New River Housing

Here's an interesting item highlighting a DD supportive housing provider & a progressive service idea. I lifted the entire excerpt from the Winston-Salem Journal online partner Journalnow.com You may be asked to register (for free) to read articles.

Monday, November 28, 2005
Community Milestones

JOURNAL STAFF REPORT

IN PUBLIC SERVICE

• Group Homes of Forsyth Inc., a nonprofit corporation, observed its 30th anniversary recently at the home of Sarah and Harlan Daubert. The agency raised more than $20,000 to help start a fund to begin developing a retirement community that provides advanced care for people with developmental disabilities.

James Pritchett, vice president of Development for Community Housing Partners, was the guest speaker, and Zach Bacon IV was honored with a Community Spirit Award. Mayor Allen Joines welcomed all the guests and paid tribute to the services that the agency provides.

Group Homes of Forsyth Inc. operates seven group homes, a supported living program and a community classroom.

rmcox

29 December 2005

Good Morning,

While looking for resources related to tracking donor prospects these things came across my desktop:

Fundraising

• Keeping Track of Key Donors is an article published Wednesday, July 27, 2005 by Michele Hickey, CFRE on Charity Channel.

• eTapestry is a resource for donor management that can be used for free for small organizations & affordably for larger ones.

• Here’s a fundraising affinity idea retrieved from Charity Channel on 28 Dec 05 by rmcox:

Wooden Nickel Program

Years ago Wild Oats invented a unique way to support local nonprofit groups while encouraging customers and employees to recycle. In an on-going effort to reduce negative impact on the environment and encourage others to recycle and reuse, Wild Oats created the Wooden Nickel Program.

The way it works, is, every time you bring your own shopping bags to the store – be it canvas, plastic or paper – they will offer one Wooden Nickel per bag, which you then deposit into one of several Wooden Nickel Banks as you exit the store. Each Bank represents a different local, non-profit organization. For those that would prefer a nickel refund, they will give you 5 cents per bag reused to encourage good recycling practices.The Wooden Nickel Program benefits three non-profit organizations every three-to-six months, and nonprofit groups can apply by visiting their community’s Wild Oats store and requesting a Wooden Nickel application.

Affordable Housing

Depending upon the source, Watauga County is listed as one of the highest rental markets in North Carolina. It is true that Watauga County has a higher than state average housing market & a lower than state average median wage (this is across the board for all jobs). It is routinely thrown around, by local advocates, that Watauga County is the “3rd highest rental market in NC, per capita”.

Personally, I use that stat to make the case that Boone is expensive & that metro areas are not the only ones with affordable housing problems. (Another piece of data is the difficulty of bringing professionals to the area due to lack of affordable housing.)


However, there is data that places Watauga County as the 8th
most expensive rental market in NC as determined using the “housing wage”. [The housing wage is the dollar amount required to be earned to afford a 2-bedroom apartment at the benchmark 30% of income to be used for housing.] It is also the 2nd most expensive rental market for non-metropolitan counties—Dare County is the highest. (Dare County is a resort area of the NC Outer Banks—coastal.)

The “Universal Living Wage” and the “Housing Wage” are essentially the same thing. The Universal Living Wage campaign seeks to set the federal minimum wage be indexed to the housing wage. This creates a dynamic localized minimum wage & therefore headaches for business owners & payroll clerks until everyone adjusts to the system.

For perspective, North Carolina is the 22nd least affordable state ($12.14/hour housing wage). Washington DC ($23.56/hour) is 1st least affordable & Puerto Rico ($7.46/hour) is the 52nd least affordable.

Blog Changes

I made a few tweaks to the outline of this site. Primarily, I created two sub-categories in the link list (general & nonprofit resources) & added a couple resources to the list. Messing around with the template is a nice distraction; but, I temper all changes through the filter of usability, which causes a time lag in decision-making—something of a change in style.

rmcox

22 December 2005

Good Morning,

The NLIHC publishes an annual survey of housing affordability in the US. This year’s edition of Out Of Reach is now available.

The data for the Northwest Continuum of Care (NWCoC) is disturbing—again! The counties of interest are Alleghany, Ashe, Avery, Mitchell, Watauga, Wilkes and Yancey. None of these counties have Area Median Incomes (AMI) at or above the North Carolina state average. Watauga comes closest (NC $53,635; Watauga $ 51,500), unsurprisingly, with the highest education, due to presence of Appalachian State University—2005 NCAA 1-AA football national champions--and biggest consolidation of second home owners.

Housing wage for the counties averages $10.37/hour. The range is $9.67 up to $12.29. Watauga County holds that top spot honor; placing the county housing wage above the NC state average of $12.14/hour. This boils down to working 80 hours each week at minimum wage ($5.15/hour).

So, what analysis can be reached here? Well, there are several. 1st, consider that renting is expensive in terms of time for persons employed in the service industry; or 2nd, that those living on Supplemental Security Income (SSI), $579/month can never hope to pay fair market rent for an apartment. This creates a market for older, less well maintained units—some of which are pretty rough.

If we accept that everyone is entitled to decent, safe, affordable housing then we must consider that such a goal can never be achieved through current market-based philosophies. It takes coalitions of government, private developers and interested persons to create affordable housing.

I will not pretend to know much about this topic or to have an answer. I do understand that this is a systemic problem & can only be solved systemically. It is the core of my work to tackle the system around supporting those who will never be at or above the average.

rmcox

22 December 2005

Good Morning,

Capacity building is grantmaking designed to develop the strength and effectiveness of nonprofit organizations and to increase the leverage of philanthropic dollars.

Developing what organization’s need is the first, and most important, step in grant seeking. This oft overlooked step can be sidelined by a search for money at any cost. Such short-sighted perspective leads to problems down the road—problems that can be costly and time-consuming to correct.

Blogging is fascinating in the same way as webpage development. In fact, blogging makes websites easier since only the space for the actual text is needed and updates are, by definition, regular. A side benefit is that writing skills develop with continuous authorship.

There are plenty of places to get blog and website templates. The internet abounds with graphic artists giving away basic designs in hope of selling more complicated designs.

The following block quote about blogging software is lifted from Nonprofit Online News; where you can sign up for weekly email of relevant news to nonprofit communications. The writer, Michael Gilbert, is particularly interested in the use of computer technology and the internet to support the missions of nonprofit organizations. The newsletter usually also has items of interest to a more general reader (ie, me).

In my article on the content management workflow for Nonprofit Online News, I mentioned Ecto, a desktop blogging application that I admire, but don't use. Ecto is available for Windows and Mac OS, although not for Linux. It plays well with all the major blogging platforms. It supports per-post control of trackback, comments, post time, categories, and tags. It is a top notch writer's tool, with spell check, integration with other content tools (like iPhoto on Mac OS), word count, rich formatting, and filters. Unfortunately, there is one important protocol (involving a separate element for links to which individual blog entries point), essential to the one link per entry model of the Nonprofit Online News platform, that Ecto doesn't support. I think this is an elegant example of the connection between a core aspect of a communication model and a technical protocol.

I use Blogger for Word when developing longer posts due to the ability to publish directly from my word processor. There are limitations of editing blog entries in Word; particularly, in posting HTML links. Word automatically converts links to HTML causing a double entry in Blogger—which is a dead link when published. If anyone out there has a good work around that doesn’t involve hand-correcting the post in the Blogger edit box I would love to read about it.

Interesting site and links to anti-anti-corporate activists--I've never seen that before. (Usually it is corporate support versus anti-corporate support. Guess I'm proving my moderate liberal position.) Gifthub includes links to other satrical sites and one site called Activistcash.com that attacks efforts to influence policy directed at social change. This all gives a very different way to think about liberalism in modern post-industrial capitalism. Here is a philanthropy blog to check out again: gifthub.org/.


rmcox

Map of the Serenity Farm area

12/15/05

NC HOMELESS CONFERENCE:
Raleigh, NC. 29-30 November 2005.

Looks like a good crowd. The official report given is 540 persons—good growth over the nine years. The staff reported that 163 people registered for the inaugural conference.

Spent some time last night riding around the hotel—without ever getting close enough to see it. Pretty frustrating, to say the least. Then, today, in the light, I can see how close I was so many times. It amazes how I can go to the same hotel & drive the same road every year & still have such trouble every year.

I recognize several people from past years & from other events. There are many 1st timers, as always. It is good for new people to attend. I'm particularly pleased to see the Hospitality House of Boone staff and the Wintergreen PSHP staff.

One of the original purposes of the conference is to discuss access to the largest funding process for homeless programs: US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Continuum of Care (CoC) community planning process.

OPENING REMARKS:

The conference opened with inspirational remarks from people in various stages of transition out of homelessness—3 people telling their stories, some with the humorous honesty of self-reflection. A better panel could not have been picked. A young man who worked through the system, a young lady who fought the system until she accepted it, and an educated mother who could not make it through the system & gives a picture of all the things not working.

These speakers present how the system could work when it is flexible & supportive. It is good that the young people are here to learn a little about what does work. Flexibility in acceptance of a consumer's presentation & ways to think about that presentation is encouraged by these panels.

Another aspect is training that “the system” is not the only way to attack a problem—it can be the hardest way. The system is funded consistently; however, there are times when the costs of doing business are high—emotional and time costs specifically.

The panel also highlighted acceptance by service providers, attached to persistence in approaching consumers, as another feature of “what works”. A correlate is the persistence of the consumer—which is enhanced by the relationship between provider & consumer. This old lesson is a good one to re-visit regularly. Focus on helping the consumer meet their own goals is the real work. By working for the consumer & not asking the consumer to meet our needs more energy can go into problem solving.

This was a great session & I hope I can find the transcript online.

CONVERSATIONS:

Some consideration of the future of the NorthWest Continuum of Care (NWCoC) through a couple of conversations over the two days.

First, I spoke with a colleague about the prospects of HUD funding for homeless projects. It is the speculation that HUD will continue to not fund projects that do not focus on permanent housing for chronically homeless persons. This is bolstered by rumor that services-only projects are not being renewed in some areas. Rumor has it.... What we don't have is the facts about why such a program would be cut—that would take the fear out of the prospect.

Certainly, the McKinney-Vento Act gained such momentum because of the vets sleeping on the Capitol Mall. It is vets, chronically homeless singles, and “chronic inebriates” who have gotten the bulk of the funding lately. It seems a logical step to only fund housing for these hard to serve persons.

While all this is going on there is plenty of attempts to shift that funding to other populations (ie, families).

There was discussion of how the CoC community planning process can reach beyond the seed funding of the US treasury. If I remember correctly, HUD reps have said as much all along--”look beyond HUD for $$”. Strategically, I would like to see NWCoC work out of its center as an independent nonprofit networking throughout the communities it serves & building the infrastructure. This dovetails with my vision of my NRBH job: to develop housing capacity for consumers throughout our catchment area using a variety of community resources—sort of a strengths-based model that still needs some work & planning.

Overall, the conference opened up some conversations leading to ways to continue using local capacity. Included is the opportunity to work with the fire marshal—which previously held an adverserial position.

WORKSHOPS:

Several workshops related to NPOs becoming landlords were available. I went briefly to the nonprofit/local government session—it was a presentation of CASA & Wake County. CASA is the housing developer created by area authority of Wake County in 1992. Brought up the idea of mixed income housing in tax credit developments. This partnership produced fruit in the form of a well-managed supportive housing owner/operator.

The Afternoon workshop was presented by a nonprofit supportive housing developer from Portland, Oregon. His company buys, builds, rehabs housing—mostly apartments—in communities, to create "recovery" communities. They own 1400 units & service them with a set of for-profit companies that employ consumers/ former consumers & provide an income stream for the company. He mentioned that there are rules in OR where they can evict on 48 hours notice for certain lease violations (ie, use of intoxicants as a lease violation). He also mentioned that the goal is to use the 48 hours to provide an intervention. He mentioned that he had only evicted 10 times.

Some discussion about the challenges facing some of the nonprofits, including cost of housing, gentrification, rural vs. Urban, neighborhoods. Presenter mentioned that he creates housing that is better than others in the neighborhood & that he takes an active role in neighborhood associations. The company is a large landlord in the areas where they work. These are all elements of the company's success.

NCCEH (North Carolina Coalition to End Homelessness)

North Carolina Coalition to End Homelessness meeting where they presented on achievements for 2005. These included advocacy network building where the coalition staff (1 person) is now called upon by legislators (state & federal) for expert opinion & they are able to influence lawmakers positively. This truly is a success for a social issue that lost its sexiness years ago.

All this put me in a reflective mood about what my goals are. Essentially,:

--access to affordable, decent, safe housing for consumers.
Relationships with developers
relationships with landlords
con plan
advocate for use of resources
survey of needs
green building technologies
leader in supportive housing services

The materials from these workshops are reported to be placed on the DHHS homeless website following the conference.

ADVOCACY 101 WORKSHOP:

Do ask for what you want, specifically—in terms of introducing a bill through signing up an original co-sponsor (hopefully, bi-partisan co-sponsors). Job then is to get people to sign on as a co-sponsor—more co-sponsors, more support.

"you are the expert"--why people will listen to "me". Part of the process is to educate the listener.

Process:
educate on the issues, problems, solutions
ask for ways to solve the problem (this is what politicians want to do--"solve problems")
build relationship

Email is good way to contact Hill staff (formula for email address available through coalition website)
want to get the name & contact info for Legislative Assistant for a particular issue.
Then build relationship with that person.

"The greater the apparent effort, the more attention given by the staffer"--so, personalized faxes & localized information in bulk letters. Pay attention to subject lines & re-wording of form materials.

Always give the ask, after some brief background, in specific bullet points. With local facts, figures, stories.

HOUSING FIRST WORKSHOP:

Debbie Webster, division Best Practice, homeless contact/ PATH coordinator

Mainstream service—available as long as the consumer needs it.

Housing First is evidence-based/best practice model

Housing First is taking services to the consumer
The new service definitions require housing—whenever they go into play.

Specifically designed for homeless SPMI consumers. There is some empirical evidence that this model can be generalized to general chronic homeless population.

PATH is time-limited CM for persons on the street & not-engaged. (research this program & getting funding)

A representative from a PATH-funded Housing First Program in Wilmington NC expressed the following points:

"community-benefits"
started in Wilmington with some agency funds ($5000) & some NAMI money.
8 apts—2 persons per apt—helps with affordability
similar to Safe Haven model in that people can take time to adjust to living in unit.

NOTES, ETC:

Cost/benefit analysis of housing v. Homelessness may go a long way to expanding funding locally.

One message I brought from the conference is to take a big picture role & look for ways to solve bigger problems—then the problem is affordable housing not homelessness. Or, affordable housing for low & very-low income persons as a specific subset of the affordable housing problem in Watauga County.

So, how can I best use my time in Ashe County? I could stay all day. I could work on the housing stock inventory. I could advocate for homeless services. I could work with CM & build those relationships. It will be the day that the revolving fund will start (maybe). Ask CM what they need.
rmcox

Questions to consider when thinking about buying your own home. These questions are on the website of the NC Self-Help Credit Union.

The credit union has served North Carolina since 1980 & offers financing for homeownership & entrepreneurship. This is actually a national nonprofit.

"Self-Help is a community development lender that has provided over $3.9 billion in financing to more than 43,000 home buyers, small businesses, and nonprofits nationwide. Self-Help reaches persons who are underserved by conventional lenders--particularly minorities, women, rural residents, and low-wealth families. Funds for lending come from deposits, grants, and other investments made by individuals and institutions across the U.S."

"Since 1980, Self-Help has provided $3.9 billion in financing to over 43,000 small businesses, nonprofits, and homebuyers. In many cases, our lending and advocacy efforts have benefited people and communities both in North Carolina and nationwide."

They can be contacted at Self-Help Credit Union (919) 956-4400 / (800) 476-7428 • P.O. Box 3619, Durham, NC 27702.

rmcox

Good Morning,

I want to start with gratitude for my co-workers and family because the treatment they gave during the time of my grandmother's funeral. THANK YOU.

Otherwise, it is business as usual:

trying to find housing resources for low-income persons in the area. Today, 2 people in one county lost housing & became homeless. The significance is multi-level; but, it does show that there is homelessness in Appalachia.

Also finding that defending services for the homeless is getting harder to do. HUD started a major program & now we find that committment waning.

Had a request for homeownership options for someone in rural NC. Don't know much about the circumstances so a little google is in order. There is HUD, Center for HomeOwnership, Wilkes Habitat for Humanity (Wilkes Habitat for Humanity, 910 C. Street, North Wilkesboro, NC 28659 Phone: (336) 651-7817 Fax: (336) 651-7807).

-- Isothermal Planning and Development Commission -- 111 West Court Street Rutherfordton, NC 28139 -- (828) 287-2281 --This is the Western NC Housing Partnereship that came up as the grant receipiant in a google for housing in Wilkes county. The confusion is that the two areas are not in the same polictical region. I'll have to learn more.

rmcox

Good Morning,

spending a little time creating a flyer for World AIDS Day exhibt happening tonight. Along the way I ran across a cool project that reminded me of the AIDS Quilt. The Peace Tiles Project is the work of an artist named Lars--you know I should do better than these quickie entries--where children with AIDS create a collage & then mount it onto wooden tiles and varnish them for protection. The whole collection is being displayed in two sections.

more later,

rmcox