Journey Home – on ending chronic homelessness
The Zero:2016 campaign
We recently caught up with Matt Morgan, Executive Director of Journey Home in Connecticut, a non-profit that is leading the effort to end chronic homelessness in the Greater Hartford area of the State.
Matt recently attended a Zero:2016 Summit and had this to say about the event.
“I believe we can end chronic homelessness by the end of 2016, but we have lots of work to do, and lots of changes to make, and that starts here! Our Zero:2016 team of front line workers has an incredible level of first-hand expertise, and our leadership in Greater Hartford is really committed to this effort. Context for any successful effort is such an important contributing factor to its success, and CT is the absolute best context in the country to become the first state to end chronic homelessness. The CT landscape includes large state investments in supportive housing and rapid rehousing, current leadership at all levels committed to this goal, the creation of the Coordinated Access Networks, being a small state where we can drive to get together for face-to-face statewide planning, and having an identified name by name registry of chronic homelessness all combine to set the deck for making this an achievable goal. More work is necessary because our monthly placement rate in housing is still lower than the number of people becoming chronically homelessness each month. We need new strategies and creative ideas for how to get the job done, and the Zero:2016 campaign is the way we will make it happen.
Matt also gave us an interview about his organizations work and how Rapid Results has been a key partner.
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