Introduction

Long Range Plan to Reduce Homelessness
in Milwaukee County for 2000 To 2004

I. Introduction

Over the past fifteen years, the Milwaukee community has developed a comprehensive range of services for the homeless. The Homeless Shelter Task Force, which has been in existence since 1985, has played a significant leadership role in expanding capacity and creating new services for the homeless in Milwaukee. In 1995, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development initiated the Continuum of Care (CoC) to bring additional federal dollars to local communities for the development of a continuum of services for homeless individuals and families. Milwaukee’s Continuum of Care, comprised of non-profit service providers, Milwaukee County, the City of Milwaukee, and providers for the homeless, created a community consensus on a strategic direction to address the needs of the homeless in the community.

The strategic direction details the vision, goals, strategies, and action steps needed to provide services and housing in a comprehensive and coordinated fashion over a five-year period. As a result of this funding stream, an expanded range of services beyond emergency shelters has been developed to assist homeless persons to move from homelessness to permanent housing with a greater degree of self-sufficiency. The strategic direction is under continuous review to insure coordinated implementation of projects initiated with HUD funding and other mainstream resources, to identify unmet needs and gaps, and to respond to critical issues as they arise. After several years of cooperatively building capacity through HUD’s CoC funding, Milwaukee’s CoC decided it needed a more comprehensive vision for what it wanted to achieve with regard to homelessness in the long term.

In May of 1999, the Continuum of Care planning group met to devise the blueprint for ensuring that long range planning would become an ongoing activity throughout the year. In the absence of an administrative entity or structure, agency staff decided to pool their resources and work together, and select a facilitator (the Planning Council for Health and Human Services, Inc.) to assist in developing a long-range plan to reduce homelessness in Milwaukee County over the next five years. The agency representatives felt that the annual planning activities engaged in each year to secure CoC funds from HUD needed to be done within the context of a broader, community-wide, and longer range plan.

What follows is a description of the planning process and a presentation of the long‑range plan, including the vision and mission of the Long Range Planning Committee, service needs and gaps, and five-year goals and objectives.

2001 Update Report Available in Adobe Acrobat .pdf format (505 KB) - Download