NAEH CONFERENCETUESDAY JULY 13 , 2010

NANCY STROHMINGER

AIRS/ City Steps/Empire Homes of Maryland

Baltimore—A Poor City in a Very Rich State

Population: 637,000

Median Income: $40,087

Persons Below Poverty Level: 19.2%

STATEWIDE--

Population: 5,699,000

Median Income: $70,482

Persons Below Poverty Level: 8.2%

Emphasis on Adult and Chronic Homeless

Shelter capacity (adults) Emergency shelter-- ~1000 beds Transitional shelter-- ~1400 beds

Youth-specific shelter services 4 beds for runaway for youth under age 18 7 transitional housing beds for youth age 18-21

AIRS City Steps Youth Resource Center—Opened in mid-2008—the first to focus on homeless youth ages 16-24.

Baltimore Profile of Need

Extremely limited services (housing options or support services).

Little sense of need other than anecdotal. Without services, it is hard to count the need.

Youth are not accessing traditional adult services—see themselves as vulnerable in these locations.

Cities of comparable size estimate range of 1500—2000 homeless youth annually.

HPRP Project

OUR IDEA– Become the go-to place for service knowledge

Money for Service Navigators (3) to fan out as a Mobile Team connecting youth to known resources

Additional dollars for rental down payments, utility supports, emergency shelter, support of family units with 16 and 17 yr. olds.

Collect basic profile data to better illuminate their needs

Use the new counts to justify the needs for services (including housing)

Twin Goals

Support need for resources and policy change Exposing the need and strengthening knowledge Defining current resources and possible gaps

Provide services Developed basic services manual specific to age Use the housing and utility dollars as honey to draw

out, identify and serve the need. Understand the target population and their needs Educate, assist and connect consumers to services

Intake and Documentation Process

Simple Intake with emphasis on basic demographics, and client signature.

Track zip code at point of contact.More in-depth intake for those wanting

housing, HPRP Prevention dollars, including Verification of homelessness, Income Verification for household.

Records are kept, but little traditional service planning

Approach

Be creative and flexibleUse our mobility to perform intakes

anywhereUse their tools of communication

All had personal cell phones with texting capabilitiesTreat youth like non-clientsHave something tangible to offer.Use traditional outlets to speak to providers.

What We Found

Hidden population of unstably housed couch surfer.

Extremely underserved—and unaware of available help

Transportation challenges enforce their isolation.They call you when they need you, but not before

or after.They do not identify as “clients” or “homeless”Distrust of programs, prefer to work outside the

system, high failure rate in programs, education attempts.

Intakes by Zip Code

21217

21215

21218

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Next 7

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All Others

Income Profile

Education/ Training Profile

Some Observations

Not everyone wants independent housing, but they do want and need assistance.

Most respond well to the “Call Charlie” approach

High percentage of women with young children

Highly mobile group—the folks who call this month fall off, and are replaced with a completely new set of callers.

About half are self referred or referred by a friend.

Their Challenges

Traditional cash assistance very difficult to get except if you have a child.

Most subsisting on the cash economy. 7 out of 10 using food stamps.

High percentages of debt from failed attempt at education, child support, providing barriers to workforce enhancement.

Their top 3 identified needs—housing, transportation, employment.

Did it Work?

272 unduplicated Intakes since Nov. 1, 2009 (Service Navigators point of hire).

Anticipate over 400 intakes/ yearHave hired youth to start taking the phone

calls, with eventual goals of releasing some service navigator time to follow up on service connection verification.

The Effect of Service Navigators

JUL A S O N D J F M A M JU0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

68 9

16

11

6

28

21

34

44

49

61

Youth Resource Center Intakes by Month

FY09FY10

Service Profile

Program Challenges

Cold weather exposed our problem with no emergency shelter.

The city’s voucher program used a vulnerability index that focused on cold weather exposure and did not identify “age” on the vulnerability spectrum.

Giving and getting the voucher to a young adult with no lease or apartment experience really exposed their lack of independent life skills.

No extra money for life skills or case management

Surprises

How well they responded to structure—as long as one found the half-step up from child expectation.

Intervention does not have to be long-term to be valuable

How readily we found suitable adult services in all areas of basic services in the city—often willing to serve this group when invited by the Service Navigators.

Some traditional clinical service providers enabled and forgave a lot of poor entry level behavior, rather than provide instruction.

For More Information

Nancy StrohmingerExecutive Vice President, ProgramsAIRS/City Steps/ Empire Homes of Maryland410-576-5070 x12nancy@airshome.org