Housing First

Partnerships & Strategies to Ensure Permanent Housing for All

Rental assistance helps make housing affordable, and targeted and individualized support services help keep people in housing long-term. The partner agencies of Our Path Home work together to expand and offer the availability of the three components needed to achieve permanent housing: housing, rental assistance, and support services.

The 30+ agencies that make up Our Path Home, the public-private partnership working to end homelessness in Boise City/Ada County, operate from the service model and philosophy that permanent housing is the solution.

CATCH, a partner of Our Path Home, helps provide stable housing and support services for individuals experiencing homelessness.

To facilitate access to these resources, to serve; clients in a trauma-informed, client-centered way; and to ensure we put limited resources to their highest and best use; Our Path Home launched “coordinated entry” two years ago.

Coordinated entry is the access point to the homeless services system. Through this access point, each household experiencing homelessness is assessed and put on a prioritized queue based on the length of time they’ve experienced homelessness and the severity of their service need. Partner agencies have agreed to use this one prioritized queue to serve our most vulnerable neighbors first. This agreement means that they work from one list and receive referrals from that list to fill openings in their supportive housing programs.

Man in red sweater talking to group — Wyatt Schroeder, Director of Community Partnerships, discusses the history of homelessness and support services.

group of people in front of mural — Ambassadors pose at a stop featuring art from a local artist

Group talking to man — Troy, a resident of New Path Community Housing, and Maureen Brewer, the city’s Our Path Home Administrator, share details about New Path.

Our Path Home envisions a system wherein every person experiencing homelessness finds home. We know that, simply put, housing ends homelessness. Such a solution isn’t an over-simplification of the issue, as we know it is more complex. Yet, complexity itself should not delay our response, particularly when we have a framework of solutions to work within. For households experiencing homelessness, the crisis is critical and immediate; the speed with which we respond to a housing crisis matters.

Housing is Health

Opportunity: Partnering with the Healthcare System – Housing is Health

Public-private partnerships, particularly those that can be forged with our hospital systems, provide the opportunity to leverage resources and meet common goals. New Path Community Housing is one such example of how Our Path Home can partner with our hospital systems to house people experiencing chronic homelessness and who may be frequent users of our emergency medical services system.

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End Family Homelessness

Opportunity: Working to End Family Homelessness

We have an opportunity to house every family experiencing homelessness and to carefully adjust the inflow and outflow into and out of our system each month. We won’t be able to prevent every instance of homelessness, but we can work to re-house families within 30 days of their housing crisis using a flexible approach that creates funding and programming bridges between providers and discrete fund sources.

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Ambassador Jyoni taking notes during the introductory lecture.

Ambassadors Sharon and TJ take notes and learn about the city’s approach to addressing homelessness.

Maureen Brewer, Our Path Home Administrator with the City of Boise, explains how the Continuum of Care works in Boise and Ada County.

Wyatt Schroeder, Director of Community Partnerships, discusses the array of housing available for people experiencing homelessness.

Wyatt talks about the city’s Partnership to End Homelessness that includes 30+ agencies across the city and county.

Ambassador TJ walking to New Path Community Housing.

Ambassadors went to CATCH to learn more about the services they provide and how they help in the Partnership to End Homelessness.

Ambassadors listen to Stephanie Day, Executive Director at CATCH, who explains the array of services CATCH provides in assisting those experiencing homelessness.

Ambassadors Joyni, Steve and Jillian hear more about how coordinated entry works and how each of the partner agencies of Our Path Home work together to help individuals experiencing homelessness.

Troy, a resident of New Path Community Housing, talks about the various features of New Path.

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