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Summit spotlights lived experience, community toolkits and World Cafe discussions
Summary
Speakers emphasized centering people with lived experience in planning and highlighted a new community toolkit, World Cafe sessions and peer‑led efforts such as Keys to Life and True North Recovery as part of the city's response.
Summit panels and community dialogues emphasized that people with lived experience of homelessness should help design responses, and organizers used small “World Cafe” sessions to collect community proposals and volunteer commitments.
Shirley May Springer Staton, executive director of Keys to Life, summarized a months‑long community listening process that produced a toolkit and a list of community‑generated solutions. She said participants — including people who are currently or previously unhoused, community council members and faith groups — repeatedly asked for more listening, local small shelters integrated into neighborhoods, sanitation and trash services, and repurposing vacant spaces.
The summit also featured a live conversation with Carl Soderstrom, CEO of True North Recovery, who described his personal path through substance use, incarceration, loss of housing and eventual recovery. Soderstrom credited repeated outreach, peer support and community programs for his stabilization and told the audience that small acts of consistent help can change a person’s trajectory.
World Cafe and volunteer pathways
The event ran multiple World Cafe tables hosted by faith groups, nonprofit providers and municipal staff on topics such as volunteering at shelter sites, eviction diversion and reentry, youth homelessness, and housing on church land. Organizers encouraged attendees to sign up for specific volunteer roles and for coordinated‑entry training for supervisors and front‑line staff.
Why it matters
Speakers reiterated the maxim "nothing about us without us" and called for more peer‑led roles, more culturally responsive services, easier access to information about services (for people without phones), and smaller distributed shelter and housing models that preserve community ties.
Next steps
Organizers will compile World Cafe notes and circulating results and asked participants to take a short post‑event survey. Keys to Life and coalition partners said they would continue dialogues and offer the toolkit to councils and nonprofits.
