Ending and preventing homelessness. Our community-wide Weld’s Way Home effort is succeeding. Our hope is that sometime in 2021, no more veterans in Weld County will be experiencing homelessness. Kaiser Permanente of Colorado is a primary partner in this effort, locally and nationally. Nationally, Kaiser Permanente has committed $200 million to develop affordable housing, recognizing that stable, healthful housing is health care. Locally, Kaiser Permanente is resourcing two UWWC-connected regional initiatives.
“Like many human services challenges, homelessness pays no attention to jurisdictional lines, be they states, counties, or cities and towns. Because of this regional effort, the person experiencing homelessness is the focus. Likewise, Kaiser Permanente delivers integrated health care with the patient at the center. This like-mindedness makes it easy to support this regional work,” said Dawn Paepke, senior specialist with the Kaiser Permanente Colorado community health and engagement team.
Built for Zero is a nation-wide process improvement effort led by Community Solutions to help local areas accelerate the ending of homelessness. With participation paid for by Kaiser Permanente, UWWC and a local team are participating, so as to improve our regional Coordinated Assessment and Housing Placement System (CAHPS).
“Through Built for Zero we are improving our data, learning to better facilitate efforts between our 40-plus CAHPS partners, increasing our outreach, and more. Kaiser Permanente’s generosity means fewer people will suffer homelessness, and for those that do it will be for a shorter period of time,” noted Summer Garcia, the CAHPS coordinator who is employed by UWWC.
Recently, Kaiser Permanente also made available a national COVID-19 response fund focusing on homelessness response. Inspired by the success of The Weld Trust-funded Community Health Workers (CHWs) that serve at the Housing Navigation Center in Evans, the Northern Colorado Continuum of Care (NoCO CoC), a regional entity that is housed at UWWC, applied for and was granted $150,000 to hire two resource navigators to be deployed by Homeward Alliance in Fort Collins. These new employees will accelerate ending homelessness efforts throughout the region by focusing in on Fort Collins.
For more on Kaiser Permanente’s commitment to housing stability and ending homelessness visit: