EveryOne Home envisions an Alameda County where all residents have a safe, affordable, and supportive place to call home. We understand that representation matters and that even the most equity-minded policies and programs will have limited success when their development and implementation lack the voices and contributions of people with lived experience. When making decisions about homeless services policies or programs, it is vital to meaningfully include the perspectives of people with lived expertise.
EveryOne Home understands the best way to implement a person-centered system of care is to include and amplify the experts who have successfully navigated homelessness as well as those who are currently working their way through systems and services to get to stable housing.
EveryOne Home is working toward a homeless services workforce, including senior leadership and boards of directors, that reflects the racial and ethnic diversity of the people we serve and includes significant representation of people with lived experiences of homelessness, with built in career development pathways.
The Alameda County Continuum of Care (CoC) Leadership Board ensures that racial equity is at the center of our work to end homelessness and that people with lived experience are represented in decision making roles throughout the system. Moreover, because EveryOne Home understands the importance and value of the expertise of our colleagues with lived experience, we compensate financially them for their time doing the work of the CoC.
The voice of people with lived experience of homelessness is essential to how we design and implement an effective homelessness response system in Alameda County. These perspectives go beyond advisory roles or token representation to shared power. People with lived experience of homelessness are significantly represented on all boards, committees, and workgroups across our system. Specifically, we set a representation metric of at least 33% people with lived experience on all boards, committees, and workgroups. The Leadership Board hold itself and each committee and workgroup chair accountable for achieving and maintaining the 33% metric. If a committee or workgroup is falling short of this metric, the Leadership Board will work with that committee or workgroup to implement a strategy for to correcting the issue and will set a timeframe for implementation.
For more information about EveryOne Home, the Alameda County homeless services system, or to find out about opportunities for people with lived experience to become involved in our work please email alameda@homebaseccc.org.
Design and Developed with love ❤️ by Wellington Studio
