As the lead agency of The Way Home — the local homeless response system — the Coalition has continued to unite partners and maximize resources to serve people experiencing homelessness throughout the coronavirus pandemic. (To read about the Coalition’s immediate response to the pandemic, see our previous annual report.)

The Coalition has long believed that housing is healthcare. So, as new federal funding became available for COVID response, the expert staff at the Coalition designed an ambitious, housing-focused plan to stop the spread of COVID among people experiencing homelessness. On July 1, 2020, the City of Houston, Harris County, and the Coalition for the Homeless announced the Community COVID Housing Program (CCHP), a joint $65M plan to accelerate the work of the local homeless response system to serve 5,000 people experiencing homelessness by September 2022.

The CCHP officially began Oct. 1, 2020. As of October 7, 2021 we have already exceeded our goal. CCHP includes three primary interventions: 

1. A “Bridge” to Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH), which has allowed us to house 862 people experiencing chronic homelessness — approximately double the number our system would normally be able to house in one year;
2. Rapid Re-housing, which has allowed us to house 2,556 people experiencing homelessness;
3. And Diversion, which has allowed us to prevent 2,111 people from falling into homelessness.

As additional federal funding becomes available for ongoing COVID response, the Coalition continues to advocate to local municipalities to make unprecedented investments into permanent housing and other homeless assistance programs — these investments help build a more resilient, prepared community not just for today, but for whatever challenges or disasters may come tomorrow. 

Encampments aren’t safe or healthy places — least of all for the people living in them.

The Community COVID Housing Program has given the Coalition the additional resources to develop and implement a coordinated plan to address unsheltered homelessness by helping people living encampments move into permanent housing.

Working with several partners of The Way Home and local law enforcement, the Coalition’s outreach and project management teams have been able to draw on years of knowledge regarding what does — and doesn’t — work to house people living in encampments.

Over the past year, the Coalition and its partners have been able to decommission six different encampments throughout the City of Houston and Harris County. Contrary to a common misconception, people in encampments will, more often than not, accept permanent housing when it is offered to them. The proof: approximately 170 people were living in these encampments, and the majority of them are now residing in permanent housing!

The Coalition’s staff has played a key leadership role on this encampment initiative. Decommissioning encampments is a community response that uses a system strategy of coordination across multiple partners and jurisdictions. The Coalition has convened public and elected officials and secures access to system resources to ensure that the tools are available to quickly move people out of encampments and into permanent housing. 

This work caught the attention of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which commissioned a consultant to work with the Coalition’s staff to study our process for addressing encampments and create a “how-to” guide for other cities to follow our example. We are proud to be leading this innovative work that has propelled Houston back into the national spotlight on creative and effective ways to address homelessness. 

One of the required roles of the Coalition as lead agency to The Way Home homeless response system is to lead and coordinate the annual Point-In-Time Homeless Count and Survey. This annual Count is important because it is able to show us trends over time on homelessness and identify needs and gaps in the community. 

The 2021 Point-in-Time Homeless Count & Survey found a total of 3,055 individuals experiencing homelessness on the night of Jan. 19, 2021 — 1,545 people staying in shelter (51%) and 1,510 people living unsheltered (49%) — in Harris, Fort Bend and Montgomery counties.

Due to methodology changes enacted to protect the health and safety of all parties involved in the Count, and because of the unique circumstances created by the Coronavirus, the results of the 2021 Count are not directly comparable to those of years past. 

However, the Homeless Count data and information from the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS, administered by the Coalition) can be used to draw reasonable conclusions about the pandemic’s impact on homelessness in the Houston region.

Notably:

• Data suggest that the unsheltered number may have been higher if not for the Community COVID Housing Program.
• One in seven unsheltered individuals surveyed cited COVID-19 as the reason for their homelessness.

On February 13, 2021 and the days that followed, a severe winter and ice storm called Winter Storm Uri hit North America. This weather event impacted millions across the country and tens of thousands across the Houston region. Record low temperatures and an unprecedented power crisis led to the mobilization of our local homeless response system to assist people living unsheltered in our community. 

Coalition staff members engaged in critical communications and meetings with the City of Houston and Harris County to understand what the local plan was for responding to the incoming cold weather and played a critical role as an advocate for people living unsheltered during this disaster. The City of Houston Office of Emergency Management opened the George R. Brown Convention Center (GRB) as a warming center and Harris County opened smaller warming centers throughout the county. We set up communications channels on our website to get information on resources and shelter out to people who needed it. The Coalition also fielded media inquiries from across the country and helped direct monetary and in-kind donations to partners of The Way Home.

Along with several partner agencies, the Coalition stepped up to staff the GRB, transport people living unsheltered to the shelter, and complete housing assessments for those at the shelter. The ability to connect with and provide housing assessments to people at warming centers led to many of them being housed within the weeks and months following the winter storm. Also, thanks to the Community COVID Housing Program’s start just four months before Winter Storm Uri, 1,100 had already moved into permanent housing, keeping them safe during the unprecedented weather event.