A Home For All: How Did We Get Here?

Tchernavia Montgomery & Stacy Lowry

Co-Chairs, A Home For All Technical Committee

This blog post is from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Housing & Homelessness Dashboard. View the original post here.

Recently, United Way of Greater Charlotte (United Way) released the A Home For All Implementation Plan. Building on the priorities identified in the A Home for All Strategic Framework , the Implementation Plan outlines which priorities to advance first in order to address housing instability and homelessness across the Charlotte-Mecklenburg area.

Following the publication of the Framework, the community asked United Way to serve as the lead of the enduring structure charged with guiding the work over the next four years and translating the framework into an actionable implementation plan. United Way convened a Technical Committee comprised of 70+ individuals with professional and lived expertise related to homelessness and housing insecurity. The committee helped ensure that implementation priorities were community and data-driven and informed by best practices. Over the last nine months, preliminary initiatives from the Strategic Framework were prioritized and synthesized into the Implementation Plan.

This blog will provide an overview of the work of the Technical Committee and the process for getting from the Strategic Framework to the Implementation Plan.

A HOME FOR ALL STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK & IMPLEMENTATION PLAN

In April 2021, Charlotte-Mecklenburg came together to address concerning local trends in affordable housing and homelessness. This 18-month community engagement effort consisted of input from hundreds of diverse stakeholders and resulted in the A Home For All Strategic Framework, a first-ever comprehensive framework to address homelessness and housing instability– spanning the continuum from shelter beds to affordable homeownership. This effort created important momentum and focus on the issue of homelessness and housing instability in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg area.

In October 2022, led by United Way and facilitated by HR&A Advisors, Inc., the community came together again to develop the Framework implementation plan and to identify which of the strategies to move forward first. The full process took place over nine months and involved consultation with more than 150 individuals and organizations. A key centerpiece of the engagement was the convening the Technical Committee. The committee, comprised of subject matter experts with professional and lived expertise, provided insight into what supportive services are required, how services should be offered, and how to meet the current demand for all forms of shelter and housing. Committee members began with the 99 initiatives laid out in the Strategic Framework and identified nine near-term priority initiatives.

These innovative initiatives address the full continuum of housing instability and homelessness and will help achieve our goal of a community where homelessness is rare, brief, and nonrecurring, and every person has access to permanent, affordable housing and the resources to sustain it.

MOVING FORWARD

Making these initiatives a reality will require a new coalition of public, private, and nonprofit organizations to coordinate action. United Way will continue to convene key stakeholders through a Technical Committee charged with monitoring progress across initiatives, and via various implementation teams charged with overseeing program design for each pilot initiative.

The expertise, enthusiasm, and unwavering dedication of the Technical Committee and other stakeholders will move us forward in making meaningful, enduring change. Homelessness and housing instability are a community issue, and it will take members from all sectors of the community to find solutions.

United Way will work with community stakeholders to ensure the work is adequately resourced through public-private partnerships. Flexible funding for these initiatives is essential to support innovation and allow service providers to move quickly. The City of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County will continue to play a critical role in supporting the initiatives. Shared community-wide metrics will be key to maintaining coordination. Realistic and attainable targets will be determined as funding is identified and initiatives are launched.

Several initiatives are entirely new concepts requiring full program design. Initiatives will be piloted and evaluated so that lessons learned can be incorporated into final program design. It is critical all initiatives are responsive to the realities of funding, human resources, and system/organizational capacity. Our community must remain agile in what solutions and innovations we choose to deploy. As long as we stay carefully coordinated in approach and united in mission, we have no doubt this effort will be successful.

When positive outcomes are evident, initiatives will be scaled to the broader community. Even as initiatives are scaled, continuous quality improvement will be applied to implementation and design.

Each of the nine initiatives are at different points in this process and will move forward independently over the next four years. For example, the systems navigation role is entirely new and will require program design. In contrast, there are many successful critical home repair programs that need to be evaluated to make program design adjustments before they can be scaled.

SO WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s creation of the A Home For All Implementation Plan demonstrates the power and potential of deep collaboration between public and private partners, and the importance of centering the voices of those with lived expertise in designing solutions to our community’s most difficult challenges. We are working diligently to create a more efficient homeless assistance system within our community. Our objective is clear. We are willing to think differently and are passionate about tackling the problem from within.

Successful implementation of the identified initiatives will hinge on the continued commitment of all stakeholders to remain aligned. We must sustain our collective focus on addressing the full continuum of housing and homelessness in order to create a community where homelessness is rare, brief, and nonrecurring, and every person has access to permanent, affordable housing and the resources to sustain it.

Visit AHomeForAllMeck.org to view the Implementation Plan, learn more about the initiative and sign up to receive email updates or follow along on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Tchernavia Montgomery is the CEO of Care Ring.  A licensed clinical social worker, she currently serves on the Board of Directors of Alliance Health and the Board of the NC Association of Free & Charitable Clinics, in addition to co-chairing the Technical Committee for ‘A Home for All’ – Charlotte Mecklenburg’s Housing and Homelessness Strategic Plan. A 2023 Charlotte Ledger “40 Over 40” awardee, in 2021, she was also recognized with the City of Charlotte/Atrium Health’s MLK Growing the Dream Award and UNC-Charlotte Black Alumni Association’s Excellence in Leadership Award. She is a member of Charlotte’s Women Executives and a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated where she serves as a local chapter officer and a regional committee leadership member.  

Stacy M. Lowry is co-chair of the A Home for All Technical Committee. Since 2016, she has served as department director of Community Support Services, a human services department within Mecklenburg County that addresses homelessness and housing services, veterans services, domestic violence, and substance use. She is recognized as a national leader in the implementation of best and promising practices in the homeless and supportive housing field and implemented the MeckFUSE and Keeping Families Together housing programs for frequent users of homeless shelters, streets and jail and frequent users of homeless shelters and the child welfare system.