Continuum of Care

The Christian, Greene and Webster Counties Continuum of Care, a subcommittee of the Housing Collaborative, is the area consortium of homeless and housing service providers. This group meets monthly to ensure that nearly $900,000 in Housing and Urban Development (HUD) dollars are secured for the tri-county area. The Continuum works closely with HUD to meet federal compliance standards, one of which is the submission of a local 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness.

This plan identifies priority needs in the community and ways in which collaborative partners can work together to address the needs. As a HUD funded Community, the Continuum of Care works closely with HUD to meet federal compliance standards, one of which is the submission of a local 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness. Goals included in this plan include

  1. Create new permanent housing beds for chronically homeless persons.
  2. Increase percentage of homeless persons staying in permanent housing over 6 months.
  3. Increase percentage of homeless persons moving from transitional housing to permanent housing.
  4. Increase percentage of homeless persons becoming employed.
  5. Ensure that the Continuum of Care has a functional Homeless Missourians Information System.
  6. Identify Supportive Services to assure individuals attain and maintain permanent housing
  7. Develop strategies to expand supportive services that address Transportation, Employment, Poor Credit History and Housing Counseling.
  8. Establish a housing office funded through a local Housing Trust Fund

With dwindling financial resources, we depend on the coordination and collaboration of both HUD and non-HUD funded entities to meet our goals. The Continuum of Care Steering Committee oversees several committees that conduct much of the work conducted to meet the adopted goals. These committees include:

  • Case Managers Committee: A network of homeless and housing case managers who share resources and information and identify gaps or barriers in the current support system for the homeless that they serve.
  • Discharge Planning: The mission of the Discharge Planning Committee is to prevent homelessness for persons being discharged from public and private institutions, including correctional facilities, city and county jails, treatment facilities for mental illness and addictions, health care facilities, and youth and social service agencies.
  • Exploratory Committee: Investigates funding or collaborative opportunities that will increase the amount of permanent housing available for the chronically homeless
  • Homeless Missourians Information System (HMIS) User Group: Congress has indicated that continuum communities should be collecting an array of data on homelessness, including unduplicated census counts, use of services and the effectiveness of the local homeless assistance system. HUD has been directed by Congress to work with Continuums to collect this homeless data. Locally, the Kitchen, The Salvation Army and OACAC are entering data into the HMIS system. This group works closely with the statewide steering committee to ensure that our community follows strict confidentiality policies and guidelines.
  • Homeless Count Task Force: This workgroup spearheads the annual winter and summer counts of those that are homeless -- sheltered and unsheltered. This data assists the Continuum to meet HUD mandated reporting requirements and is presented to the community as a whole to increase awareness and to document need.
  • Hard to Employ Committee: Develops employment opportunities for those individuals facing multiple barriers to employment within the Greene, Christian and Webster County Continuum of Care catchments area.
  • Homeless Youth Subcommittee: Youth typically become homeless due to a complex set of circumstances, often beginning with family conflict and poverty and many times ending in abuse, abandonment or neglect. Year after year, the Kitchen Inc.'s Rare Breed Youth Outreach Center has seen an increase in the number of youth accessing services that turn to the streets for the night with the center closes its doors. Because of this, the Homeless Youth Subcommittee was formed to:
    1. Investigate the need for a local emergency shelter for youth.
    2. Gather information from homeless youth regarding services needed to secure housing assistance (emergency, transitional, permanent).
    3. Increase number of appropriate, available, accessible services for older adolescent homeless youth.
    4. Create a dialogue with stakeholders from the Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice to address the number of youth exiting the state system of care who become homeless.
    5. Collaborate with Mayor's Commission for Children to address their goal to reduce the number of local children and youth in poverty.
  • Housing Resource Education Committee: On June 28th, the Case Managers Housing Resource Training Committee completed their second Housing Conference with over 160 agency representatives present to learn about topics ranging from Permanent and Transitional Housing opportunities to Hard to Serve Clients. The need for educating the community about local housing resources came out of the city's Vision 20/20 process, and the Housing Resource Trainings are making the vision become a reality.
  • Housing Trust Fund Committee: Included in the Vision 20/20 Affordable Housing Plan is the identified need to implement a local housing trust fund to create more housing options for residents of the Springfield community. The Housing Collaborative is taking action on this need as collaborative member agencies report decreasing and more restrictive state and federal funds coming into our community to assist families in need.
  • Springfield-Greene County Reputable Lending Committee: Identified by the Housing Collaborative as an increasing housing risk to families, the Springfield-Greene County Reputable Lending Collaborative was established. Headed up by the Urban Neighborhood Alliance, this group has adopted the "Don't Borrow Trouble" educational campaign from Freddie Mac and has also recruited many business partners that contribute both funding for the project and membership in the Don't Borrow Trouble" Speakers Bureau.