Welcome to the Vulnerability Index Blog

Hi -

Welcome! This blog is for everyone working to end street homelessness. Author invitations were just sent out to change agents across the US and Canada who have adapted the Vulnerability Index to their community. In 2008, over 4,300 surveys were administered in NYC, LA County's Skid Row, Santa Monica, New Orleans, Washington, DC, Portland, Nashville, Calgary, and Fort Worth. Not counting the housing placements in NYC -- there were many - this should be posted by those who did the heavy lifting on that! - more than 680 individuals identified as being homeless the longest with the highest mortality risk were placed into housing by the cities mentioned above last year. This is absolutely amazing.

I wanted to find a way to connect all of you with one another, a forum for the exchange of great ideas, best practices, success stories, lessons learned, and good questions. Please use this as a space to brag about your housing placements, the transformation of your outreach practices, and to share your opinions, knowing that you are among friends.

We will be adding content to this blog over the next several weeks so that it can become a "go-to" place to download relevant studies, reports, and useful tools. Please see this as shared space for anyone working to end street homelessness - I look forward to the community that this will build and to seeing each of you on my next trip to your town!

If you have an idea about how to use the Vulnerability Index --> post it!

If you have a question about the Vulnerability Index --> post it!

If you have a story about how the Vulnerability Index is being used in your city --> post it!

If you're one of the 680+ people who were identified by the Vulnerability Index and are now in housing --> post it!

If you're not sure how to post to the blog, or have suggestions for how to make this blog better, please contact me at bkanis@commonground.org.