Hocking County Housing Coalition

1

• Hocking County Housing Coalition
• Martin Hammar, BSSW, LSW
• ACPST Team Leader
• Tri-County Mental Health and Counseling Services,
  Inc.
• 541 State Route 664 N.
• PO Box 1145
• Logan, Ohio 43138
• 740-385-6594
• (mhammar_at_tcmhcs.org)

2
Why did we start our housing coalition?The
simple answer is fear.

• Our agency is a direct service provider of mental
  health care, and it includes a residential
  program and rental subsidy program.
• We get our funding from the local mental health
  board administering funds from our states
  department of mental health.
• We had already seen cutbacks and longer waiting
  lists for other housing programs.
• Preventing homelessness was not our first
  priority. We wanted to hold onto what we had.

3
How did we start our housing coalition?We
volunteered people.

• We researched the Continuum of Care process.
• We used the work of other communities and
  customized it to our needs.
• We set aside time to meet regularly and
  eventually developed a working steering
  committee.
• We organized our coalition and kept a record of
  our activities.
• We kept in touch with each other.

4
What has made our coalition successful? We had
something to share with the community.

• We developed a resource booklet about housing and
  housing related services.
• Our meetings were open to anyone, and we shared
  our information with everyone.
• We remained flexible. Individual participation
  would wax and wane, but there remained a
  dedicated core group that took on leadership
  roles to assure that the work continued.
• We did a lot of public education.
• We had support from our respective agencies to
  continue the work of the coalition even though
  there was no money to do this.

5
How will we address homelessness?As long as we
face the challenge together, we can achieve our
goal of ending homelessness.

• Weve begun to combine resources, and coordinate
  services.
• We are learning more about the problem and
  solutions to homelessness and are working
  together to meet them.