Agenda Packet 10-10-18 Joint Work Session

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number of unsheltered persons has become acute. School Districts in Lane County report that 2,544 of their students were homeless during the last school year. Annual figures show that 15,454 individuals who sought services from local human services programs were homeless at some point during the year (2017). Both the City of Eugene and Lane County support a range of projects and programs to address homelessness (Attachments A and B). These efforts are guided by multiple plans for human services and affordable housing. However, despite these efforts and those of other community partners, there is a growing need for a systems-level analysis of homelessness and an examination of what future shelter options might be most viable in Lane County. The Lane County Department of Health and Human Services - Human Services Division, with the assistance of the Poverty and Homelessness Board, Shelter and Supportive Housing Sub-Committee, and City of Eugene and Springfield staff has worked toward implementation, support and oversight of homeless shelter and supportive housing programs and a Public Shelter Feasibility Study. In the fall of 2017, Lane County, with the participation and additional funding support of the City of Eugene, selected the Technical Assistance Collaborative (TAC) to conduct a Public Shelter Feasibility Study and Homeless Service System Analysis for Lane County. TAC is a non-profit, 501c(3) organization with over 25 years of experience providing technical assistance and consultation to states, counties, municipalities and Continua of Care on conducting shelter and supportive housing systems analysis for individuals and families who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. B. Policy Issues The context of the TAC analysis is that Lane County currently has a complex network of shelter, housing and human services and that while learning about public shelter best practices from other communities would be important, so too would an objective, expert analysis of our local situation. This would generate recommendations that would be tailored to financial and other conditions present in Lane County as well as effective integration of any new public shelter into our current system. The initial phases of TAC’s analysis included interviews with an extensive list of key stakeholders in Lane County that are part of the system of homeless services (Attachment C) and synthesis of local homelessness data. This data, combined with a mapping of all community housing and human services programs focused on homelessness, provides the first full-picture understanding of all homeless services, their capacity and gaps in Lane County. The product of this work is an interim systems map of homeless services in Lane County (Attachment D). The second key component of TAC’s work has been to analyze the systems map, homelessness data, best practices and an understanding of local economic conditions, to produce an interim description of challenges and recommendations October 10, 2018, Joint City-County Work Session – Item 1