Phone: 603-882-3616 E-mail: info@nh-hmis.org NH-HMIS Newsletter Summer 2017 HMIS Happenings NOFA As many of you already know, the NOFA often runs in 2-year cycles, and FY 2016/2017 was one such cycle. If your agency received money last year, do not apply for 2017. You will receive an expression of interest letter from HUD, and your response to this letter will determine whether or not you receive funds for 2017. The same scores and funding methodology as in 2016 will be used to generate your award. If, however your agency is one of those which did not receive funding in the FY 2016/2017 cycle new entities, agencies who missed the deadline or simply were not chosen to receive funding -- HUD invites you to apply for the FY 2017 Supplemental NOFA. This supplemental competition will be identical to that of last year, in terms of eligibility requirements, in order to maintain fairness for all applicants. To apply for the Supplemental NOFA, you will first need to have registered with the System for Awards Management (SAM) website. (The deadline for registration passed on 1 May 2017, so hopefully you are already registered.) Secondly make sure that you re authorized to submit. Next you will go to grants.gov and locate the NOFA. Download the application materials, complete them, and upload them right back to grants.gov. Once you have submitted, you will receive an email on whether your application was accepted or rejected. If your application was rejected, you will be extended a 24-hour grace period in which you can correct the errors and resubmit. Rejected applications which are not corrected and resubmitted within the grace period will not be sent to HUD, and therefore will not be considered for funding. If you did not receive an email response to your submission, go to Track My Application under the Read Applicants tab at grants.gov to check on the status of your application. You want to see the words validated by grants.gov by your application. 1 INSIDE THIS ISSUE CoC APR Q&A... 2 NOFA Tips... 2 Using Sage for APR... 3 Housing Reevaluation... 4 Functional Zero... 4 Defining Chronic Homelessness... 5 Chronic Homelessness Flowchart... 5 HMIS Training Save the Date!... 6 Sleep Out Results!... 6 FZ: The Criteria... 7 FZ: The Benchmarks... 7 Mediware Bootcamp... 8 NH PIT Results... 9 Homeless on Web...10 Advisory Council..10
START RUNNING NEW COC APR As you know, all APRs submitted after April 1 of this year are to be completed in Sage. Some people still have questions about what this changeover means, so we ll try to address a few of those now. Why switch to Sage? Sage creates a time-saver for agencies. Instead of hand-entering data from esnaps into the APR, the move allows agencies to import CSV data from HMIS directly into Sage. Sage also offers enhanced options for running reports. Finally, Sage provides CoCs and HUD Field Offices direct access to APRs. Can I still make amendments to APRs that we have submitted in the past several years under esnaps? Yes. If you need to make a change in fields that don t involve client data, such as finance information, then it is fairly simple; the data in esnaps will be available indefinitely. If you need to check info on old APR s or make changes for pre-fy2015 funded grants, you can still do that; however you will need to talk to your HMIS admin about how to access client data from these years. Using Sage to Complete Your APR (Published June 2017) Sage CoC APR Guidebook APR Training Overview of the Sage HMIS Repository For instructions on how to register for a federal grant including information on DUNS, SAM.gov, and grants.gov accounts please check out the playlist of seven STREET CRAZY Seager explains brain disease, tells the history of the mentally ill, and shows how...our most vulnerable citizens have been abandoned to the streets. Amazon 2 NOFA TIPS Here are a few things to remember when applying for funding: In terms of your funding request, it is important to apply only for the amount you anticipate your organization will expense over the grant period. There is no advantage in reaching the top of your eligibility limit. Conversely, if you request a funding amount that s less than what HUD has calculated for you, you ll be capped at that lower figure. The easiest thing may be simply leave the funding request box blank and accept the amount HUD calculates your needs to be. For application materials, filenames can t be over 50 characters long. Underscores and spaces are okay, but no special characters such as exclamation points or pound signs will be accepted. Keep narratives 25 pages or fewer. Be sure to include headers and page numbers. If you re already in SAM, it s a good idea to make sure your registration won t expire before your application is submitted reregistration can take a week to process, by which time the application deadline might have passed. It s a good idea to keep your username and password available and to have more than one person authorized to submit, in case illnesses or emergencies interfere with deadlines. It s important to retain any communications you receive regarding your submission. If your application is lost in the system you will 2
USING SAGE TO COMPLETE YOUR APR Have you viewed APR Training: Using Sage to Complete Your APR yet? If not, here are our crib notes: Aggregate data is imported via a CSV-APR Report from HMIS data. Be sure to import the one that says CSV-APR. It differs from the one for SSVF, for instance, and ensuring you use the correct form prevents accidentally uploading personally identifying data. EVICTED A book on housing and homelessness has won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. CoC s can t submit for a grant recipient; only recipient programs can submit. Since many CoC s are recipients themselves (of planning grants, etc.), this means that, when working in Sage, CoC workers will have to make sure to affiliate themselves twice once with the CoC, and again with the entity (the city, the nonprofit, etc.) which receives the grant. Furthermore, CoC workers will need to be checked into the recipient dashboard, not the CoC dashboard, when acting in this capacity. The person listed in the contact information section will be the one who receives email and phone calls about the APR if there is a problem. Be sure to use a person who is both knowledgeable about the APR as well as one who is willing and able to respond to any issues that arise. The Authorizing Recipient Official and Title/Position, should denote the person who is legally responsible for the APR. By typing YES in the certification field, you are certifying that everything in the report is true, with the understanding that HUD will prosecute false statements; therefore, only the person listed under Authorizing Recipient Official should type YES, in that field, AFTER having reviewed the document. Once you hit SAVE, the document will be on its way to the HUD field office. (For us in New Hampshire, this means the Tip O Neil building in Boston.) Final thoughts: HUD assumes that information in the CSV-APR comes directly from your HMIS system, so it is not editable. Once a file has been uploaded, opening and trying to edit within will introduce a host of problems. If there is information from eloccs that is wrong other than dates, which are easily amended that means the data was entered incor- In Evicted, sociologist Matthew Desmond follows eight at-risk families in Milwaukee as they struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Learn more at Desmond s website, justshelter.org as well as evictedbook.com. If you want to add Evicted to your book club reading schedule, a discussion help list is available at Lit- Lovers.com. Penguin Books also provides a teacher s guide. Please remember to: Double check that you have requested an account in Sage. Do not wait until your report is due. Go to the Sage website to connect with resources. Confirm that your HMIS vendor has programmed the CSV-APR report into your database. This was required as of April 1, 2017. Be sure to run a test report once it is set up. Review trainings and guidebook on Sage, all of which are available on the Sage site under resources. 3 3
POWERFUL READS: CLICK COVERS FOR NEW HAMPSHIRE HOUSING: A REEVALUATION The New Hampshire Biennial Housing Plan for 2017-2018, distributed by New Hampshire Housing, analyses current housing needs in the state as well as looks ahead at projected housing needs for the next eight years (through the year 2025). It shows that economic and demographic shifts will have a significant impact on housing in the near future, and that our local communities are ill-equipped to handle these changes. The state s population is growing at a much slower rate than in the past, which reduces the demand for housing. Young residents are saddled with the highest student debt in the nation, which reduces both their ability to buy their first home as well as their likelihood of a starting a family. Senior citizens, who typically have less money to spend on housing than their working counterparts and have smaller households -- make up the fastest growing segment of the housing market. With both the young first-time buyers as well as elders, smaller units located convenient to services are increasingly in demand. New Hampshire s housing stock, on the other hand, is heavy with larger (3+ bedroom) houses built far from urban amenities. The few multifamily units that have been built recently are on the high end of the market out of reach for most buyers. To make matters worse, many local authorities have imposed regulations on land use and building codes which inhibit the creation of the small, affordable units future homebuyers need. In order to provide appropriately for the future, New Hampshire communities need to reevaluate their goals; They need to prepare for a future defined by less growth, more senior households, fewer young households, financially FUNCTIONAL ZERO Functional Zero it s the goal in any given community of having fewer homeless veterans in the system than the average number of veterans being housed each month. Because veterans are continuously entering programs, receiving services, and exiting programs, Functional Zero is a moving target. Any time the average number of veterans your community moves into housing is greater than or equal to the number of veterans on your rolls, you are sustaining Functional Zero. Forty-five communities and 3 states have achieved Functional Zero, Nashua joined that number in 2016 and 2017. New Hampshire as a whole had 123 homeless veterans in 2016, which is an eleven percent reduction from the 138 homeless veterans of the year before. The average decrease in veteran homelessness across the US for the same time period was 56 percent. 4 Resources: By Name Lists and Functional Zero, 10 Strategies to End 4
DEFINING CHRONIC HOMELESSNESS The term chronically homeless means: 1) The individual (or head of household) has a disability as defined in the HEARTH act 2) AND currently lives in either a) a place not meant for human habitation, b) a safe haven, or c) in an emergency shelter 3) AND has been living in one of those three locations for at least the last 12 months 4) OR has done so on at least four separate occasions in the last three years in which the combined occasion total is at least 12 months AND these occasions of homelessness are separated by a break of at least seven nights. Instead of defining occasions by a certain number of days, HUD defines them by the breaks in homelessness such as when an individual lives 7+ days with friends between shelter stays. As long as the client met the definition of chronically homeless prior to entry, stays in institutions of fewer than 90 days do not constitute a break. In fact, they count toward the total length of time a person has been homeless. So if somebody was on the street for three months, then they end up going to jail for two months, their entire period of homelessness at that point is five months. Details on how to define chronic homelessness can be found here. RECOMMENDED: Capturing Chronic Homeless Status in a Client s HMIS Records, published May 19th, helps clarify your HMIS responses. Defining Chronically Homeless Final Rule Webinar gives pin down this tricky definition. Requirements for Coordinated Entry Systems Webinar Connects the dots across all of HUD's Coordinated Entry requirements and recommendations. Introduces Technical Assistance (TA) materials, plus a 5 5
Photo: J. Koester SAVE THE DATE! September 28 (Thursday): The 11th Annual Stand Down Event for Veterans will be held at Harbor Homes, 45 High Street, Nashua. Contact Emily Reisine at 603-624-4366 x 3622, or Robert Mottola at 603-624-4366 x 2129 for more information. October 1 (Sunday): New Data Standard arrives! We will be providing new HMIS forms in compliance with the latest DS, so use up your old ones now. October 16-20 (Monday-Friday): Mandatory HMIS Recertification Training for all end users and agency administrators will be held during the week of 10/16/17. Please join us at one of the following locations: Nashua: Monday 10/16 at Harbor Homes, (45 High Street) Manchester: Tuesday 10/17 at Manchester Community Resource Center (434 Lake Avenue) Concord: Wednesday through Friday 10/18 10/20 at DHHS training room (64 South Street) We will send out more details as they become available. October 28, 2017 (Saturday): Wicked FIT Run 2017 will be held in Concord. Dress up in your favorite festive running gear and join the Families In Transition folks for a day of spooktacular family fun! More info is on the FIT website. November 16, 2017 (Thursday): SleepOut America!!! We will be sending out details as they become available. In the meantime, check out our article (below) The statewide rental housing vacancy rate is below 2% for both two-bedroom units and all units. Half of all households in rental units earn less than $40,800 per year and the percentage of market rate units that are affordable to them is low. New Hampshire Biennial Housing Plan 2017-2018 NH SLEEP OUT: TERRIFIC RESULTS! Manchester-based Child and Family Services held their third annual SleepOut on March 24th, 2017. Their goal was to raise $180,000 this year, earmarked to fund services for over 1,500 runaway, homeless and at-risk youth who seek CFS s help each year. When all the donations were counted, however, volunteers for the CFS SleepOut had actually raised 106% of their goal $190,749! How did that happen? First, let s give you some background. For those who aren t familiar with them, TheSleepOut.org events have been held across North America, Europe and Australia since 2011. Volunteers sleep on the streets as a group on the specified night, in solidarity with as well as to raise funds for the homeless youth of their city. Teams of volunteers are expected to raise $1,000 each, in much the same way as Walkathon volunteers do through donations from friends and family. In New Hampshire, volunteers opened crowdsourcing accounts for themselves and managed to raise several times that amount. Photo: Public Domain, Wikipedia Commons. For instance, Cindy Gaffney raised $4,137, William Conrad raised $5,920, Borja Alvarez de Toledo raised $11,525 and Lou Kaucic raised a whopping $74,300 for Child and Family Services. Of the corporate and nonprofit teams, NH Magazine raised $3,340, Runaway & Homeless Youth Program raised $4,238, Market Street Settlement raised $6,065, and Team Bank America raised $16,115. 6
FUNCTIONAL ZERO: THE CRITERIA 1) The community has identified all Veterans experiencing homelessness. In this case, Veteran is any person who served on active duty in the armed forces, regardless of how long they served or the type of discharge they received. 2) The community provides shelter immediately to any Veteran experiencing unsheltered homelessness who wants it. Access to shelter is not contingent on sobriety, minimum income requirements, lack of criminal record, or other unnecessary conditions. 3) The community provides service-intensive transitional housing only in limited instances. 4) The community has capacity to assist Veterans to swiftly move into permanent housing. 5) The community has resources, plans, partnerships, and system capacity in place should any Veteran become homeless or be at risk of homelessness in the future. This means: a) The community is routinely using multiple data sources and conducting comprehensive outreach and engagement efforts to identify and assist homeless and at-risk Veterans and to understand where Veterans are entering the system. b) The community has an adequate level of resources and the capacity to provide appropriate services that will, whenever possible, prevent homelessness for at-risk Veterans. c) The community has an adequate level of resources and appropriate plans and services in place to continue to assist Veterans to swiftly move into permanent hous- FUNCTIONAL ZERO: THE BENCHMARKS 1) Chronic and long-term homelessness among Veterans has been ended, with exceptions of: a) Any Veteran who has been offered an available PH intervention but who has not yet accepted; b) Any Veteran who has been offered an available PH but has declined and instead has chosen to enter a TH program in order to address a clinical need, provide Safe Haven-like services, or provide recuperative care post-hospitalization; and c) Any Veteran that has accepted a PH intervention but is still actively in the process of identifying, securing, or moving into a unit. This exemption expires 90 days after acceptance of the PH intervention. 2) Veterans have quick access to Permanent Housing, with an average of 90 days or less between the day they are identified as experiencing homelessness to the day they enter PH (with the exceptions above). The calculation of this average should include all Veterans who entered PH in the past three months, with two rare exceptions: a) For any Veteran who was offered a PH intervention, but did not initially accept the offer, the calculation of the average should only include the time from when they accepted the intervention until they moved into housing; and b) Any Veteran who was offered a permanent housing intervention but declined and has instead chosen to enter service-intensive TH should not be included. 3) The community has sufficient permanent housing capacity. 4) The community is committed to Housing First and provides service-intensive transitional housing to Veterans experiencing homelessness only in limited instances. Resources: Criteria and Benchmarks for Achieving the Goal of Ending Veteran Homelessness 7
Two Bedroom Median Gross Rent in 2016 by County: Belknap $996 Carroll $986 Cheshire $1045 Coos $790 Grafton $1134 Hillsborough $1278 Merrimack $1120 Rockingham $1321 Strafford $1083 Sullivan $965 Statewide $1206 Tony Nappo (HMIS), William McBride (Mediware) and Roger Pitzer (BHHS) in Austin. NH Biennial Housing Plan 2017-2018 MEDIWARE BOOTCAMP 2017 For a week in April, our software vendors at Mediware hosted their annual Bootcamp. This year, Tony Nappo of HMIS and Roger Pitzer of BHHS represented New Hampshire at the conference. While the weather back home was warm and sunny, Tony and Roger were under thunderstorm warnings for most of their time in the Live Music Capital of the World. No doubt this only steeled their concentration on their training. So, what were their takeaways from the trip? ClickSmart This will replace ART in our HMIS reporting. Tony reports that ClickSmart will be more of a business analytic tool than its predecessor. Even in its infancy stage it appears to be very powerful. By the way, ClickSmart will be the only reporting tool in ServicePoint 6.0, so enjoy ART while we still have it. Data Standard -- The guys got a preview of HUD s latest revision of the Data Standard (release TBA) and Data Dictionary (released June 1, 2017). ServicePoint SP 6.0 is on its way, but delivery date is still TBD. ClickSense Bootcamp focused heavily on ClickSense; expect to hear much more about this in our mandatory HMIS training in October. Expect HUD s update on the new PATH report and new CoC APR report. Being homeless causes sleep deprivation. And many homeless shelters, thinking they are inspiring people to leave homelessness by making the shelter uncomfortable, actually create an environment that creates sleep deprivation. The effects of sleep deprivation only worsen the state of homelessness. Kevin Barbieux, The Homeless Guy 8
NH 2017 POINT IN TIME COUNT BY REGION The total number of homeless persons for the state of New Hampshire is 1,854, which breaks down to 1,282 sheltered, 174 unsheltered and 398 temporarily residing with family/friends. In terms of households, we have 912 individuals and 942 persons in 328 families. New Hampshire has 127 homeless veterans 33 of whom live in Manchester, 57 in Nashua, and 37 in the Balance of State. Thanks to Heidi Petzold of BHHS for all her work pulling these numbers together! 9
MISSION The NH-HMIS Advisory Council advises and supports NH-HMIS operations in the following areas: Resource development Consumer involvement Quality assurance/ accountability The Council will support the overall initiative, in particular advising the management on HMIS operations. The HMIS Advisory Council shall meet at least quarterly, at which time HMIS decisions can be raised for discussion and/or approval. The HMIS advisory Council shall designate a committee or task group to develop and help enforce the implementation of HMIS policies. More information about the Advisory Council can be found on the New Hampshire HMIS website: http://nhhmis.org/content/hmisadvisory-council. Harbor Homes, Inc. 77 Northeastern Blvd. Nashua, NH 03062 603-882-3616 LAST THOUGHTS: HOMELESS ON THE WEB Have you noticed that, while social media, pop culture and politics dominate the internet, the voices of those we serve the homeless and marginalized often get left out of the conversation? It makes sense if you think about it. Making one s voice heard on the internet requires both a safe place to stay and reliable access to technology. Those who are in various stages of homelessness typically have neither of these things. This is why we pay so much attention when a homeless person is able to overcome these limitations and communicate with the world their day-to-day reality. One such person is Kevin Barbieux, author of the blog The Homeless Guy: There is More to Homeless People Than Being Homeless. His website features hundreds of posts, the topics of which touch on every aspect of Barbieux s life; a careful reader can watch his progress through various shelters and programs and back to the street. Barbieux is honest in his self-reflection. It s fascinating to read his responses to his life and the lives of those he sees around him. Alarmingly, he has not posted since June, 2016 after blogging consistently for years -- so one can only wonder what has happened to this writer. We can hope for him the best of outcomes, while acknowledging it may not be so. A life on the street is hard on the health as well as dangerous. OUR ADVISORY COUNCIL Balance of State: BHHS: Craig Henderson Heidi Petzhold Barry Quimby Roger Pitzer Lori Hathaway Susan Ford Greater Nashua CoC: HMIS Lead Agency: Miles Pendry Donna Curley AK Gadgil Tony Nappo TBD TBD YOUR LOGO HERE Manchester CoC: Cathy Kuhn Barbara Dunn 10