Hennepin County: Homelessness

Client: Hennepin County Housing, Community Works, and Transit

Stakeholder Engagement and Decision Making: Designed and conducted rigorous annual stakeholder engagement and decision-making process for nearly 15 years.

Provided decision-making support for Hennepin County’s HUD Homelessness Continuum of Care Committee for their grantee selection and ranking process. This diverse and evolving group has included people who had experienced homelessness, funders, staff from county, state, and federal agencies, providers, and advocates.

Developed responsible analysis and evaluation process for Committee to review outcome data prior to annually determining criteria, reviewing applications, conducting site visits, examining performance, and ranking recipients for millions in HUD support for providers of housing and services to people experiencing chronic homelessness.

In addition, early in this work we conducted one of the first comprehensive evaluations of the County’s overall homelessness continuum of care. The introduction to the complete report ended with this prescient statement:

“And from homeless people to funders, providers to regulators, and staff to elected officials at local, state, and federal levels, there is clear consensus that with dwindling resources and increasing demands, the county must quit simply “managing” homelessness, and must commit to a comprehensive and strategic vision and action plan to actually end chronic homelessness in Hennepin County.”

Quote from COC Evaluation and Recommendations, Complete Report