HEARTH Focus Groups

Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing Act

October 22, 2009

Dear Homeless Advocate:

The National Coalition for the Homeless requests your assistance in assuring that the views and recommendations of people experiencing homelessness are brought to the forefront in our nation’s policymaking on homelessness prevention and elimination.

The National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) is a national network of people who are currently experiencing or who have experienced homelessness, activists and advocates, community-based and faith-based service providers, and others committed to ending homelessness.  We take as our first principle of practice that people who are currently experiencing homelessness or have formerly experienced homelessness must be actively involved in all of our work.

You may know that earlier this year, Congress enacted the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act, legislation which reauthorizes the McKinney-Vento homeless assistance programs of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD).  The law makes significant changes to HUD’s portfolio of homeless assistance programs.  HUD is now developing regulations to implement the HEARTH Act.  The HEARTH Act also requires the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (ICH) to develop a federal plan to end homelessness.  The ICH is just beginning its work toward fulfilling this requirement.

NCH plans to comment on HUD proposed rules for implementing the HEARTH Act and to ICH on the federal homelessness plan.  We intend for our comments to be informed by the views and recommendations of people experiencing homelessness and formerly experiencing homelessness.  With that in mind, we request your assistance in gathering such views on our behalf by convening focus groups of people experiencing homelessness in your geographic area.

We invite state and local homelessness advocacy organizations, homeless empowerment projects, homeless assistance service providers, and others who work directly with people experiencing homelessness to convene the focus groups. We recommend focus group sizes of between eight and 12 participants. We strongly encourage diversity of focus group participants so that we hear from homeless people of various family statuses, ages, and other factors. We encourage you to convene at least one focus group, but feel free to exceed the minimum if your time and resources permit.  Also if your resources permit, you may wish to provide refreshments, stipends, or certificates of appreciation to recognize participants for their time.

Our goal is to gather views from at least 250 people experiencing homelessness from across the nation.  We request that focus groups be concluded by November 30, 2009.

We have prepared an introductory message and discussion questions for your use with the focus groups.  We ask you to take summary notes of participant comments. Please then send typed notes of the participant comments to Charles Bontrager, Policy Advocate, at cbontrager@nationalhomeless.org. NCH will compile responses received into a consolidated document. We will then share the findings with HUD and ICH as part of our comments on the HEARTH regulations and the federal homelessness plan.  We will also share our comments with you to report back to focus group participants as you are able.

Please contact Charles at cbontrager@nationalhomeless.org or call him at 202.462.4822 to let NCH know that you intend to conduct a focus group, or if you have questions about this project.

NCH thanks you in advance for your assistance in ensuring that the views and recommendations of people experiencing homelessness are brought to the federal level of policymaking on homelessness.

Sincerely,

Neil Donovan
Executive Director