The Community Partnership and the District of Columbia's Public Homeless Assistance System

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Abstract

This report, the first of three completed under contract to the D.C. Department of Human Services to assess the District of Columbia's homeless assistance system, examines seven functions that The Community Partnership manages for the District. These include contracting for emergency shelter; orchestrating the District's Continuum of Care; managing and monitoring contracts between homeless service providers and DHS, HUD, and DHCD; quality assurance and program monitoring; rule setting related to provider and client rights and obligations; data collection and analysis; and performance standards and client outcomes. Findings feed into and helped shape the final recommendations offered in the second and third reports.

Introduction

Homelessness has been a continuing presence in the District of Columbia for almost three decades. It only became a high priority issue for public action, however, when the administration of Mayor Adrian Fenty assumed control of District government in January 2007. As a City Council member, the Mayor had been instrumental in passing the Homeless Services Reform Act of 2005 (HSRA); he quickly made clear that ending homelessness in the District would be among the most important goals of his administration.

Toward this end, the Department of Human Services was authorized to contract with the Urban Institute to conduct an assessment of the District’s homeless assistance system, with the expectation that the results of such an assessment could help guide efforts to transform the system to make it more effective at reducing and ultimately ending homelessness. This is the first evaluation report, begun in July 2007. It addresses issues related to the Community Partnership (TCP) identified in our initial survey of key informants, upon which we based our plan for this evaluation.

TCP is a nonprofit organization occupying an intermediate position between District government agencies and homeless assistance providers. Since 994 it has been the vehicle through which District funding from the Department of Human Services (DHS) and the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) flows to homeless assistance programs. It also manages the application process to and the flow of federal dollars from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) homeless funding programs to programs in the District. A number of cities, including Miami/Dade County, Florida and Columbus/Franklin County, Ohio, have found the use of similar intermediary nonprofits to be an efficient and effective way to manage homeless resources.

We were charged to make a detailed assessment of TCP activities and accomplishments, designed to answer the broad questions “What does District government get for the money it pays TCP through the DHS contract?” and “What does TCP do for the District of Columbia community?” This first report of the evaluation focuses on providing answers to those questions.The second evaluation report, Transforming the District of Columbia’s Public Homeless System (Burt and Hall 2008a), addresses the much larger issue of how the District could organize itself to end homelessness. Many topics discussed in this first report are also pertinent to the second; findings reported here are incorporated into the second report as they shed light on the discussion of what it will take to end homelessness in the District of Columbia. In addition, a short summary report, Major Recommendations: Summary Report of the Urban Institute’s Assessment of the District of Columbia's Public Homeless Assistance System (Burt and Hall 2008b) presents major recommendations and integrates findings from both reports.

(End of excerpt. The entire report is available in PDF format.)

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