Housing Our Neighbors Planning Collaborative

Vision for the work: Eau Claire County is a community where homelessness is rare, brief, and nonrecurring.

Mission for the work: In October of 2024, the Eau Claire Department of Human Services, Eau Claire City-County Public Health, and the Eau Claire Chamber of Commerce came together with a commitment to facilitate and support deep collaboration and coordination of a homeless response system in Eau Claire County. The goal of the system is that the number of new people using homelessness services is less than or equal to the number of people who exit homelessness through being housed or leaving the region. It does not mean nobody is experiencing homelessness, but rather that homelessness is rare overall and brief when it occurs.

Our work is centered on the understanding that an impactful homeless response system needs to include:

• outreach to unsheltered people
• coordinated entry
• targeted homelessness prevention and diversion
• emergency shelter
• permanent housing including rapid rehousing, and
• wraparound services during and after homelessness

Additionally, the work in building an impactful system needs to be centered around the insights of people with lived and living experience that are impacted by the system. This is why we are committed to having folks with lived/living experience on our executive team and at all community meetings.

Our work is grounded on the below principles:

1. Ground the work in data and context, and target solutions.

• Disaggregate data by demographics to understand problems and root causes, as well as develop appropriate solutions and document progress.
• Ensure the data is high quality and used ethically, with transparency about the uses of data throughout the data collection and analysis process
• • • Incorporate the voices of community members and those with lived experience into the data collection and interpretation process

2. Focus on systems change, in addition to programs and services.

• Utilize Coordinated Entry and available funding in Eau Claire to build off each entity’s strengths to create a unified crew rowing in the same direction; focus on changing the underlying systems, not just adding new programs of services

3. Shift power within the collaborative

• Focus on our mission of empowering our clients (service providers, people experiencing homelessness) by providing direct and indirect support

4. Listen to and act with community.

• Be purposeful with communication plans to lean heavily and often into the insights of people who are impacted and affected by the plan
• Define and utilize a shared language to support common understandings

5. Build fair leadership and accountability.

• Build a system that amplifies minoritized voices and purposefully moves folks into leadership roles with support
• Hold leaders accountable for reporting their metrics and delivering on the commitments of their organization
• Establish and maintain a clear point of contact to ensure effective communication throughout cooperative and community
• Regularly establish and review action plans
• Regularly update capitol investors with metrics highlighting cost savings and goals

The executive team includes individuals with lived/living experience as well as community leaders:

• The Director of the Department of Human Services, Angela Weidemann
• The Assistant Director of Human Services, Angela Stokes
• The Eau Claire City Manager, Stephanie Hirsch
• The Eau Claire City-County Health Department Director, Elizabeth Giese
• The Eau Claire City-County Health Department Population Health Institute Fellow, Katerine Kerwin
• The President and CEO for the Eau Claire Chamber of Commerce, David Minor
• The Vice President of Government Affairs for the Eau Clare Chamber of Commerce, Scott Rogers
• The Vice President of Marketing and Communications for the Eau Claire Chamber of Commerce, Sarah Hughes
• The Grants and Housing Program Manager for the City of Altoona, Julian Emerson
• The Founder of For Goodness Sake, Jill Christopherson
• JONAH ( Joining Our Neighbors Advancing Hope) leader, Paul Savides