The gathering of virtual communities
Back in December of last year, Governor Gavin Newsom announced a 100-Day Challenge Initiative to address homelessness across California - due to the impact 100-Day Challenges have made to accelerate efforts to prevent and end youth homelessness, and in tackling Veteran and chronic homelessness across the country.
Just last month - in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, 4 communities came together (virtually) to launch the first set of 100-Day Challenges of this initiative. The focus of these Challenges is to ensure that those who are housed as a result of Project Roomkey exit the program into safe and stable housing.
The communities to participate in this first cohort include:
Alameda County
Riverside County
Los Angeles County
Stanislaus County
What is Project Roomkey?
Launched in April, Project Roomkey is a first-in-nation initiative to provide safe temporary housing in hotels and motel rooms for the most vulnerable amongst us experiencing homelessness during this pandemic.
“Through this effort, the state will provide dedicated support teams to counties, including assistance in identifying hotels, negotiating and executing operating agreements, and providing the local providers technical assistance in keeping the records necessary to receive federal reimbursement.”
The 100-Day Challenge goals
Over the course of a week and several virtual workshops, the Teams came up with and committed to ambitious goals - all related to housing folks exiting Project Roomkey:
Alameda - In 100 days, 400 people across Alameda County will exit Project Roomkey into safe and stable housing.
Los Angeles - In 100 days, we will utilize shared housing to house 100 people age 55 or older and have an acuity score of 0-7 (without precluding people with higher scores). We will leverage the learning to house an additional 300 PRK clients by the end of PRK demobilization.
Riverside - In 100 Days, 140 seniors, 65 years and older, who are currently participating in PRK, will be in safe and stable permanent housing.
Stanislaus - In 100 days, 100 Individuals experiencing homelessness that are 65 and older and/or individuals experiencing homelessness with underlying medical conditions will successfully exit Project Roomkey into safe and stable housing which can include Permanent Supportive Housing and landlord engaged units with a focus on veterans, individuals dealing with severe mental illness and/or substance use disorder, and individuals with disabilities.
We want to give a huge thank you to the California Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council for being our partners in the work.
What's next?
These communities are already innovating, collaborating, and executing their way towards reaching their ambitious goals. Day 50 of these communities’ 100-Day Challenge is on July 14th, so stay tuned for more updates on their progress around then!
We will also be launching further cohorts as part of this initiative - with different focuses, in the future. More on that later!
Read More
Sarah Robens becomes the new CEO of RE!NSTITUTE
We are delighted to share THIS REPORT which outlines how the 100-Day Challenge methodology has supported over 100 teams in 24 Mexican cities in 14 states in 7 years, as well as teams in the Dominican Republic and Honduras, to operationalize a people-centered approach to support the resolution of thousands of criminal cases, improve the quality of victims’ services, prevent femicides and build belief and momentum in change across Mexico and Latin America. We share people- driven innovations that have supported these results and how they were created. We analyze the lessons learned, including where we have fallen short and what the approach can teach us all about how we balance the inherent tension between the need for short-term results and the long hard journey to more accountable and fair justice systems everywhere.
A look back at our role as a founding partner of Nesta's People Power Results program as they reflect on 10 years of work.
Multi-sector approaches to homelessness response have been proven effective at more quickly and efficiently addressing homelessness in communities across the country. The research literature suggest ways of tackling the complexity of multi-sector coordination, and here we highlight examples from past 100-Day Challenges where communities have woven together expertise and services from their housing, healthcare, employment and education sectors.
Starting in October 2022 and ending in February 2023, Palm Beach County(PBC) Conducted a 100-Day Challenge® to both house and connect to service people experiencing homelessness and living with HIV.
That is our objective (to protect women and save lives). This innovation was born because we had a crisis on our hands of missing persons; It all started with a viral post through social media for a missing young woman.
Our 100-Day Challenges produce amazing ideas, innovations, and actions that create meaningful change, helping our teams achieve their unreasonable but believable goals. These innovations can be small or large, disruptive, or the start of a slight ripple; some are temporary, and others permanent. However they work, they all make things different, affecting systems in such a way that the changes we see as a result of a 100-Day Challenge last.
Treatment of wounds is a prerequisite for entering shelters and residential recovery programs. Most shelters have strict rules around substance use, which can be a barrier to entry for some; treating wounds is a first step toward recovery. Untreated wounds can lead to infection and, in extreme cases, amputation. This increases long-term health needs and can make permanent housing placement more difficult.
"Holy moly, it was, like, a pop!" - Christy McCammond, Program Manager at Merced County Human Services Agency
As a part of our journey to make equity a central part of what we do and an actionable part of our internal and external policies and practices, we hope to be transparent and share highlights of what we’ve learned and unlearned. We will be the first to own that this is a journey without a reachable destination, and we humbly acknowledge how far we still have to go but share these lessons in the hope that they will be helpful to others on their own equity journeys.
Catalyzing frontline staff to create successful, innovative solutions to complex challenges is a positive step in itself. But when those innovations are taken and adopted in a different area, the impacts are massively increased, and the possibility of wide-scale, systemic change starts to become a reality. This is what happened with one of the innovations generated through RE!NSTITUTE's 100-Day Challenge methodology.
Rapid Results Institute has now become RE!NSTITUTE, still offering the same impactful methodologies and partnerships.
Bringing together four California communities to discover new pathways to helping vulnerable populations move toward safe and stable housing.
“People deserve a seat at the table they’ll be discussed at.” – Sean Whitten, RE!NSTITUTE CEO