Santa Monica realizes 8% reduction in homelessness

Last week I was lucky enough to attend Santa Monica's briefing on their annual point-in-time count results.  They were able to demonstrate an 8% reduction in homelessness.  Congratulations, Santa Monica!  They've already housed 54 out of the 130 individuals identified as being at a high risk of dying with the Vulnerability Index.  That's amazing!  

To read more on Santa Monica's progress, click here.  

Does anyone else have any point-in-time results they'd like to share?  What are people seeing out there?  

Data Entry Competition in West Hollywood

Greetings from sunny Los Angeles!

This week Beth Sandor and I are delighted to be working with PATH Partners as they create the registry and apply the Vulnerability Index to the street homeless population in West Hollywood.  

Tomorrow morning is our last 4 am wake-up.   The sleep deprivation that is an unavoidable part of this work tends to really kick in on the last day and further warp our sense of humor.  Tomorrow should be fun!  

As you can see from the photo to the right, Beth and I are really suffering here in West Hollywood.  We're competing to see who can enter the Vulnerability Index survey results into the quickbase database the fastest.  As usual, Beth won.  

Monday night, we atteneded Santa Monica's briefing on the results of their annual point in time homeless count.  Congratulations for achieving an 8% reduction in homelessness! 

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.