Register now for Bringing it Home 2021! Join us on June 8th and 9th for this year’s Bringing it Home: Ending Homelessness in NC virtual conference, where we will share best practices, discover successful strategies, and celebrate the tremendous work we have done over the past year. This year, Bringing it Home will be free to all who register.
Conference Schedule
Tuesday, June 8th
Welcome from State Leaders: 10:00-10:45am
Workshop Breakout 1: 11:00am-12:00pm
Choose one of the following workshops to attend during this breakout session.
Implementing Housing Solutions focused on Individuals, Collaborations and Systems
Deronda Metz, Director of Social Services, Salvation Army Charlotte and Karen Pelletier, Director of Housing Strategy, Innovation, & Alignment, Mecklenburg County Community Support Services
This session will discuss housing focused interventions in working with homeless individuals and families. Including how to build a homeless system based on the data and the need in the community and using best practices while designing the system specific to the needs of the community. This session will highlight sustainable and new collaborations created to leverage resources and expand impact during COVID 19.
Lowering Barriers and Providing Housing-Focused Services in Shelter
Brian Alexander and Kevin McNamee, NC Coalition to End Homelessness
Shelters play an essential role in the homeless service system and are key to ending communities’ homelessness. This session will focus on the five key elements of an effective emergency shelter based on the National Alliance to End Homelessness’ work with shelters across the country. The session will provide information on common barriers in shelter, how to make changes to current practices, and ways to operationalize housing-focused case management.
Strategies for Recruiting Landlords
Speakers TBA
Recruiting landlords as partners in your work is a critical component to success in assisting families in finding housing. Join us for a discussion about strategies that will help you succeed.
Wednesday, June 9th
Workshop Breakout 2: 10:00-11:00am
Choose one of the following workshops to attend during this breakout session.
Racial Equity
Lisa Bahadosingh, C4 Innovations; Kevin McNamee, NC Coalition to End Homelessness; Dr. LaTonya Penny, Family Abuse Services of Alamance County; Jeffrey Rawlings, Johnston Lee Harnett Community Action Center
This session will include an overview of historical and systemic racism that has led to a health and housing crisis for people of color. The session will provide an example of one CoC’s journey to advance racial equity and inclusion within the homelessness system. The NC Balance of State CoC will share their efforts, the challenges faced, and lessons learned to help other communities think about how to fully incorporate equity efforts in their everyday practices.
Diversion
Ed Boyte, The Listening Group, LLC
This session will focus on how agencies use flexible and progressive assistance to give clients the support they need while using agency resources more efficiently. Diversion approaches limit the amount of time that clients spend in homeless systems and preserve agencies’ limited resources for clients who have no other options. Participants will explore approaches for identifying safe housing options within client’s own networks and using client’s own resources through respectful, nuanced assessment conversations.
Let’s Spend: Creative Ways to spend Your ESG CV Funds
Lisa Worth, Chris Battle and Alissa Pritchett, NC DHHS ESG Office, video appearances from current grantees
This session will provide an opportunity to hear from ESG office staff about creative ways that ESG CV funds can and have been spent around the state. This session will feature video appearances from agencies that have been creative with their ESG funds to meet the needs of the populations they are serving.
Workshop Breakout 3: 11:15-12:15
Choose one of the following workshops to attend during this breakout session.
Street Outreach: Engagement and Beyond
Trish Ecklund, Blue Ridge Community Health Center and Laura Spivey, Outreach Mission
This session will focus on how agencies can use street outreach to connect people living unsheltered to needed services and permanent housing. This session will provide ways in which programs should engage people living on the streets safely and appropriately and use housing-focused case management to connect people to long-term housing resources. The session will feature two successful NC agencies, considering street outreach in urban and rural settings and sharing ways to approach outreach efforts and lessons learned.
Shared Housing
Kris Freed, LA Family Housing
The lack of affordable housing continues to be a barrier to getting people experiencing homelessness housed quickly. This session will focus on an emerging best practice, Shared Housing, that uses specific tools to match people together who can live and stabilize together in permanent housing. This session will provide essential pieces that providers need to incorporate into their Shared Housing policies and procedures to ensure success for people served by the program. The session will feature expert advice and lessons learned from Kris Freed from LA Family Housing which has operated a successful Shared Housing program model for the last few years.
Policy Update
Pamela Atwood, NC Housing Coalition
With a new administration in the White House, and new resources for housing and homelessness services approved by Congress, there is much to talk about. Join us and learn the latest from Washington D.C. and Jones Street.
If you have any questions, please contact Haley Solomon at hsolomon@nchousing.org.
