One Roof

Coordinated entry/street outreach: One Roof operates and oversees the coordinated entry program for central Alabama. Coordinated entry is a us department of housing and urban development (hud) mandated program designed to provide easy access to homeless services, quickly assess the vulnerabilities of persons seeking assistance, prioritize persons with the highest needs and vulnerabilities, and appropriately refer individuals and families to service providers within the community. Serving as a clearinghouse for homeless services, coordinated entry helps ensure persons with the highest needs and vulnerabilities to continued homelessness are prioritized for assistance. Coordinated entry is also home for a street outreach team that provides essential emergency services and case management to people who are unsheltered and a soar social worker who assists people who have a disability and are experiencing homelessness in attaining social security benefits.

Continuum planning: in partnership with homeless service providers, local municipal governments, education leaders, state officials, the faith community, and other dedicated organizations, the One Roof continuum planning program seeks to identify, divert, serve, and permanently house people who are experiencing homelessness in central Alabama. The ultimate goal is to maintain a crisis response system that makes homelessness rare, brief, and nonrecurring. One Roof seeks to coordinate efforts to end homelessness across community partners, including local emergency solutions grant (esg) entitlement areas and agencies funded through the continuum of care program. One Roof is responsible for evaluating esg-funded and continuum-funded programs that serve and house people experiencing homelessness in an effort to ensure federal resources are spent effectively. As part of this evaluation, One Roof reports performance data to esg entitlement areas, state officials, and hud. One Roof also submits an annual competitive grant to hud on behalf of homeless service providers totaling $9.5 million.

Hmis program: the homeless management information system (hmis) provides a shared electronic case management system including software, hardware, and all user training to various homeless service providers in the effort to end homelessness. Hmis is mandated by hud in an attempt to quantify homelessness, to track services provided by community agencies, and report progress towards ending homelessness. One Roof also manages the program information system of the southeast called promisse, a shared hmis platform utilized by hud continuums of care and homeless service providers across the state of Alabama and the Florida panhandle.

Shelter: One Roof staffs the local warming station when temperatures drop below freezing and, through sub-grants, assists local emergency shelters in providing shelter service.

One Roof housing services include rapid re-housing (rrh) and homelessness prevention (hp), both types of services provided by outside agencies funded through One Roof sub-recipient grants. Rrh rapidly connects people experiencing homelessness to permanent housing and hp provides housing relocation and stabilization services to people at risk of homelessness.

Homelessness events: One Roof holds an annual educational program about homelessness for young people called cardboard connect.