Asheville Continuum of Care reports new structure, committees and funding coordination

The Asheville Buncombe Continuum of Care (CoC) presented an organizational and operational update at the Sept. 16 meeting of the City of Asheville’s Housing and Community Development Committee. Emily Ball, the city’s homeless strategy division manager, said the CoC now has 522 members, including 92 organizations, and reported new committees, a compensation plan for people with lived experience and coordinated funding activity.

Ball said the CoC has “a very clear strategic path forward” and described that path as a foundation for “knitting individual and organizational actions into a community level response.” She told the committee that 86 members of the 522 are elected or appointed to the CoC board, committees or work groups and that board and membership meetings take place monthly at Harrah’s banquet hall.

The CoC has established six standing committees (community relations; funding; nominating/membership; system performance; system planning and implementation; and advocacy) and multiple work groups, Ball said. She named committee chairs and recent board appointments, including Captain Brown in the public safety seat, Mary Brown in the faith community seat, Jerry Kimbrough in the VA seat, Marcia Mount Shoop in a community member seat and Ella Santos in the housing authority seat. Ball said three board seats are vacant and that applications remain open; committee staff later clarified the open categories include a business community representative and a local nongovernmental funder representative, and that there are community member seats intended to represent organized community groups.

The CoC has approved a compensation plan “for subject matter experts with lived and living experience of homelessness,” Ball said. The plan covers payment for people elected to the board or appointed to committees and work groups; Ball said Goodwill was selected as the fiscal agent to receive donations and administer the compensation plan and that the CoC is seeking a funding source (the CoC has applied for a Dogwood capacity-building grant to resource the plan).

Ball described work-group priorities: an emergency shelter development group chaired by Dr. Jim Hardy that is considering roughly 80 noncongregate beds with capacity for 50 overflow congregate beds and multi-agency operational collaborations; a HelpMate-led coordinated-entry redesign focused on a new vulnerability and housing needs assessment tool; a Code Purple work group chaired by Christian Chambers finalizing the seasonal plan for approval in October; and a homelessness prevention work group chaired by Ben Williamson that will be staffed by a newly hired project manager, Sarah Dickerson, funded by a $275,000 Right at Home planning grant.

Ball said the CoC has coordinated about $13,400,000 in awarded funding and has approximately $777,000 pending. She said some requests require only a CoC letter of support, while other funding flows will be managed by the CoC’s fiscal agent arrangements; Ball said Goodwill and Citi will both play roles in holding and applying for funds depending on the situation. The funding committee is developing a public funding dashboard and will oversee compensation and fiscal processes.

Ball said the CoC adopted a three-year strategic plan in June with objectives to decrease unsheltered homelessness by increasing utilization of current beds and expanding emergency shelter capacity; increase exits from homelessness into permanent housing; coordinate and expand homelessness prevention, diversion and rapid rehousing; and build housing-focused system capacity through written standards, training and performance measurement.

Committee members asked for clarifications about the planned 80 noncongregate beds — whether they would be in one location or across sites — and Ball responded that the work group’s analysis has not yet finalized that detail and is weighing options for multi-site or single-site configurations and ways to share beds across partners. Ball described a proposed “central nervous system” for shelters to share real-time bed-availability information.

Ball noted the CoC structure now includes a dedicated seat on the Downtown Improvement District steering committee, partnerships with YMCA and AFD Rest for showers, and coordinated outreach in West Asheville focused on increased outreach and needle-response work.

Next steps described to the committee include continued committee and work-group activities, the Code Purple plan coming to the CoC board for approval in October, and continued pursuit of funding opportunities to resource compensation for people with lived experience and other CoC priorities.

Ending: Ball said the CoC “has a lot going on” and that staff will keep council and committee members informed; the committee chair and members thanked her for the briefing and expressed support for continued coordination and data reporting from the CoC.