goals

Goal One: Prevent Homelessness
We cannot end homelessness without preventing it in the first place. Heading Home Hennepin lays out strategies that will keep people in the housing that they have, prevent people from becoming homeless when they leave public institutions (such as jail and foster care), provide conflict resolution for families, and better assist refugees so they do not end up in our shelter system.

Goal Two: Outreach
Heading Home Hennepin calls for a 24/7 system of street outreach that will respond more effectively to people?s individual needs and move us away from a criminal justice response to homelessness. This increase in outreach will free up valuable police time, reduce livability issues, and get people off of the streets and into housing. Our new outreach efforts will also focus on increasing access to both primary care and mental health care.

Goal Three: Housing
Housing, coupled with support services, is critical to ending homelessness. We will develop 5000 new housing opportunities over the next 10 years for men, women, children, and youth. We will ensure that people have access to the supports they need to remain stably housed.

Goal Four: Improve Service Delivery
For people to escape homelessness, it is critical that they have access to the services they need. Heading Home Hennepin will engage in efforts to break down traditional barriers to services. Project Homeless Connect (www.homelessconnectminneapolis.org) will continue to provide access to multiple services in one location, while we work to develop Opportunities Centers to achieve this kind of coordination on a daily basis. For veterans and people with multiple barriers we will provide service navigation to ensure they are getting connected to appropriate resources.

Goal Five: Build Self-Support
People must have resources to find and retain housing. Heading Home Hennepin will develop additional opportunities for access to employment, education, and job training, so that youth and adults are able to move themselves out of the cycle of homelessness.

Goal Six: System Improvements
There is more we can do to ensure that the systems we already have in place are working as effectively as possible. Heading Home Hennepin calls for an examination of our current shelter system to improve its ability to serve all populations, an increase in truancy intervention and other assistance for homeless youth, and a broad collaboration with other local, state and federal partners in our efforts to fight and end homelessness.

To view the plan in its entirety, click here.

our plan

Plan Overview Goals Gail Dorfman Message RT Rybak Message

featured
testimonial

RT Rybak

“I firmly believe that if we are going to move simply managing homelessness towards really ending it, we must remain focused on action and results..."

More >>