By: Karen Hill | Ocala Star Banner
As the lead agency of the Marion County Continuum of Care (CoC) for the homeless and near homeless of Marion County, the Marion County Homeless Council (MCHC) has a broad range of responsibilities and activities.
The CoC is comprised of representatives from local service providers, local government, faith-based organizations, non-profit organizations, businesses and housing assistance providers, and is mandated to provide collaborative community leadership resulting in innovative solutions to reduce homelessness and maximize local resources to meet the needs of the homeless and those persons identified as being at risk of homelessness.
Additionally, the MCHC operates the local Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) program as well as a coordinated assessment system used to screen, assess, and refer persons seeking assistance to the appropriate service providers.
In 2015, there was no designated CoC Board of Governance (BOG) for the CoC. The MCHC Board of Directors (BOD) was responsible for directing both the Homeless Council as a Direct Care Agency and as the CoC’s lead agency. With guidance from the Florida Housing Coalition, the full CoC partnership was told it was time to separate the two boards to meet HUD’s guidelines for a CoC.
Several people from the community agreed to be part of the initial BOG. Since that time, the CoC has come a long way. The charter for both the lead agency and a new HMIS platform is in place. Data for 40-plus agencies with seven years of data was gathered. Staff was added via grant monies to develop policies and assessments, and a housing resource specialist was added to create and strengthen relationships with local property owners. The CoC’s HMIS policy and procedures were re-written, mandated annual Point in Time counts have been completed and much more.
MCHC is a direct care and lead agency that excels in many areas. HUD and state funding continues to increase annually and, most importantly, the number of homeless individuals continues to decline in Marion County.
In 2018 the United Way, the Public Policy Institute (PPI), Marion County government and the City of Ocala paid the Florida Housing Coalition (FHC) $40,000 to study the issue of homelessness in Marion County. This study resulted include 16 recommendations, of which 11 focus on strategies to improve efforts to house the homeless.
Unfortunately, since the release of the combined PPI and FHC studies, the only recommendation of the 16 offered that come up for discussion is changing the lead agency. The problems with beginning with the strategy of changing the lead agency are numerous:
- The Board of Governance would need to have a community-wide discussion resulting in a recommendation based of the board members to change the lead agency. Currently four out of 14 would need to abstain from voting as three work for either the city or county and one who wrote the PPI Study report. Of the remaining 10 BOG members, there must be a majority who agree with presenting the change of the lead agency proposal to the full CoC body.
- The members of the CoC would then need to have a majority vote affirming their desire to remove MCHC as lead agency and begin the search for the new lead entity.
- A request for proposals (RFP) would then need to be written by those board members who are not in conflict. The RFP would then be released to the community for applications. These applications would need to be scored and a new CoC lead agency recommended by the BOG. The recommendation for lead agency would be presented for a vote by the entire CoC body.
Changing the lead agency is an arduous plan. HUD and DCF must rewrite contracts with the new agency. The new agency must meet time constraints of monthly monitoring of all sub recipients, monthly reporting, and completion of grant applications. The current CoC staff of seven would be required to apply for jobs that they already do well. Many of these staffers have noted that they would not be willing to transfer their jobs to working under county or city leadership.
Personally, I find it interesting that before 2016, while the CoC was floundering, there was no interest in or discussions of a need for change of MCHC as the CoC lead agency. Now that our CoC it is fully functional and acknowledged by the state as compliant — and has even been targeted to receive additional grant funding based on recent performance — there is a flurry of activity to replace MCHC as the lead agency.
As the community continues its discussions regarding the offered strategies, I ask that the current lead agency be included in the conversation. Currently, MCHC leadership has and is being excluded from meetings such as the recent workshop where the city and county discussed a strategy to take over as the lead agency.
Article last accessed here on April 16, 2019. A print-ready version is available here.