used and project design. PSH projects are scored on the number of participants that stay in the project or exit to other PH. RRH and TH projects are scored on exits to PH, but unlike TH, RRH participants are expected to stay in their unit once they are no longer in the project. TH participants must relocate once they leave the project. Albquerque CoC TH projects serve people with dual diagnosis that are in recovery. The IRC felt that having multiple project types provides choices to households that are in recovery and that they wanted to continue to place high performing TH projects in Tier 1. There was no vote, because this was not a change to the established ranking criteria. Should CLNkids RRH grant be placed in Tier 1 or 2? The ranking criteria currently states that well-performing projects that started in July of 2016 would be placed at the bottom of Tier 1 because there is not enough data to score their projects accurately. CLNkids RRH grant was one of the grants that started in July CLNkids struggled to get its new RRH program up and running and expended less than 20% of their FY15 grant. When the new Executive Director started in December 2016 the project got to capacity fairly quickly and successfully addressed other issues identified during the CoC monitoring visit. However, the IRC felt that it was not fair to put another well-performing project that had expended all or most of its FY15 grant into Tier 2, while giving CLNkids a spot in Tier 1. Therefore, the IRC decided to place this grant at the top of Tier 2. Natalie Michelback motioned to place CLNkids in Tier 2 and Patrick Scott seconded. There was no discussion and the motion passed unanimously. How to rank the NMCEH and AHCH Coordinated Assessment System (CAS) grants Lisa Huval and Lisa Maury left the room so that IRC could discuss whether to renew funding for the CAS grants and how to rank them. Natalie Michelback motioned to put CAS projects in the middle of the Tier 1 to ensure that they are funded, with NMCEH above AHCH because they are the lead CAS agency. (To determine the middle the IRC instructed NMCEH to take the average score of all Tier 1 projects and place the CAS grants where the average score would fall). Patrick Scott seconded the motion. There was no discussion and the motion passed unanimously. The rankings as of of all CoC renewal projects and the SHC reallocated project are listed on the next page. These rankings may changes pending the outcomes of any appeals. The IRC will decide on rankings for new bonus and reallocated projects on August 30, All new bonus and reallocated projects will be ranked at the bottom of Tier 2.

5 FY17 CoC Project Rankings as of 8/15/17 Rankings may change pending the outcomes of any appeals The IRC will rank new reallocated and bonus projects on 8/30/17 Grantee Grant Name Score Type of Grant Award Amount Cumlative Total Barrett Foundation Milagro PSH PSH $92,028 $92,028 1 Therapeutic Living Services Crossroads for Women Therapeutic Living Services Supportive Housing Coalition of NM Supportive Housing Coalition of NM NMCEH AHCH Frank Gray House PSH $157,383 $249,411 1 Permanent Housing Chronic PSH $144,508 $393,919 1 Mesa House PSH $109,233 $503,152 1 New Reallocated Project (with Pathways, Sevegram & Homeward) Rental Assistance - AHCH/SMHC Downtown@ 700-2nd Coordinated Assessment Coordinated Assessment 17.37* PSH $544,694 $1,047, PSH $1,439,728 $2,487, PSH $70,510 $2,558,084 1 n/a SSO $25,000 $2,583,084 1 n/a SSO $71,140 $2,654,224 1 Catholic Charities La Luz RRH RRH $238,073 $2,892,297 1 Catholic Charities La Luz Services PSH $52,350 $2,944,647 1 Crossroads for Women AHCH Rental Assistance - TLS Permanent Housing Non Chronic Supportive Housing (formerly STARS) PSH $457,265 $3,401, PSH $240,627 $3,642, PSH $127,641 $3,770,180 1 Rapid ReHousing n/a RRH $905,261 $4,675,441 1 St. Martin's Welcome Home n/a PH $100,000 $4,775,441 1 St. Martin's Dual Diagnosis TH $92,700 $4,868,141 1 Transitional Housing Tier TH $138,982 $5,007,123 1

6 Catholic Charities TBD Partners in Housing PSH $284,170 $5,291,293 $424 of this project will fall into Tier 2. The remainder of the project will fit into Tier 1 CLNkids RRH n/a RRH $226,599 $5,517,892 2 New Projects funded through Reallocated and Bonus Funds Project n/a PSH, RRH or TH- RRH $448,407 $5,966,299 2 *Score is average of Sevegram, Homeward and Pathways Scores, which SHC is voluntarily reallocating to a new PSH project PSH = Permanent Supportive Housing RRH = Rapid ReHousing TH = Transitional Housing SSO = Supportive Services Only