Transcript

Sexual Assault, Housing and HUD Funding: A Webinar for State and Territory Sexual Assault Coalitions

0:00:00.4 Karla Vierthaler: Hello all and welcome. Good morning and to some of you good afternoon. I see that our participants has remained stable for a while, so I figured it was time to introduce us all and say hello. I’m gonna share my screen.

[pause]

0:00:28.7 KV: Alright. My name is Karla Vierthaler and I work for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, and I wanna introduce you to your presenters today. We have Cat Fribley and Elizabeth Edmondson Bauer from the Resource Sharing Project. We have Rebekah Moses from GBV Consulting. And then finally, we have Condencia Brade from the National Organization of Sisters of Color Ending Sexual Assault. And today we are gonna talk about sexual assault, housing, and HUD funding, specifically for coalitions, as you know. But first, I wanna talk a little bit about sort of how our partnership and this sort of work came from. NSVRC is part of the National Domestic Violence Housing Technical Assistance Center, and this is an organization funded by four federal funders, not just one.

0:01:28.0 KV: I think it’s the only project funded across different federal partners, and they created a grant around housing and violence, and multiple people applied and multiple people were funded. So now we have a consortium made up of the National Alliance for Safe Housing, Collaborative Solutions Incorporated, the National Network to End Domestic Violence, the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, Collaborative Supportive Housing, and then finally, NSVRC was a recent addition. And I am gonna stop because I promised our interpreter, I would allow her to sort of talk about how that works, and I did not do that. So Vanessa, my deep apologies, and please share a little bit about how to access interpretation.

0:02:27.7 Vanessa: Hello. Thank you. Okay, so can you hear me? Okay. Very well. So I will read a brief announcement. Thank you once again. So today’s event will be conducted in English with live interpretation available into Spanish. To listen to the interpretation on a computer, locate the globe icon along the bottom row of your Zoom screen and select Spanish. If you’re joining via the Zoom app on a mobile device, click more on the three dots in the bottom right corner of your screen, select language interpretation, then choose Spanish and click done. If you would like to hear only the interpreters without the original speakers in the background, click mute original audio and select your language. And we ask that everybody, English speakers and even bilingual folks, please choose a language to ensure clear communication and you can change your listening language at any time throughout the program. Now I’m gonna say the same thing in Spanish.

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0:04:10.4 Vanessa: Thank you.

0:04:12.5 KV: Thank you, Vanessa. Again, my apologies everyone. Sometimes we get a little over-enthusiastic, but that is no excuse. So I wanna continue sort of where we were. So these are our technical assistance partners in the DVTAC housing group. And there was a point, maybe three, four years ago, where the consortium got together and realized they were funded to do work around sexual violence and housing, but they realized they did not have the expertise to do so. So they got a group of us together in Washington, who had been doing sexual violence and housing work, and just sort of had us talk through some ideas about how sexual violence and housing work, how different it is from domestic violence and housing and as far as services needed, services provided, and we were given an opportunity to present to the federal funders, and wrote for a grant and received a grant to become part of the consortium.

0:05:18.9 KV: And so in that work, we were sure to partner with folks we worked with along the way. So, Sisters of Color Ending Sexual Assault, Condencia Brade, and then RSP, Elizabeth, and Cat have been strong partners of ours as we’re moving through this work at NSVRC. And I do want to share that we were not able to change the name of the TA consortium, that that is something in the works, hopefully, for reasons that are probably pretty obvious. So that is exciting. And I also want my other two colleagues here from NSVRC to introduce themselves that are also part of the project. Jen Benner, would you just give a quick hi? 

0:06:03.4 Jen Benner: Hi, I am Jen Benner. I’m the Resource Development Coordinator. And yeah, so I helped plan the meeting today and get everything all set up for everybody, so you might have seen emails from me.

0:06:18.1 Louie Marvin: Hi, everyone. This is Louie Marvin, I’m a Training Specialist at National Sexual Violence Resource Center. Thanks for coming to this.

0:06:26.8 KV: Thanks, Louie and Jen. And then I’m going to show you something you’re all very familiar with, just so you know. And now we’re gonna get down to it. So we are gonna do two poll questions to start off, just to sort of see where we are collectively in terms of housing work. So our first question, have you worked with any housing systems? So that would be communities of care or CoCs in your state. Have you worked with any HUD funding or worked with anybody who received HUD funding? Any state or local housing funding that you or your program, or you assisted programs within your state? This is our first team Zoom webinar, so I apologize. Usually someone hosts, so I did not launch it. It was up, but I did not launch it, so there you go. Oh, I see some yeses. Would folks be willing to share either in the chat or by unmuting yourself what sorts of housing work you’ve done in your state? So anybody have any thoughts or anything they’re willing to share? Doing it in the chat is fine. Okay. Oh, here we go. “We are part of our state housing coalition and worked with programs who received HUD funding.” Oh, that’s cool. “And my position is HUD funded to coordinate with our rural balance state CoC around coordinated entry.” Would you mind sharing which state you’re from too when you comment? I should have asked for that before, just so we can get an idea.

0:08:33.4 KV: And are either of those sexual assault specific or is it dual work or domestic violence work exclusively? Dual. Okay. Great. Okay, these are the final results. Thank you for your patience as we move through this. We have a second poll. Okay, here we go. Is there anyone in your state doing sexual assault specific housing work, whether it be you or any of the programs that you work with? Okay, a lot of, I don’t know. Two yeses, and dual, which means sexual assault often gets pushed aside, especially in housing work. Yep, yep. Okay, great. Feel free to add anything by unmuting yourself or sharing in the chat as we move forward. We really want this to be as interactive as possible because as you all know, very little is being done around sexual violence and housing, and we also know very little about what is happening with sexual violence and housing. So we’ve been hearing about little bits and pieces happening across the country, but we’re hoping that we can sort of gather some of those stories and ideas and share them across the country, so people have an idea of how to support doing sexual violence and housing work, what that looks like when it’s successful, and also have people to talk to, to dialogue around, etcetera, etcetera. So we really thank you for your participation.

0:10:43.9 KV: I also wanted to briefly share that as part of our funding, we have been able to create... Because as I said earlier, we don’t know much, so our first order of business was to create an annotated bibliography to give us an idea of what research was done around sexual violence and housing, what’s out there, what we can use for funding, grant applications, etcetera, etcetera. Then we created a comprehensive resource list related to sexual violence and housing resources, and homelessness, and then finally, we were able to create a series of infographics, so I will share those in the chat. We have a whole page on our website dedicated to those resources. There are more in the works, and we will probably continuously over the period of this webinar, be sharing more resources with you. And if something comes up for you where you’re looking for something, do not hesitate to ask in the chat or reach out to us afterwards. I think another key takeaway we really want to share today is that we are a technical assistance provider, so we may not know the answers, but we have the capacity and the funding to work with you as you work through these thoughts, plans. So we’re here, whatever you need. And with that, I’m going to pass it over to Elizabeth and Cat to talk a little bit about an overview of survivor-centered housing. Thank you.

0:12:12.0 Cat Fribley: Hi, friends. So my name is Cat Fribley and I’m with the Resource Sharing Project, and I know lots of you. I’m super excited to see you all on this webinar and have a chance to really dig into questions about issues of information around sexual assault and housing really specifically. And when Elizabeth and I talked, we thought one of the things that would be really helpful is some context giving, right? And I wanted to just share... We’ve been having these conversations in some other places with some of you all, as we’ve done through the Resource Sharing Project, along with Rebekah Moses from GBV Consulting. I’ve been doing work around transitional housing, really specifically and working with transitional housing grantees through OVW who already are doing this work to help them enhance their sexual assault specific work and housing advocacy. So you may have seen us there. We also, of course, are partnering with the folks at the National Sexual Violence Resource Center and with Condencia and crew, SCESA to think about even more broadly, because transitional housing is but one small part of the housing world, right? And so that’s part of how this came about is for many of us who are standalone sexual assault or who have focused on sexual assault, HUD is like a completely mysterious new world for us, right? 

0:13:40.0 CF: And so we thought it would be really useful to pull together a chance for coalitions specifically to dig into HUD, dig into the resources that are available, and to really center ourselves in terms of sexual assault and housing. So one of the things I really love to do is to center us with some sort of grounding truths, and I wanna share some of our grounding truths with you all. Also having a baby here makes me really happy, thank you Hillary for having a tiny co-worker. [chuckle] So when we are doing this work, I just wanna acknowledge all of our work is about centering the needs of sexual violence survivors, and that we’re talking especially about those who are facing the most sort of structural inequities and systemic racism as being at the core of what we want to be changing and doing and thinking about in terms of housing. And I wanna be clear that today, and in our work, we are talking specifically about sexual violence outside of the context of domestic violence or intimate partner violence. That is also super important, and we need to be thinking about how we best serve survivors of domestic violence and in other forms of interpersonal violence who are also experiencing sexual assault or sexual violence, but for our time today and for the work that we’re doing, it is focused exclusively on the needs of sexual assault survivors.

0:15:08.2 CF: Partly because what we heard was when we’re talking about, say, outside of the context of DV, folks struggle more to incorporate that into their work, their housing work, and so we wanna create space for that conversation to come forward and for us to really center and prioritize the needs of sexual assault survivors. So as we do that, I wanna just name, like I said, a couple of grounding truths. Housing instability and homelessness, we know you all are risk factors for sexual violence, right? Sexual violence is also sort of vice versa a risk factor for housing instability and homelessness. It goes both ways. So when we talk about survivors needing housing due to sexual violence, we also know that sexual violence sometimes occurs due to a need of housing that folks have. So we like to make sure that we’re always holding both of those truths as we dig into more of the needs and the barriers, and what it is that HUD specifically offers. Lots, as know we know of children and young adults become homeless or have housing instability directly as a result of sexual abuse, and we just wanna name that. And we also know that often that contributes to housing issues later in life as well. And that it’s important for us to center that in our conversations about what it is that survivors need in terms of housing advocacy and housing itself from us.

0:16:41.7 CF: We wanted a space to really be able to talk with you all knowing that you all are often the ones talking with programs in your states and in your territories about how to address this sort of foundational issue, and right now within the current context of COVID, you all we know it’s an even more visible reality, that sort of reality that survivors need housing solutions now more than ever. And that as we are looking at who is needing housing, it’s not equal across the board. We know that folks who face structural inequities, folks who face systemic racism, oftentimes are needing different and better housing interventions, survivors are. So COVID, you all have elevated this conversation about sexual violence and housing to a really different level, partly because it’s like COVID has helped us peel back layers that were maybe obfuscating part of how sexual violence works, which is folks often experience sexual violence within housing structures. That might be a landlord, that might be another tenant, it could be maintenance or other housing employees, right? 

0:18:00.6 CF: It could be folks who are roommates or others who control housing for folks. And we just wanna lift that up as well, because I think oftentimes, especially when we use the domestic violence lens, it’s really hard to remember that sometimes the sexual violence is not happening in the home from someone else who lives with you and is a part of your family, but it might be happening within a different context within your housing. And COVID really, I think has helped us to elevate that issue in an unfortunate way as we have seen, landlords and folks in housing really pray on folks who weren’t able, for example, to pay rent or were needing a different form of housing. So all of this really comes down to the fact that survivors deserve safe housing and they need a safe place to heal, friends.

0:18:58.0 CF: And when we’re talking about sexual violence in particular, housing advocacy can be a really important and powerful tool to helping folks create those spaces of safety, create those spaces of healing and create those spaces of comfort. And coalitions in particular have a super big role to play in this you all. I also wanna say that as we’re having conversations that are really crucial around racial justice and around what it looks like to think about how our work happens within criminal legal systems, that housing is another system that we can invest in, if you will, for survivors healings, even as we’re thinking about all of the different systems and how we’re interacting with them, housing can be one of those places that creates opportunities for deep healing for survivors of sexual violence.

0:19:48.4 CF: So those were my sort of big grounding kinds of contexts, and what I would love is, do you all have additional ones that you work from? If you are focusing on sexual assault in housing, are there other sort of framing pieces that you hold center for yourself in doing this work and that you really want to make sure to get to share? ‘Cause we would love to hear them. Are there ones that you think I missed? Help me add to them, friends, if there are.

0:20:27.5 KV: Just because this has come up in different conversations recently, Cat, I think a link to economic justice in this conversation is essential.

0:20:33.6 CF: Absolutely. Yes.

0:20:37.8 KV: And then we are really trying, at NSVRC to have more meaningful conversations on housing as prevention work with the programs.

0:20:49.6 CF: Yes. Oh, for sure.

0:20:51.9 KV: So those are two that I would bring to the...

0:20:54.2 CF: I love that. And I would add that one of the things certainly that I’ve seen over my years of doing this work is that sometimes the folks who are out in front of this, the ones who are really thinking deeply about homelessness, housing instability and sexual violence are queer and trans youth organizations, youth serving organizations. And that’s because so many queer and trans youth have been experiencing homelessness due to who they are, due to their identities. And so part of what I am always hoping for too is to just be learning with and from folks who are already doing this work, which is also part of why I think we wanted to bring all of us together into this conversation to hear how is that happening for you all. Elizabeth, did I miss anything? 

0:21:45.9 Elizabeth Edmondson Bauer: Okay, no, I don’t think so. I was just gonna drill down just a little bit on some of the barriers that we see specifically for survivors of sexual violence outside the context of domestic violence. Cat really lifted up some of the specific needs in a big picture way. But what we see is that survivors of sexual violence really need, like Cat said, a safe place to heal and holistic services that really understand the impact of sexual violence and of trauma across their lifespan. And what we see is that most housing structures, funding programs, folks and positions of power making decisions on access to housing, don’t really set up their programs with that lens, right? They really are set up and targeted and built for survivors of domestic violence often fleeing danger.

0:22:43.4 EB: And so a huge barrier is... The bottomline is access, right? We’re seeing different programs where the homelessness definitions don’t take into considerations these intersections of homelessness and sexual violence. Again, funders and program staff and folks in decision-making positions don’t understand sexual violence at its core, and that’s some of the work that we’ve been doing with this project and with transitional housing is really educating housing folks around the dynamics of sexual violence and the needs, the real specific needs of survivors of sexual violence. And then broadly, again, the lack of understanding of how sexual violence may impact folks across their lifespan. So someone may not be fleeing violence, but their housing may be impacted by sexual violence they’ve experienced across their lifetime, and that’s a real shift for folks who are doing housing work to really look at how someone... How trauma has impacted folks across their lifespan and how it’s impacting their housing.

0:23:57.0 EB: Again, I wanted to kind of lift up something Cat said about folks who may commit harm, sexual violence harm aside from intimate partners, could be landlords, these property managers, it could be your boss, it could be your neighbor, it could be someone living in campus housing with you, it could be someone at the nursing home where someone lives, so we’re looking really across where people live everywhere, right? And how that’s really, again, not the lens of someone working in housing traditionally looking at that would be a survivor that they may be able to serve. So we’re really taking on some barriers here to increase access for survivors of sexual violence. And now I wanna really shift gears to talk about HUD funding, which is... And HUD in general, which is kind of dictates a lot of the housing world, and I think the first thing we wanted to do, Rebekah, is ask folks if you had a chance to listen to the webinar that we did with the HUD folks from the SNAPS office. And if there were specific questions we wanna address, we’re kind of here as a follow-up to that, to kind of decode and unpack some of those bigger pieces of HUD. So if you wanna chat in or unmute yourself to talk about any of those questions, that would be super helpful. Rebekah? 

0:25:37.2 Rebekah Moses: Hey everybody, I’m Rebekah with GBV Consulting, and so honored to get to be here today. I see a lot of faces and names of folks that we’ve had the privilege to connect with about this issue, and so it’s good to see your names and faces. Also, good to see lots of new names and faces and coalitions that I recognize, but don’t necessarily know the person, so it’s really an honor to get to share this space with you guys today to talk about a really important issue and an issue that has lots of opportunities for change and growth, and with lots of opportunities, oftentimes come challenges. So Elizabeth was asking this question about how many of y’all had a chance to watch the webinar that Lisa Kauffman did with the consortium on housing. More than anything, just to get a sense because we were thinking of building off of that webinar, but I think we’re really trying to meet folks who are on this call today where y’all are.

0:26:35.4 RM: And just to recognize that there’s people on the call today that have extensive HUD experience, they’re talking about receiving ESG-CV funds. For some of you guys you may see in the chat ESG-CV and you may be like, “What is that?” Even if you listen to Lisa’s webinar, Lisa from the SNAPS Office, you still may be like, “What is that?” Right? Like Emergency Solutions Grant, CARES Act visibly funding. And so we’ve got folks on the call who understand the nitty-gritty of all of those acronyms, we’ve got folks on the call who understand that sexual violence survivors who’ve experienced sexual violence any time, anywhere, perpetrated by pretty much anyone have housing needs that are not being met but they may not know all the fancy HUD acronyms or may not be steeped in HUD advocacy.

0:27:22.3 RM: The great thing about that difference in our experience and our expertise is that it brings us to a place where we can better answer lots of people’s questions, ‘cause we got people walking in lots of different shoes towards finding solutions for housing for survivors of sexual violence. So I’m just kind of reading through the chat here to see how many folks got to watch the webinar, did anybody have any specific questions. I see Mark saying, review the recorded webinar. I’m seeing some folks, I think the link is gonna get posted, some other folks didn’t have a chance to check in about the webinar, and you know what, that’s okay. If folks haven’t had a chance... The purpose of this conversation is to create a broad enough frame, so wherever you are in your lived experience around working with survivors of sexual violence on housing issues, that we can connect with your expertise and provide a place for you to plug in to this work. So we’re gonna try to really create a broad frame, and we’re really coming at it from the coalition lens, so what’s kind of the coalition’s role in housing work for survivors of sexual violence? HUD is gonna be a part of the conversation today.

0:28:40.5 RM: And what I’ve heard in talking with a lot of people is when they allow the funder and only the funder to dictate what the needs are and what the solutions are, we end up missing the boat and missing the people who we most need to serve, because... And so many of us are in a position where we’re going after dollars to support our work, and then the dollars don’t meet the survivors where they are, and we find ourselves in a position that sometimes can really increase vicarious trauma in programs, ‘cause you’ve got all this money and then people keep coming to your door, and as Elizabeth was saying, it’s like, “Oh well, you’re not HUD homeless, and so yes, you’re dealing with sexual violence, and yes, all you need is actually money to stay in your current housing, but this money that we’ve got right here from HUD requires you to flee your housing.” Right? 

0:29:30.0 RM: And not all HUD money necessarily requires you to flee your housing, but you begin to see the rub and the vicarious trauma the advocates and coalitions are experiencing as they get money, feeling like they’ve found a solution to the problem. And then what ends up happening is uh-oh, all the survivors we’re serving are actually over here and this money doesn’t meet their needs, and so as I block my face while I’m talking, we... I’m a hand speaker. So it really, it increases, I think sometimes the trauma around housing work, ‘cause you’ve got money, but then it’s not meeting people where they are.

0:30:05.2 RM: So I’m just checking the chat again, and my co-presenters also wanted to shout out to Condencia. Please jump in as we have this conversation, I’m hoping folks, I know we didn’t have time to let everybody introduce themselves and where they’re coming from, sometimes that opens up the free flow of conversation, but if you just wanna unmute your line, especially as I’m talking if I use an acronym you’re not familiar with, if I talk about something that doesn’t make sense in your context, just unmute your line or chat in. I wanna ask that my fellow co-presenters help me track that as well as we’re going through things.
0:30:46.3 KV: Rebekah? 

0:30:46.5 RM: Yes.

0:30:46.5 KV: If you don’t mind...

0:30:46.8 RM: Go for it, Karla. Perfect.

0:30:47.6 KV: I was gonna jump in quickly. There was a question, I’m thinking it’s Nany, but I may be mispronouncing it. I apologize if I am, from Connecticut. They said they were somewhat new to their role, but I think they asked a great question, how would the needs of DV and SV survivors change in terms of housing? And everyone jump in, please, but for me, they wouldn’t necessarily be different in a lot of ways. So there... More often than in sexual violence situations, a person is fleeing the home that they share with their partner, which would be a domestic violence... If it was a domestic violence situation. They would need to leave that home if they were living together.

0:31:35.4 KV: As Elizabeth shared, there’s lots of situations where a person could be fleeing their home where sexual violence is occurring, let’s say there’s a landlord, a housemate, a neighbor, the list is endless, but I think that fleeing definition really puts a barrier up because I think for a lot of sexual survivors and for housing providers and sexual assault advocates, they’re not necessarily totally aware of what fleeing means, and we talked a lot about that on the webinar with Lisa, and she did give some good clarification, but historically, let’s just be honest, this was around domestic violence, and then they included sexual violence, trafficking and dating violence. So I think there’s still sort of a miscommunication there, but I think what we also wanna say, and this would apply equally to sexual violence survivors, domestic violence survivors, survivors of trauma, because we know most survivors are survivors of multiple forms of trauma, housing is not provided based on your needs related to trauma.

0:32:46.7 KV: So it’s really just about that fleeing situation and where we’re seeing a gap is maybe you’re not able to continue with your work or you don’t wanna work, or you don’t feel safe in your home, ‘cause you were sexually assaulted in your home, and you can still afford to stay there, but you don’t want to. I remember talking to an advocate in Philadelphia who shared, most of the people who have housing issues, their biggest barrier is getting a security deposit to move into another place. So that was a long answer, but I think in terms of housing funding, there’s a lot of differences between DV and SV, but in terms of what survivors need, there’s just not a whole lot of difference.

0:33:32.7 EB: Can I jump in though and piggyback off that before I turn it back over to you, Rebekah, and just say housing is housing, right? In some ways, we need... The housing piece of it remains the same, but much as with any other service, sexual violence survivors have distinct needs in terms of the trauma that they’ve experienced, which are really different sometimes than the needs that someone who has experienced domestic violence might be bringing. And so the ability to both universalize the experience and then also to dig really deep into how does this show up differently is important because most of the time when we’re talking about housing, we’re actually talking about a whole structure of services, we’re not just talking about the space that someone is living in, we’re also talking about supportive services that go potentially along with that if folks want it and the framing of how that happens needs to look really different sometimes when that is... When we’re addressing the distinct needs of a sexual violence survivor. So I just wanted to piggyback and say, “Yes, and... “ And then Rebekah, I know you’ve got more to add to that, my friend.

0:34:42.2 RM: Yes, and so today, this conversation really isn’t, again, like Karla was like, “Hold on, Rebekah, lemme just put the... “ If you guys have stuff like that, just jump in. Today we really wanna again, come way back and not necessarily get into the nitty-gritty details of HUD funding per se. Like how you apply for a NOFA, so the NOFA is a Notice Of Funding Availability. This is how HUD lets people know that money for continua of care, which is COC, this is how they let folks know that that money is available, right? So we’re gonna talk a little bit about that here at the end, but we wanna actually have folks back way, way, way up, so that before you get to the point where you’ve received a bunch of money that doesn’t that... Or you’ve helped your programs apply for money that may not necessarily meet the needs of survivors.

0:35:36.2 RM: First, we’re gonna talk about the coalition’s role in figuring out what those needs are, figuring out where your membership is, figuring out where is the best place to start with housing advocacy. And if you’re already in housing advocacy, if you’re already receiving HUD money, a lot of the things that we’ve talked about, like where the definitions and eligibility issues sometimes become a barrier to actually meeting people’s needs, what kind of advocacy can you engage in, if you as a coalition are already receiving the money, or if your member programs are receiving it and running into barriers, what’s the coalition’s role in addressing that? And I think one of the first things coalitions are thinking about is, so this kind of policy advocacy work, so this work around how is housing and urban development for folks who that may even be new term? 

0:36:28.9 RM: How is this big agency that deals with housing in lots of ways, how do we... So they don’t typically fund coalitions to be involved in just advocacy work or training and technical assistance for their member programs or for the field, right? Depending on what... Again, this gets really complex, so I’m trying to keep a high level. Depending on what funding you’re going for under HUD, oftentimes it’s difficult to just get HUD funding for that type of work unless you have long-term relationships. So for folks who are newer to this work, what... I’m gonna throw this question to Cat, Elizabeth, Karla. If you’re a coalition and you’re new to this work or you’re already helping your programs, but you’re thinking about maybe taking a different strategy around housing work for survivors of sexual violence, what are some ways coalitions can think about funding the work we’re about to talk about, or funding the strategies to find out what survivor’s needs are, and then to meet those needs through policy and direct housing funding? So I wanna throw that question back to Cat, Elizabeth, Condencia and Karla. How might coalitions think about what funding sources could fund that, that coalition work? 

0:37:45.6 CF: I am super happy to just start the conversation, because one of the things that we know is that, for example, as a coalition, everyone gets OVW Coalition dollars, and there’s a lot actually of flexibility about how you choose to use either STOP or SaaS coalition dollars in terms of supporting sexual assault in your state and the work that your programs are doing and the needs of survivors. And so certainly, if you decided this is a place that you really wanna begin to shine a light and really focus on building capacity with programs to meet the needs of sexual assault survivors around housing, if it’s something that you wanna make sure that there are resources right around, that would be one place I know that you certainly could build that in, is to put that right into your either SaaS or STOP funding that you get for coalitions. So I would just start there.

0:38:53.6 CF: I know Karla and Elizabeth and Condencia, VOCA is another place you may be able to build... And I wanna go back to something you said, Rebekah, relationships. It’s almost always about relationships, and coalitions are relationship builders in their states and territories. And so the part of how you can think about this is, who do you know, who do you have a relationship with that is potentially interested in helping fund this work? Is it a priority? Is it a VOCA priority area in your state or territory? Is it a state line item priority? Is it something that you may be able to start having conversations with, with different funders? So I just wanna throw out there again, flexibility, certainly in the OVW funding, but also that relational piece of, is this a VOCA possibility? Do you wanna be talking with your VOCA office about that? 

0:39:54.9 RM: Perfect, Cat. Anyone else wanna chime in on that? ‘Cause what we didn’t wanna say is, “So here’s all this work for coalitions, and HUD doesn’t necessarily always fund this work, now go forth and do the work.” We wanted to recognize a lot of people are on this call ‘cause we talked about HUD funding, and so it’s like, “Will HUD fund our advocacy work to make HUD better for sexual violence survivors?” Depending on your relationships and what HUD money you’re looking for, potentially. But it oftentimes, especially if you don’t already have relationships, isn’t the place to start, and so wanted folks from NSVRC, RFP and SCESA to address that elephant in the room, per se. So again, coming back to this issue of a broad frame on meeting the housing needs of sexual violence survivors and figuring out if HUD funding is the way your programs can meet those needs or meet certain needs, but recognize that there may be gaps and other needs. So what is the coalition’s role in creating these strategies? So I think the first thing to figure out is... Yes, Karla? 

0:41:06.8 KV: I was just gonna say, there’s another question in the chat that I feel like might be good to address before we jump into that. How as a coalition do we determine what programs within our state are in need of sexual assault housing resources and begin to support them? 

0:41:22.6 RM: Yes. And I saw Ms. Hill’s question, and this was actually the perfect segue. So the first place you... I think sometimes we hear about funding, we hear about a possibility and we go toward it, because we know there’s such great need, but if we can take some time to just kind of breathe, which is really hard for me as a survivor to do, everything gets caught up here, if I can take a moment to breathe and connect to the abundance of expertise that our programs and that sexual violence survivors have about their needs, before I jump to funding those needs, I feel like that is the place you start. And this gets to the question is, so how do I determine what programs within our state are in need of SA housing resources and begin to support them? So different strategies, different coalitions organize their membership and communicate differently with their membership. I worked at a coalition where we would do a survey amongst membership, and what we had been hearing for a long time is, “This is an issue, this is an issue, this is an issue.” So we started with a survey, we actually ended up finding a private funder to fund some visioning work around housing, and with the mission of learning from the expertise of survivors, of communities who are oftentimes not considered when policy priorities are set up.

0:42:48.8 RM: We started by convening these groups of people, building trust, building relationships, leveraging the relationships the coalitions oftentimes already have, and asking the question, “What does your housing need look like?” ‘Cause there’s this assumption, Elizabeth, Karla were talking about this fleeing thing, and Hillary in the chat talked about this fleeing recent violence that has occurred, and what we’re hearing from sexual violence survivors just in my chat and in my work is that, yes, for some sexual violence survivors, that’s reality. “My landlord is causing me sexual harm right now, I need to get out.” But there are so many people who are adult survivors of child sexual abuse who were harassed sexually at work three years ago and are still having to deal with the same boss and are not able to keep that job and so are gonna lose their housing. And oftentimes, HUD funding is looking at whether you’re fleeing or attempting to flee sexual violence.

0:43:47.0 RM: Now, I believe a policy argument can be made that even though the sexual violence happened a long time, you’re still fleeing the impacts of that violence. If you need to move... I’ve made that policy argument in a CoC meeting. It was an interesting meeting. CoCs are Continuum of Care, they handle local HUD money around homelessness. So I think you can make the argument, but it’s a tough argument to make and not everybody is on board. And so this takes me back to, how do we know what the needs are? I think taking time to convene your membership, to do some focus groups, to look at your coalition funding, look at your SaaS funding, look at your VOCA funding, talking with your state, the grant pass-through in your state to say, “We really need to take some time... We know there are housing needs here.” And as Cat was saying, COVID has really unearthed... There’s lots of people struggling with this, and the way housing is being funded right now is not meeting their needs.
0:44:42.6 RM: But we need to know more so that our local response doesn’t create all this money that literally can’t get out, because one of the things I’ve been hearing about the ESG-CV money, so this is the Emergency Solutions Grant money that came down from the CARES Act, this is money that oftentimes funds emergency shelters through HUD, it funds what’s called homeless prevention, it funds Rapid Re-Housing. Rapid Re-Housing is a term that HUD uses to talk about medium to short-term rental assistance, case management around that. What I’ve heard about a lot of that funding is they literally can’t get it out the door, it’s stuck, because there aren’t landlords who will take the money, they won’t rent to people receiving this money, people don’t have the relationships built, people aren’t eligible.

0:45:30.1 RM: So literally, they have all this money, people are applying and it’s like, well, you make a little bit too much, or you live in the wrong area, or we can’t find a landlord who will pass the housing inspection. So literally the money is stuck. So it’s a perfect example of when you go to local funders, private funders, again, talking to your state pastors to say, We know there’s need, but understanding the exact nature of the need in Oregon, as Hillary was talking about, or in New York. We need to convene survivors, we need to convene our members, we need to convene systems partners and find out what they know. And this brings up an interesting dynamic that I wanna, again, throw back to my co-presenters, Karla, Cat, Elizabeth, Condencia, is the issue of if you are a standalone sexual assault coalition, and you’re in a state where there are domestic violence coalitions who’ve been doing this work around domestic violence and you’re beginning these conversations; Cat, can you guys talk a little bit about what standalone sexual assault coalitions need to think about as they’re navigating those relationships, as well as the politics of beginning to expand the focus of housing work beyond just the needs of domestic violence survivors that are role both/and perspective, which is sexual violence survivors, also have needs that we need to be talking about, so I wanted to throw that... ‘Cause that’s a reality for standalone Sexual Assault Coalition.

0:47:04.2 CF: Absolutely, and I think one of the things that makes me think of, Rebekah is the, again, bringing it back to relationality. And also centering it in what the needs are within communities, within your state or territory. So starting by talking, if you are a standalone SV coalition and you have a DV coalition in your state that’s doing housing work, starting with conversations there, about like, what’s already happening? What do you know is happening, who’s doing it, what are the structures and resources that you’re aware of? And here are some of the things that we’ve seen... Potentially even partnering with folks to do focus groups about what it is that would be useful in housing advocacy within your state. And I don’t know if we’ve actually said this, so I wanna go back to something if I could, that I feel like is one of those grounding things, Rebekah, which is... I think often when we think about housing, we think we have to have a building, friends, we don’t. That’s actually the majority of housing money is not about owning a building or managing a building where people have to come and access their housing in space that you provide.

0:48:20.1 CF: Rather, there are lots of opportunities for doing, as our DV colleagues have been really digging into, things like rapid re-housing, there are options for scattered-site housings, there’s the work with landlords that Rebekah was talking about. So I wanted to take a step back, because I know for myself, when I originally started this work around housing maybe eight years ago, 10 years ago now, my initial thought was, well, of course, you have to have a shelter or a building or a transitional housing space that you are administering, and it was kind of like mind-blowing a rearrange of my head to think about the fact that you could provide housing for survivors and never have to manage or own a building, because that is not always the structure that works potentially for sexual violence survivors.

0:49:11.9 CF: And I say that again, because I feel like this is a great conversation to have with your DV Coalition. What’s your model, how are you all moving forward, what are you supporting in your state, are you looking really at rapid re-housing and other forms of housing advocacy that allow, again, scattered site or other forms of housing assistance for survivors? So in my sense, that’s one of the best places to start, and then when we started doing work around transitional housing within NNEDV, I would say it’s a similar kind of thing, right? A National SA, National DV organization, and we started to just try to put our heads together to say, what do you already know and what do we bring to this conversation? And a deep part of what we decided was we needed to do listening sessions and focus groups, we needed to do one-on-one interviews with folks and ask them really specifically what already works for sexual violence survivors within the structures that you’ve come up with, and what doesn’t, what are the barriers, what are the places where something different needs to grow or be built. So that, again, I would say is another place, and I imagine there are more Karla, Elizabeth, Condencia? But those would be the first ones that I would think of as a way to really begin that relationship and think about it.

0:50:43.7 RM: Yeah, I think, again, for standalone sexual assault coalitions, connecting to DV coalitions, finding out what they have and haven’t done, what has and hasn’t worked, and building off those relationships is, again, I think we wanted to address. The other thing we wanted to address for dual coalitions is that, many dual coalitions have done a lot of work around this around domestic violence and their membership, dual programs and standalone domestic violence programs have done a lot of work around this around domestic violence, so what I’ve seen in our work with Transitional Housing grantees and lifting up the needs of survivors of domestic violence is there begins to be tension in the room when we start talking about supporting an adult survivor of child sexual abuse, who needs assistance with paying rent, and we talk about housing someone who is currently fleeing imminent physical danger.

0:51:35.4 RM: And there begins to be a kind of a prioritization of me, there becomes to be a... “How dare you put this person’s needs over this person’s need, don’t you understand the danger of the situation?” And the reality is not... Someone’s needs are more or less. The reality is really both/and, because the harm that sexual violence survivors continue to experience just like the harm intimate partner violence experience years after they may have left the relationship, if there are children involved, if credit has been damaged, if long distance power and control continues to be an issue, the harm continues and someone who is looking at losing their housing, the trauma and stress around that is also harm.

0:52:20.2 RM: And so for dual coalitions, I think really also being really cognizant of and really sensitive to where your members are on this issue, a lot of times in state budgets, money for emergency shelter is some of the biggest money that comes out to victim services programs, so as you’re thinking amongst your membership and dual coalitions about what this means to your membership, about how to lead, about how to support the needs of survivors of sexual violence, but also recognize what that means amongst your membership is something that you have to be aware of as you begin these conversations, and I don’t know if any of my partners have anything they’d like to add to that, or if anybody on the call has anything they’d like to add about those, any conversations they’ve had with membership around that issue.

0:53:14.7 S?: Rebekah, I just wanna add along those lines is one of the barriers that we see is that a lot of housing programs, the participants are referred from emergency shelter, and so we see that that’s another way that survivors of sexual violence aren’t getting access to housing programs because typically, they’re coming from shelter to transitional housing or to some other type of housing.

0:53:40.7 RM: Yes. So kind of being prepared for those conversations, it’s a factor we want to bring to people’s awareness if it wasn’t already. So relationships with your domestic violence coalition, if your dual coalition, what this means for your membership and navigating those conversations, and if you’re wanting to convene conversations with memberships, if you’re wanting to think about like... So how do we ask about these questions, what questions do we ask, we don’t have time on this webinar to dig into that, and we don’t have any resources, I could send you a checklist tomorrow, but it’d be something that we’d be willing to work with you to help build if that would be helpful for you. And I see Cat saying, but we can help. So this first prong is really stepping back and breathing and connecting to the abundance of expertise about needs with survivors with the homeless coalition, with DV coalition amongst your membership, finding out what you may have members who know a whole bunch about HUD that you don’t know about or a whole bunch about housing needs, you can really tap into that, so once you’ve figured out where survivor’s needs are, you may decide that focusing on HUD is the right place to start.

0:55:00.9 RM: So in this kind of assessment of what survivors housing needs are, you may find that getting access to a specific fund is most helpful. You may find in that conversation that actually you need to back up and do a whole bunch of work with your membership around organizational approaches to serving survivors of sexual violence, organizational change around holistic services, organizational change around requiring people to do things in order to get access to housing, you may have to start your work there before you jump into funding housing, you may have to start work with landlords, you may have to start work with City Council, dealing with public nuisance issues, and these are where survivors are losing housing because of issues related to their experiences of violence.
0:55:47.0 RM: And so you may start in a different place, but if after this assessment, we’re jumping over a bunch, you decide that HUD is where you want to start your advocacy, and what I say is wherever you start, HUD is such a huge piece of the pie around housing, that you’re gonna run into HUD eventually, so it’s gonna come up, but you may not start there. But let’s say you eventually get to your HUD policy advocacy piece. The next thing is really, you’ve learned from your members what they know, it is training your members about HUD, so teaching them about how this system works, after you’ve learned, and this is where you can tap into experts in membership to train fellow members within the coalition, teaching folks at the local level how to advocate, because if you’re working on HUD, you wanna be advocating from coalitions can be building relationships with state HUD pass-throughs. Meanwhile, members are doing work at the local level. Why is this dual approach helpful if the state is just doing advocacy with the HUD funding pass-through? So let’s talk about ESG, that’s come up quite a bit.

0:57:09.0 RM: ESG is a formula grant, right? It’s doled out and it sent to certain jurisdictions based on a formula. You may have a really great relationship with your ESG pass-through and you may be setting some great policy here, but between here and here, where ESG is actually distributed, where your local rape crisis center is working on this, you may find a big difference in the policy. So they may have set a policy that really helps survivors of sexual violence here, but if your programs can’t advocate with the same talking points, with the same policy language, then there’s gonna be a gap in the strategy for this change. And so it’s training your members on how to work... All about HUD, how to work on it. And again, if this is not your expertise, this is again something... Reach out to us, we can talk to you about building these tools, beginning to think about what types of HUD should we talk about first. Because again, HUD is big. HUD is fair housing. HUD is public housing. HUD is Section 8. HUD is community development block grants. HUD is homelessness services. It’s big. So it’s getting your members up to capacity, it’s at the same time, you’re also wanting to train the HUD players. So again, who in the HUD system do we need to be talking to? So is it the HUD funding pass-through? Is it locally? Again, we’ve talked about COC, so continuum of care.

0:58:47.2 RM: In some states continuum of care is a metro group, and continuum of care for folks who are new to this, again, is a HUD mandate to coordinate how homeless funding is distributed locally to make it more efficient and to prioritize those with the most need. And I use lots of this because... Well, I just use lots of this. [chuckle] It’s a well-intended policy, and we know what the road to perdition is paved with, lots of good intentions. If you’re working with your HUD pass-through up here, you also... And training them, you need... And building relationships with them, you need your local programs to also be training and working with HUD funding. So the reason I mentioned with the CoCs, excuse me, the reason I mentioned training versus policy work is training sometimes can be a really great way to begin to build relationships, especially cross-training. We wanna learn about your system, especially if you have money for the cross-training, we’d like to teach you about our system. You build relationships, you learn, but we know that training without policy accountability moves very little, because then everybody has all these best practices, but the eligibility requirements still don’t let survivors of sexual violence in, or people are still being required to be sober, to get into housing, or people are still, “Yay, kiddos.”

1:00:15.4 RM: People are still being required to participate in services to continue to have access to their housing, so those are really key aspects, is training at the state level, training at the COC or the local level, and then policy work at both level. And so I just wanted to check in, are there... And I wanted... Before I check in, one thing, I saw Mark had a question about funding for vouchers versus funding for capital investments, did that get discussed at... Cat you talked a little bit about owning a building versus... Did that get answered in the chat? I’m sorry, I’ve not been able to keep up. I’m so glad that chat is robust, that makes me happy.

1:01:04.8 CF: No, I don’t think it did.

1:01:07.4 RM: Okay, cool.

1:01:09.3 CF: Yeah.

1:01:09.9 RM: And I think Cat had a really great point. So you don’t... So some programs... So this is a thing, this is a perfect example of understanding survivors’ housing needs. So after you understand survivors’ housing needs, you may find... You have a bunch of survivors of sexual violence in your community that would really like to live in some sort of congregate intentional community where they share a living space, where they share duties to raise children, where they find that that would be really healing. So you may have... This may exist hypothetically, and you may say, “You know what, we would like to purchase a building and build something like that up,” or someone donates a building. Okay, great, if that’s based on survivor’s needs. And one of the pros of congregate housing that you own and operate is that you don’t have to do the advocacy with landlords where you’re running into so much discrimination against people because of credit histories, criminal legal involvement, past evictions. It’s one of the pros to advocacy programs running the housing. There are cons to running housing. Because you become a landlord, it changes the power dynamic with people when all of a sudden you are responsible to the city or to the government jurisdiction that you’re in, if people are choosing to do things in housing that the city is gonna put a big eye on, right? 

1:02:35.2 RM: So it changes your relationship with people when you own the property in which they live, so it’s something you have to navigate around housing needs. So that’s an example of housing needs where maybe finding money for capital... And there are some HUD grants that are for reinvestment and development work. But most of the homelessness program grants are not for capital investment. They are for subsidy. Yes, Cat.

1:03:04.6 CF: I just wanted to... Because as you were talking about that, I’m thinking about a lot of things, and one of them is, I feel like this is a really great conversation for coalitions to have with local programs.

1:03:18.0 RM: Yes, totally.

1:03:21.4 CF: One of the places that, again, we can invest is in training and making sure that programs in our state or territory have a deep understanding of not just what’s available, but all of those ways that you can meet those needs that they’ve identified. And as we’re talking about that, I also... I’m trying really hard to get more spacious. And so I just saw like Kristen in the thing saying, planting ideas and she’s... They’re thinking about community land trusts and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I love that.” And then additionally, somebody else was chatting me and Tracy was like, “Don’t forget, we have an opportunity right now because of the administration that has just begun”, which has a deeper investment in the needs of survivors of sexual violence, and so there are probably terrific opportunities that may be coming up that go way above any given funding source that we’re thinking about right now. And so I just wanted to sort of pause us and say, even as we’re thinking about the nitty-gritty of this sometimes to remember we can think in this more spacious way about the needs of survivors, and then work to figure out how to build it, if that makes sense.

1:04:42.0 RM: Exactly. I love it.

1:04:45.9 CF: And that’s our role as coalitions, I think, is to host the spaces to really deeply hear from programs, from culturally specific programs, from folks in communities of color across the state who you may or may not be connected with, but who probably are the ones that are doing really holistic kinds of housing advocacy to start to dig into what’s happening, what are the needs, and then start to build once you all have developed that as a state, instead of trying to... Spaciousness. Let’s not try to squash ourselves into a definition. Let’s build what we believe we need and then figure out how we fund it, right? 

1:05:25.4 RM: That’s what... And I love it. That’s exactly it. So that congregate idea is an idea, but you’ve got a million ideas here, and it was an idea to show off like the pros and cons of one idea that had been run with for a long time, but it’s one idea and it may not be the right idea locally, and there’s so many ideas in the chat that I can’t even follow. And that, as coalitions, is like, how do we back up, think broadly, connect to our expertise around needs and then think abundantly about meeting those needs, creatively, innovatively? And that’s kind of the role... Hopefully, your coalition has space to explore that because again, if we just go after HUD funding because it’s there and we’re being invited to apply, does that meet survivors’ needs? And only you guys can determine that right? It may, it may not. So love that, Cat.

1:06:20.6 KV: Can I just jump in, Rebekah? 

1:06:22.0 RM: Yeah go for it.

1:06:24.3 KV: Just a couple of thoughts we’ve had is... A couple of us, Condencia, Elizabeth, myself, Patima, who is an advocate who does housing work in California, did a presentation on sexual violence in housing that was really needed, it was widely attended, and we were asked to come back to do a second session. And I think one of the things we walked away with was, we don’t have to do this the way domestic violence has done this historically. I know that’s sort of what’s being said, but that’s not what our survivors need. Domestic violence is moving past sort of how that all operates and works in terms of emergency shelter, transitional shelter. I think we just need to be more broad, it’s exactly what you all were saying, and we also had a conversation with a local program in Vermont who does some housing work, and one of the things she said, and she was sort of grandfathered into doing that, they received a house and they were told a condition of receiving the house was that they had to do housing work as a sexual assault program. And she was just talking about some of the barriers of HUD funding, a lot of audits, things like that, and she said, “We wanna be able to do what we do well, which is sexual violence advocacy work, and we wanna be able to work with our housing providers so they can do what they do well.”

1:07:47.8 KV: So I just really wanted to stress that relationship-building, because you may not want a $50,000 grant and to open a housing structure, you may really want just to be able to access what survivors need in a quick way by having those relationships and having folks who are willing to support survivors that you’re working with in the array of housing needs that come up. Thanks.

1:08:16.3 RM: Totally agree. I mean, again, these are the conversations to be having thinking broadly, “Are we advocates? Are we landlords? Are we both/and? Are we something we haven’t even considered before because we’ve got our eyes to the ground instead of looking at the sky?” And looking at one another, or being with one another in whatever ways that we communicate, and again, tapping into the abundance and creativity that’s within us. And so this is a good point potentially for us to shift to... If you back up again, and think spaciously about housing needs and how we might wanna meet those needs, and if you decide to do some HUD advocacy again, really important to be doing this at the state and the local level, and really important to be building local programs, capacity to be doing this work as you’re doing it up here, otherwise, it’s like... It can... You all of a sudden start getting lots going to the local level, and then they don’t have the capacity to respond. If through those conversations, and thinking spaciously, you do have programs that do want to go after HUD funding, that do want to apply specifically for the funding that was discussed in the webinar that was done that Lisa did with consortium.

1:09:40.5 RM: We wanted to talk a little bit about some things you can help your programs think through as they analyze whether or not that funding is a good fit for them. So are we cool making the shift now from the kind of broad conversation about, “It’s super important to understand sexual violence survivors needs and creative ways to meet those needs,” and then deciding if HUD funding fits in there, or is it a part of that puzzle piece instead of just going for HUD funding and then finding out, “Oh whoa, we can’t meet the needs of folks”? So is it cool now for us to kind of shift to, if you have found that a piece of this puzzle is going after HUD funding, what kind of coalition’s roles in helping their member programs think through that funding. And is there anything else in the chat I’ve missed or that we wanna lift up before we make that shift? And there’s so much... I’m so glad to see the chat. It’s like, that’s so awesome.

1:10:39.9 CF: We have just been having all kinds of conversations in the chat.

1:10:41.7 RM: I love it. That’s great.

1:10:43.8 CF: Yes, and I know that lots of ideas or different ways that housing needs can be met, who folks can partner with, some of the pieces, again, around capital investments, land trusts, around using hotels for sexual assault housing, about asking crime victim compensation programs to provide rent relief. I love this, supporting tenants organizing, like how do we help build relationships between local agencies and tenants’ unions, all of that is what’s playing out in the chat, and more, because it is robust.

1:11:26.6 RM: That makes me so happy.

1:11:28.9 CF: Yeah, yeah. And I think that we probably can just maybe take a minute and just pause and say, any... Is there anything else that folks really want to get a chance to sort of lift up, talk about, dig into, before we move to that piece around local programs and when HUD might be a fit? Is there anything bigger before we get a little more micro? We’re at the macro for sure. I imagine, Mark, that probably that’s definitely possible to send out the chat, Karla and Jen? 

1:12:09.2 S?: Yeah, it should be in the recording and we’ll try to pull out...

1:12:10.3 CF: Awesome. Yeah. Other things, anything big picture before...

1:12:22.2 RM: And this is so exciting because, especially big picture, because there’s so much of housing work that I was talking... I was sending some stuff to Cat and Elizabeth around broad housing policy, and one of them... And I’ve been doing some work around thinking about what is housing, like what defines housing, and what is housing advocacy. And one of the things I was thinking long and hard about is every... All programs are pushing people to continue to rent. What about... So we’re talking about land trusts. Why aren’t we supporting people who would like to think about ownership? Why aren’t we thinking that? We’re okay with sending rent to folks who already own housing, oftentimes big, big corporate entities that snapped up a lot of housing during the crisis at the turn of 2009-10, but when it comes to helping people get assets or accumulate wealth around housing, all of a sudden that is forbidden and not doable, so thinking again about those big ideas like, why don’t we go there? So it’s exciting, again, these conversations. And I’m just looking at the chat. So I guess one of the questions is, in the webinar, we had said we would talk specifically about some of the details of HUD funding and the coalition’s role in helping member programs think about that, especially folks who are newer to it.

1:13:50.0 RM: Is that something folks wanna shift to and talk about right now? I could just read the chat ‘cause it’s that... [laughter] Which Cat already did. She did a great... Is that helpful to help people think about... I think some questions that you as coalitions, if someone comes to you and says, “I see this HUD funding here... “ ‘Cause I’ve heard of some people who went after the ESG-CV funding ‘cause it was money, and then they were like... And then they started hearing about, as Karla was saying, the audits and the reporting and the reports and all of the meetings that they had to attend, and they were like, “Oh Lord, what have we gotten ourselves into?” And so I see Rosa saying, “I worked in banking, there’s a lot of red tape to eliminate [1:14:36.9] ____ strain that survivors don’t sign into length.” Yes, exactly. There’s the buy to... Rent-to-own, and... So this whole housing advocacy piece, helping people understand what their rights are, what their needs are, and helping them advocate for that. So are folks cool with kind of shift on just some things as coalitions to think about, if your programs are interested in going after HUD funding? And again, I meant to say this at the beginning, I think there’s a lot of people listening to this call right now, could be facilitating this conversation.

1:15:11.5 RM: And so it’s an honor to get to kinda hold space and be a talking head, and I’m so glad that this space lets people do such great chat and connecting in the chat. It’s awesome. Okay, so we’ve got 15 minutes left. So to honor the kind of commitment we made to folks to touch about on this a little bit, we’re gonna go ahead and shift to some key questions you wanna ask programs about whether or not HUD funding meets their needs. So the first real question is, does the HUD funding program, and specifically, I’m talking about the funding that was discussed in the webinar that we’ve referenced from Lisa Kaufman, so does CoC funding, ESG funding... And then there’s some runaway and homeless youth demonstration grant projects, which we’re not gonna delve into ‘cause it’s a small piece of the pie, important work, but also real small piece of the pie.

1:16:05.8 RM: So one of the big questions is, do the eligibility requirements for this program, does... ‘Cause many of these programs require that you be homeless or about to be homeless, with a very limited definition of what homeless means, does that meet sexual violence survivors’ needs? So if you are working with a lot of people who need rental assistance to stay where they are because of long-term impacts of sexual violence, the most HUD funding, you’re gonna get real frustrated with trying to thread that needle, because it’s really hard for those folks to be eligible. Even if HUD were to come down with a policy memorandum, sorry to get into the weeds, that says these people were eligible, to convince the local CoC, the folks who coordinate that funding, to convince them that those people are a high priority on an eligibility list is a big, big policy and political lift for coalitions as well as local programs.

1:17:07.0 RM: Right, so that is one big question, you wanna help your members figure out. What are the housing needs of survivors like so are these people coming from shelter or from the streets or who are actively fleeing recent violence? In those cases, HUD funding may be a better fit for you, but if you’ve got folks who are really wanting to stay where they are and just get housing and get funding to stay where they are, that may not be the best fit, so that’s one question. Are the folks you wanna serve eligible? Local CoCs, I can’t emphasize this enough, have lots of power in interpreting HUD policy. They are the ones who decide who gets funded in the Continuum of Care Funding round, they are the ones who decide who gets prioritized, so when there is a list of people who need access to HUD homelessness funded programming, the assessments that CoCs choose and the prioritizations, scales... Let’s say that the CoC use... I’m trying not to get too in the weeds, I’m fighting it... Those determine whether or not... So let’s say you have a lot of survivors of sexual violence who are in shelter right now, who...

1:18:27.3 RM: It feels like eligibility is a good fit. The next question is, what is your relationship with your CoC? And can you influence CoC policy so that those people are a priority? And how the CoC has set up something that’s called Coordinated Entry. And I’ve seen a lot of you reference CE in the chat. CE is Coordinated Entry. This is another HUD mandate. It basically says, everybody who receives homelessness funding locally needs to coordinate how people get access to that funding and then who... What funding within all the different programs, what program they’re referred to, and what they get access to within all of those. So this is the next question. So if you decide to go after HUD funding, what is your program’s relationship with the local CoC? Because the local CoC, beyond just setting the policy for who is eligible and how people get access, they also decide who gets funded in CoC funding rounds and the CoC funding I heard Lisa say last time was $1 billion. So it can be a big chunk of housing money coming into your community, but the very people you may have to be advocating with to open up space for sexual violence survivors are oftentimes similar or same people and I’m using this kind of poking motion, but they’re the same people who are gonna decide if your program... If the local program gets funded right, so sometimes that can also create a rub.

1:20:08.6 RM: We’re trying to push for policy, advocacy that’s better for sexual violence survivors, people are kind of frustrated by it. So maybe they don’t decide to fund us in the next funding round because the CoC decides, sets up a whole policy and protocol for those applications. So that is another key piece, is what is the relationship with your local programs with the CoCs? Can they influence policy? So that’s another piece. Another piece that your programs wanna think about is reporting requirements and confidentiality. So do they have the capacity as a program to gather all the information that HUD requires to maintain it in a comparable database, because victim service providers can’t put victim survivors’ personal identifying information into the database called Homeless Management Information Systems. This is the database HUD, uses to track whether or not homeless... And I’m using quotes again, “Homeless” services are effective. Victim service providers can’t use those databases, so does your program have the capacity to, with maybe a $10,000 grant for a housing assistance to do lots of data collecting, lots of data entry, lots of reporting, and to also deal with the perennial battle around confidentiality? 

1:21:38.9 RM: And we cannot share this information with you. So do your programs have capacity around that? And some programs really may and really feel like it’s their work to influence that system around those issues. Great. Other programs would be like, “No, we don’t have the capacity.” So those are some really key points, working with your COC, helping programs think about that. We’re about to wrap up. Reporting requirements, databases, confidentiality. Do programs understand that? Do they feel like that’s their mission, do they wanna take that on, do they have the capacity, and then what are local relationships with at the COC in terms of policy as well as in terms of getting funding? So those are some critical questions on top of the eligibility question that coalitions can help members think about as they’re figuring out whether or not to pursue HUD funding. And now I’m gonna turn it back over to our co-presenters.

1:22:36.9 KV: Okay, thank you so much, Rebekah and everyone, and thank you all for being so interactive throughout this whole presentation or conversation, let’s be honest, I wanna give an opportunity for folks to ask any last-minute questions. Nice. We need to share that she’s experienced in workarounds to protect confidentiality in other states. There is a link for the solicitation up here, so there’s an open sign up for HUD emails and a link for that, and then there’s info around the FY 21 NOFA.

1:23:21.4 RM: Yes. And the FY 21 NOFA just a quick, since there was a direct question about that has not been released yet. Right, so you’ve got the link to the page to monitor that, you can sign up for HUD emails where you’ll find that out. Actually last week, HUD just announced who was awarded COC funding for the FY 20 NOFA. So just a heads up.

1:23:44.1 KV: Yeah, Mark, that is something we could do in the consortium, just ‘cause a lot of those folks are much more connected with the NOFA, they can get a better... Like a rough idea of when that would be. The one thing I do wanna share in terms of the NOFA is that it really does require a lot of networking if this is new for you, so if you as a coalition are gonna work with certain programs, you’re gonna have to have all, in your proposal, you’re gonna have to have all that worked out with the programs that you plan to work with, so it’s quite a big undertaking. So if you’re a standalone coalition, I highly recommend connecting with your DV coalition and if you’re not, if you’re a dual program, and thinking about including sexual assault in that housing work, that would be a little bit of an add-on, but I think as we move through connecting with different states, we’ll have more information about how different states do it, but it is... I think that’s the one thing I can walk away with.

1:24:47.4 KV: Housing is complicated, but the one thing I’ve definitely learned is that every state is different, every community is different, and so really spending the time to sort of figure out what the landscape is, is super helpful, because you could be... You as a coalition or your programs could be the sub-grantee where you’d still have to do a lot of the work, but it wouldn’t be as heavy of a lift initially. So yes.
1:25:12.0 CF: And I would add just one more like again, super basic framing piece, which is something we sometimes don’t say. This is our work, friends, sometimes I feel like we think this is DV work or we think it’s work that somebody else is doing, but this really is deeply our work to make sure that sexual assault survivors have safe housing, have access to what they need to heal, and so I just wanna bring that back to remind us all and really center us in the fact that lots of people are doing it, and it still is our work too.

1:25:52.0 Condencia Brade: And then if I can just add Cat... I think this is also one of those... I feel like sometimes when we think about the cultures of communities of color organizations, we think of them as they need assistance, but this is one of those areas where they may actually have more experience with this in terms of trying to work through housing and navigate housing for their community, and a true partnership and collaboration with the communities of color organization can lend your expertise as a coalition in state-wide and territorial strategy, what they’ve been doing in their local level to really have a strong partnership to address housing overall. As you’re thinking about partnering with folks. Again, if you’re trying to figure out, and I know as Cat said or Karla said, “Look at your DV coalition,” touch base with your communities of color organizations as well and see, some of them may already be engaged with... However minimal it is, some of them may be engaged with doing this work and you can learn some strategies from them as well. So I just wanna lift that up because I feel like sometimes when we think about these issues, it feels somewhat new to the broader SA group, but for communities of color organizations, they’ve been addressing these issues and really looking at issues of housing and insecurities around that for a very long time, so I just wanna kind of lift that up.

1:27:18.9 KV: Yes, thank you so much for that, Condencia. That’s been another huge sort of focus for us, is that we have models of what’s working with sexual assault programs, culturally specific sexual assault programs, and so we need to continue to lift that up. Okay, we have one minute. I just wanted to share quickly that we will share the chat, we will share all the resources mentioned in the chat, and it feels like we may wanna do a follow-up conversation, maybe schedule an hour for another time to talk more because this was awesome. It really, really was. I wanna thank everybody who was on, thank you for your patience with some of our technical messiness, but yeah, thank you all so much for taking the time to be here and you all know folks on this call, so please reach out if you need anything at all from us, we are here available, excited to talk about it, as you can probably tell, and we will also be recording this, it’s in English and in Spanish, so we will have that posted. But yeah, keep in touch. Look out for more. And thank you, thank you so much for being here today. Alright.

This project was supported by Grant No. 2018-TA-AX-K027 awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women.

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