The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) is leading a collaboration to ensure that racial equity guides its focus within housing and efforts to end the experience of homelessness in the region.

One notable effort is the Regional Homeless Services Racial Equity and Systems Analysis led by COG’s Homeless Services Committee with the support of the Greater Washington Community Foundation. The collaborative effort will review COG jurisdictions’ Continuums of Care (CoC) operations, the funding and support for families, youth, and individuals experiencing homelessness, and then provide guidance on how to center racial equity in these efforts. 

Participating jurisdictions include: the District of Columbia; the City of Alexandria, Arlington County, Fairfax County, Loudoun County, and Prince William County in Virginia; Montgomery County, the City of Frederick, Frederick County, and Prince George’s County in Maryland.

The project will produce a set of recommendations each jurisdiction can implement at the local level, as well as opportunities for the region to work together to align approaches and resources to create a more racially equitable approach to ending the experience of homelessness.

The recommendations will identify how current policies and practices may compound inequities seen within the homeless services system and provide alternative actions to correct them. The region’s CoCs will also benefit from adaptive leadership skills training to ensure continued improvements in the effort to reduce the disproportionate representation of people of color in homeless services systems.  

The collaboration officially began in June 2021 with a stakeholder kickoff event which provided an opportunity for government staff across multiple agencies, service providers, and other community partners to learn more about the work ahead. COG’s Homeless Services Committee has engaged C4 Innovations, a nationwide leader in the field of racial equity in homeless services, to support the collaboration.

The next phase of the project will be led by a Racial Equity Action Council with representatives from each of the participating CoCs. The council participants will have a range of backgrounds, responsibilities, and lived expertise. Quantitative and qualitative data will inform the analysis and final set of recommendations.

Once the analysis is complete, the committee will share results with COG’s Human Services Policy Committee and the COG Board of Directors. Recommendations are anticipated by June 2022.