The three-year action plan is like a roadmap for the Baltimore City Continuum of Care (CoC). It helps them work together to achieve clear and doable goals. They have specific plans to improve policies and programs, study what is needed, and see how well things are working. They are also committed to moving resources around to make things better. The plan believes that homelessness can be solved. They have a plan to stop it from happening, but if it does, they want it to be a rare, short, and not happen again. This plan aims high but is possible.
Many people in Baltimore City's CoC worked together to make this plan. They used the original Journey Home plan, the CoC goals from 2017, and other efforts over the years. They wanted to look closely at things and give good ideas. People who know a lot about this topic, including those who have been homeless, helped create and guide this plan.
The action plan has a list of things to do in five important areas.
Strategy 1: Increase Affordable Housing.
To reduce homelessness and help more people, we must make sure there are enough affordable homes available. This way, we can make sure that homelessness doesn't happen often. When it does, it doesn't last long, and people don't become homeless again.
These six actions together create a strong plan to give more people the chance to have safe, good, and affordable homes.
- Study the Homes We Have: First, we need to look at the homes we have and figure out what we need.
- Build More Affordable Homes: We'll work on creating new homes that people can afford.
- Introduce a Voucher Program: We're going to start a new program that helps people get vouchers to pay for their housing.
- Invest in Rapid Rehousing: We'll put more money into a program that helps people find homes.
- Support Good Policies: We'll back up and encourage policies that prevent and stop homelessness.
- Grow the Medicaid Program: We'll make the Medicaid program bigger and work with health systems to help people in need.
Strategy 2: Create a More Effective Homeless Response System.
A good system for dealing with homelessness tries to stop it before it happens and helps people without homes find a stable place to live quickly. Here are four things we're going to do to make this system better:
- Make Access Better: We'll improve how people can get help when they need it.
- Stop Homelessness: We'll start a program to prevent people from becoming homeless and help them find other places to stay.
- Reach Out to Everyone: We'll create a plan to find and help homeless people everywhere.
- Set Rules and Train People: We'll make sure there are rules on how to take care of homeless people and teach others how to do it the right way.
Strategy 3: Change the Shelter System.
Emergency shelters are important in our fight to end homelessness. They give people a safe and temporary place to stay and help them work through the challenges they face in finding a permanent home. This makes our system stronger and motivates those who are homeless to get the help they need.
Here are four things we're going to do to make shelters better:
- Make Shelters More Comfortable: We'll work on improving the conditions in the shelters to make them more pleasant for the people who stay there.
- Give Better Services: We'll make sure the help and support provided in shelters is even better.
- Work with Others: We'll partner with different groups to plan how people can leave the shelter and move into a stable home.
- City-Wide Transportation: We'll create a plan for the whole city to help people get where they need to go, like jobs or housing.
Strategy 4: Help People Find Jobs and Make Money
We need a plan to help homeless people find jobs and ways to make money. This plan needs to be big and involve many different groups to support people looking for work. We want to remove things that stop them from getting a job and help families find homes they can keep.
Here are three things we'll do:
- Bring Together Work and Money Resources: We'll make it easier for people to find help with jobs and making money. This plan will work all across the system.
- Create Learning Communities: We'll make groups where people can learn and get better at what they do.
- Change Rules and Practices: We'll make rules and ways of doing things that help people get more job opportunities.
Strategy 5: Treat Everyone Fairly
To make this plan work, we need to treat everyone fairly and equally, no matter their race. This way, we can make sure we help everyone the same and remove any unfair differences.
Here are three things we'll do:
- Collect Better Information: We'll get information in a way that shows us if people are treated differently based on their race.
- Teach About Fairness: We'll train people about treating everyone fairly, no matter what they look like.
- Change Rules and Practices: We'll make rules and ways of doing things that treat everyone fairly, no matter their race.