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Alameda Countywide Homeless and Special Needs Housing Plan 39 Recent Chanaes in the Response to Homelessness A decade after the introduction of the Continuum of Care policy, Alameda County faces a reality common to nearly every community in the nation. That is, despite the infusion of targeted homeless assistance funding over the past ten years and the establishment of a plethora of new housing and service programs, the high cost of housing, static or decreasing state and federal resources, local resistance to siting of housing and service facilities, as well as changing political support severely impact the County's ability to stem the tide of growing numbers of homeless persons and assist them to find permanent housing. In addition, a strong overlay of other issues, including domestic violence, substance use, and involvement in the criminal justice system continues to contribute to homelessness. Communities and policy makers across the nation are looking at new approaches for addressing homelessness. These approaches include: · Permanent supportive housing, Housing First, and "evidence-based models." Providers and communities are increasingly creating permanent supportive housing for people who have been homeless and have disabilities, rather than more emergency shelter and transitional housing. Many are moving toward a "Housing First" model, which is an approach that takes people directly from homelessness into permanent housing with services, without waiting for them to become "housing ready." It is based on the idea that people can utilize services more effectively and successfully when stably housed. Across the country, programs are documenting successful outcomes, even with populations such as chronically homeless adults and active substance users. · Long-range planning. In 2003, President Bush and the Interagency Council on Homelessness announced a ten-year goal of ending chronic homelessness, and many communities have embarked on the development of ten-year plans to create long term strategies for integrating systems of care, growing resources, and engaging mainstream programs. In support of this planning focus, HUD now requires all jurisdictions with McKinney- Vento funding to have a homeless management information strategies (HMIS) system. · Systems integration. More communities are working towards integrating housing and service delivery systems to address the complexities of homelessness by reconfiguring the management and policies of the often.disconnected health, human service, and housing delivery systems. These issues helped the Continuum of Care Council to determine that Alameda County's ten-year plan to end homelessness, while including all the elements recommended by HUD, would take a different approach that would work better in Alameda County. Specifically, community-based organizations and local government staff wanted to ensure that the ten-year plan would include both the population HUD defines as chronically homeless, adults with disabilities who have been homeless frequently or for a long period, as well as single people without disabilities and families who have been homeless for a long time.