| Name | Mackenzie |
|---|---|
| Last Name | Kelly |
| Home Address | 124 Morningside Dr. Chattanooga, TN 37404 United States |
| Organization Name | Chattanooga Regional Homeless Coalition |
| Describe Your Role In The Organization | Data Support Specialist- Data quality, reporting, and training for ESG-CV subrecipients |
| Organization Address | 600 N Holtzclaw Ave. Chattanooga, TN 37404 United States |
| Website | https://homelesscoalition.org |
| Best Phone Number To Reach You | 4234437125 |
| Alternate Phone Number | 4237101501 |
| Email Address | mkelly@homelesscoalition.org |
| Alternate Email Address | kmackenzie301@gmail.com |
| Please Describe Your Project In Detail | Goal: To provide outreach workers with a streamlined way of coordinating their efforts to ensure all persons experiencing homelessness are being served in the community, while getting community members involved in the homeless response system. How it Works: The outreach portal will be a web-based platform where community members can submit a request of persons that they see, know, or come in contact with who are experiencing homelessness. Community members will make a request through the portal, including the location of where they saw the person or group of people, a detailed account of the person or group of people, the needs they identified, and their contact information. A staff member will receive these requests and dispatch an appropriate outreach worker or team to that location. Outreach workers will then update the status of the requests through the portal, and the community member will be notified when the request is fulfilled. |
| Please explain how your project meets the requirements of the American Rescue Plan | The American Rescue Plan exists to respond to the economic and public health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the beginning of the pandemic, low-income and minority communities have faced higher rates of unemployment and lack of basic necessities. From the 2020 to 2021 point-in-time count, after enduring a full year of the pandemic, there was an increase in the homeless population in the Chattanooga area. In 2020 point-in-time count, there were 364 persons experiencing homelessness in Chattanooga, compared to 434 singles and 25 families consisting of 28 adults and 44 children in 2021. This rise in numbers has left outreach workers with the daunting task of attempting to find, connect with, and eventually house persons experiencing homelessness in the area. The outreach portal would provide the community with the opportunity to let outreach workers know where they are needed, and it will give outreach workers a way to connect with people who they might have missed otherwise. This rise in numbers has also created a need for outreach workers to coordinate efforts to ensure the maximum number of people are being served. An outreach portal would be a way to recognize where people are, and it would give outreach workers from different organizations a way to know where they have been and who they have served. |
| Where would your project take place? | Chattanooga, TN |
| How much will your project cost in total? | 95000 |
| Do you have any matching funding sources from other local governments, private entities, non-profits, or philanthropic entities for your project? | No |
| Please describe the source and list amounts of any other funding. | |
| What portion of the project are you asking the city to fund? | |
| If funded, when would your project start? | April 1, 2022 |
| How long would your project take to complete? | Ongoing - CRHC would continue to seek funding for the project after the first year of the project is completed. |
| What milestones would you use to measure your project’s progress? | The portal would track the number of requests that are submitted and fulfilled, while also tracking the number of people who are served through these requests. In real time, the webpage will update to show these numbers, providing community members an immediate way to see the success of the project. |
| How would you ensure accountability and transparency throughout the project lifecycle? | Transparency and accountability throughout the outreach portal project would be achieved by constant monitoring, adapting, and reporting of the project. A full-time staff member would collect requests, assign requests to an outreach worker, and follow-up after the outreach worker fulfilled the request. The number of requests and fulfilled requests would be updated in real-time and displayed on the webpage. The staff member would be responsible for assigning requests to the most appropriate and available outreach worker as they are received. Unless a request is flagged as urgent, requests will be filled as they are reported, ensuring equitable and timely responses to each. As the project progresses, community feedback would be used to adapt the portal to fit any needs or concerns the community expresses. Regular surveys would be available to community members to address any concerns or ideas they have to make the portal more successful. Feedback from the persons being served would also be collected, and the portal would be adapted to best serve the community based on this feedback. |
| If successful, how would your project benefit the community? | The benefits Chattanooga would see from having an outreach portal would be immediate and long-lasting. Firstly, there are many different organizations in Chattanooga with outreach teams. While outreach workers from these different organizations work together as best as possible, there are times where their services are duplicated, meaning their efforts may not be reaching as many persons experiencing homelessness as possible. The outreach portal would coordinate which outreach worker or team was responding to different requests/locations each day, ensuring as many locations as possible are reached every day by outreach workers in the community. The outreach portal would also provide a way for outreach workers to communicate with each other about different things that may be going on at any given time at different locations around Chattanooga. Not only would the outreach portal provide outreach workers with an effective way to coordinate efforts, but it would also attract and encourage community buy-in. For many people in the community, homelessness is something that is seen, but rarely addressed. The outreach portal would rely strongly on community members, which would benefit both the homeless response system and the individual community member’s ideas of homelessness. With the introduction of the outreach portal would come educational workshops. These workshops and informational meetings would be a way for community members to learn more about homelessness, the homeless response system, and their role in the system. Instead of turning their heads when seeing a person, or family, experiencing homelessness, community members would now be able to do something about it. They will simply enter the information into the outreach portal, and they will then be able to track the requests until an outreach worker fulfills the request. Involving community members in the homeless response system in a hands-on way will allow them to feel as if they truly are making a difference in their community. |
| How will you attract community buy-in for your project? | This project will attract community buy-in by educating community members on their role in the local homeless response system. Through training workshops and materials, community members will learn more about the local homeless response system, specifically the daily outreach efforts. With the rise in numbers of persons experiencing homelessness, it is time to provide community members with a way to easily be involved in the homeless response system. |
| Name | Mike Smith |
| Contact Information | msmith@homelesscoalition.org |
| Is there anything else you would like us to know about your project? | |