<Dear Mr. President Joe Biden>
<Good evening Mr. Olivet and Ms. Cournoyer, United States Interagency Council on Homelessness>
We've recently launched The National Shelter Registry (https://shelter-registry.com/) to enable stakeholders to meet the goal of reducing homelessness by 25% by 2025.
To make this goal a reality we believe it would be necessary to request that all of the agencies named in the All In / HUD awards $315 Million plan and who engage with USICH (United States Interagency Council on Homelessness) distribute a weekly recurring email and an immediate news release requiring that operators receiving government funds (grants and vouchers) for any housing be required to list all of their applicable locations on Shelter-Registry.com by January 31, 2024. Shelter-Registry.com can support hundreds of thousands of shelter locations and was specifically designed to coordinate nationwide efforts between social services, real operators, funding, and end users. You can learn more about how the shelter registry works by watching the two short videos on the how-to page.
As a nonprofit that offers shared housing to low-income individuals, we need this tool to allow police, housing specialists, drug courts, and all people the ability to find open beds in close to real-time. People frequently move up and down the CoC on short notice and therefore even operators need Shelter-Registry.com to refer residents to one another and keep them housed. Without this tool being utilized, Americans and Immigrants are confused about where to go and if it is a good fit at that time (gender, age, funding, etc.) and have little choice but to bus around town and wait in line for a bed that might never come.
We hope that you will put this tool to work as quickly as possible because an estimated 625-700 people per workday need to be housed in 2024 to meet the goal of 25% if we use the estimated 600,000 homeless people at the last count in 2022, which has likely increased with immigration. Not only will The National Shelter Registry work to prevent and end homelessness, but the "Full" feature of the website will provide real-time transparent data on how many shelters are operational nationwide and how many more are necessary. We are not asking for money, just your help to make the grants you have already approved work more effectively.
Please contact us with any questions.
May your holiday season be warm and full of blessings.
Sincerely,
Katie’s House Foundation
Administration: (205) 737-4440
Government Placements: (205) 502-4805
www.katieshousefoundation.org
www.shelter-registry.com
Offices: Alabama | Arizona