An Important Message from the Homeless Collaborative Board to System Service Providers:
The Homeless Collaborative of Dallas and Collin Counties, Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance (MDHA), and the greater housing provider community share a common goal of ending homelessness for all households in our community.
As described in previous communications, in 2020, we identified a community-wide goal to effectively end veteran homelessness by 2021. As an essential step in the effort towards that goal, the Coordinated Access Workgroup identified the need to prioritize veterans in the Coordinated Assessment System (CAS). This prioritization status became effective as of February 2021. The implication of prioritization is that housing provider agencies can expect to receive a higher volume of referrals for veterans into their projects. Since this development, we have received feedback concerning the use of Continuum of Care (CoC) housing resources for Veterans while Veteran-specific resources are available.
We know that the best and most efficient use of our resources is to serve households with subpopulation specific resources first. We want to assure you that in the current process, once a veteran receives a CAS assessment, they are first assessed for eligibility for a veteran’s specific resource. If they are eligible and the veteran-specific project has capacity, a referral is made. Thus, a referral of a veteran to a CoC housing resource is only made if:
- the veteran is ineligible for a veteran specific resource,
- the appropriate veteran-specific resource has no capacity to accept a referral; or
- the veteran needs a greater level of care than VASH can provide.
Our success to date in this effort is a testament to the power of each of you coming together to function as a single homeless rehousing system, strategically targeting our resources to systematically eliminate homelessness. It is important that we, as a rehousing system, continue to prioritize veterans for housing resources when they are referred to your organization.
This collective effort will serve as a vital exercise in making our system more efficient in ending homelessness for other subpopulations in the near future. Through effectively ending veteran homelessness in our community, we will prove to the public that this system can make a demonstrable impact to the homeless population in our community.
Thank you for your continued leadership, collaboration, and commitment to do what it takes to achieve our community’s goals. Together, we will make homelessness rare, brief, and nonrecurring.
Ashley Brundage, Chair
On behalf of the Homeless Collaborative Board
