What is the Balance of State?
The goal of a state Continuum of Care (CoC), or Balance of State, is to encourage planning and to make funding available to areas not covered by other CoCs. The Texas Balance of State CoC application offers support to communities in the development of comprehensive and long-term solutions to addressing the homelessness that affects approximately 200,000 men, women, and children each day in Texas. If you would like to learn more about this project please click on the link titled “1. BoS Brochure” under Document List in the box directly to the right of this sentence and to see the areas in Texas that are covered by this project click on “2. BoS Map”. A summarized project timeline is also available for download by clicking on “3. 2008-09 BoS Timeline".
Upcoming Projects
(In this section we will provide information about any upcoming projects those in the Texas Balance of State CoC need to know about so visit often to get regular updates)
Every two years CoCs are required to conduct a Point-in-Time homeless count during the last week in January by HUD in order to apply for HUD Continuum of Care grant funds. The last count conducted by the TX BoS CoC was in 2007 so we’re responsible for conducting another count this coming January. The count will be conducted January 29, 2009 and in conjunction communities will administer a characteristics survey to persons who are homeless in order to gather information about the scope and composition of the populations they work with. A similar effort was undertaken in 2007 and the results from that work can be found by clicking on “6. 2006-07 Final Survey Results” under the Document List to the right of this paragraph.
Eric Samuels will be holding trainings on the Point-in-Time Homeless Survey in communities across Texas during upcoming months. If your community is interested please contact him using the information at the bottom of the page. Additionally, online trainings will be held at various times this fall and winter so keep an eye out for information on those. In the meantime the instructions for the survey and survey instrument can be found to the right by clicking on “4. Point-in-Time Survey Instructions” and “5. Point-in-Time Survey”.
Texas Balance of State Blog
We have created this blog as a resource for the members of the Texas Balance of State CoC. The blog contains pictures, news and videos from participating agencies and communities in addition to a regularly changing poll question and of course the blog itself. We hope that the blog can serve as a resource for exchanging ideas between service providers and advocates across the state. If you have a question or concern that you would like input on please submit it to Eric Samuels (eric@thn.org) and he will post it on the site for others to read and comment on. Take some time to explore the blog it’s in the upper right hand corner of this page under Link List titled “Texas Balance of State Blog”.
Contact Information
see contact information below
