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BETSY CRONIN JOINS THE NCHCW STAFF AND LEADS THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE ON ENDING FAMILY HOMELESSNESS

Betsy Cronin, architect, and leader of the pre-eminent Family Unification Program in the U.S., which continues on at The Connection Inc. in Middletown, CT, has joined the National Center for Housing and Child Welfare to address the sharp decline in the availability of permanent housing for families within HUD’s assisted housing portfolio.  Families with children have lost 30 percent of their share of HUD’s public housing and Section 8 subsidies since 2009.  Impressive efforts are being carried out to demand affordable private housing for families, by homeless parents, particularly on the West Coast led by Moms4Housing and LA Reclaimers, but little attention has been paid to the precipitous loss of public housing among families with children - leading to widespread homelessness and family separation among low-income households.

Betsy will lead a National Committee to expand partnerships between public housing agencies and early childhood providers. These partnerships can immediately solve the housing problems of struggling families and get their families on the road to self-sufficiency.  The key here is to use HUD’s Family Unification Program as a blueprint, without requiring families to become involved with child welfare or homeless shelters to get their housing needs met.  Instead, the Committee will construct a method by which vouchers can be requested for families “on demand” by educators, social workers, health care workers, and community action agencies to stabilize a family’s housing situation, prevent homelessness, and eliminate unnecessary foster care placement for children.

To lead the expansion of the approach, the National Center for Housing and Child Welfare is forming a National Early Childhood Housing Committee based in Connecticut and composed of the professionals most familiar with the evolution of this concept representing a variety of fields of expertise: Anita Satti, Stacy Herbert, Pushpa Kapur, Donna Bogen, Jeri Hayes, Yesenia Rivera, Lou Rogowski, and Helen Lavin McAlinden.

Mrs. Nancy K. Smith, formidable business and hospitality leader and founder of the Homestead Fund will serve as the honorary chair.  Mrs. Smith brings a legacy of solving problems that others found intractable, including her tangible success in restoring the historic and long-neglected Homestead Inn when others thought it could not be done.  Her lifelong commitment to sharing hospitality with others will propel the Committee forward.   

Those interested in joining the committee may send an email to info@nchcw.org to learn more.  Those who would like to contribute to support the work of the committee can donate here.

Housing as a tool for Family Preservation, Reunification, & Economic Security

Click here to read more: https://imprintnews.org/child-welfare-2/use-family-first-act-prevent-family-housing-crises/52373

Read the NCHCW letter to HHS recommending Stafford Act Authority

Increasing vouchers for youth will free up Family Unification vouchers for families

Youth worked for six years to create “on-demand” housing vouchers for their “brothers and sisters” in care.  They worked on authorizing language with the Fostering Stable Housing Opportunities Act, with appropriators to add in vouchers with the “on-demand” language in the FY 2020 and 2021 spending bills, and they worked directly with Secretary Benjamin S. Carson, Sr, MD, on regulatory authority.  They were successful in each of those realms and were able to increase the amount of funding available to communities nationwide to serve youth with new vouchers by $40 million starting in October 2020.

This means that when a young person needs a voucher, a community can order a new voucher, allowing communities to use existing (pre-October 2020) FUP vouchers to serve families upon turnover.  Thus, as a byproduct of the youth’s advocacy, the pool of turnover vouchers for families will increase.  To learn more about how communities can increase the pool of vouchers for families by organizing their existing FUP vouchers in this manner, please email info@nchcw.org or tune in for our weekly housing webinars beginning Thursday, January 28, 2021, at 2:00 PM EST.