H.E.A.R.T. MS

IRD Housing Resource Management Project Overview

Building on the strength of IRD’s Community Resource Centers and its involvement in Katrina Long Term Recovery, IRD worked with the Mississippi Development Authority to launch 3 Housing Resource Centers along the Gulf Coast. These Centers serve as a critical link between low income residents, human service providers and owners of affordable housing.

One of the first initiatives of the HRCs was to launch the Housing Resource Management project that is designed to foster collaboration among human service organizations. These cross-agency collaborations are designed to address current unmet needs of residents, both low and middle-income individuals and families, and in addition, they form the basis of a Long Term Recovery Agency that can be activated in the event of another community wide emergency such as a major natural disaster. One recent example is IRD’s work with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and local agencies to inform residents of the coast about how to apply for the Housing Choice Voucher program, which is designed to provide housing solutions for individuals who received FEMA assistance and have not secure permanent housing.

In 2008, IRD made an ongoing commitment to long term recovery by integrating into IRD the Harrison County Long Term Recovery Committee and the Jackson County Long Term Recovery Committee, both of which were about to sunset and needed a sponsoring organization to continue their work on behalf of Katrina victims. IRD agreed to take on the fiscal and management responsibility for these agencies because of its involvement in the formation and operation of the long term recovery committees.  IRD also undertook to fulfill the commitments of Harrison County Long Term Recovery to rebuild homes an initial 36 homes under the Gulf Coast Community Foundation’s Coming Home Collaborative. IRD agreed to undertake the work of the long term recovery committees because the members of the committees were able to marshal the resources of over 100 public and private organizations and managed to secure $20 million in funding and assist over 1,800 individuals without the benefit of direct governmental funding.

After the approval of the long term recovery boards, IRD’s initial approach was to continue to provide recovery and renewal services to the clients of each agency. Realizing the need for a permanent long term recovery organization, IRD proposed the Housing Resource Management (HRM) project to MDA. HRM is a way to insure that coastal nonprofits, government agencies and businesses would have in place, active, cooperative relationships that could be activated if another natural disaster occurred, thereby moving the Gulf Coast human services organizations from long term recovery committees to the formation of a regional Long Term Community Resource Coalition. The Coalition will use the collective experience of its members to implement best practices and lessons learned from the work of long term recovery organizations as well as the experience of other human service providers. With this type of collaborative framework in place, the Coalition is in a position to organize disaster response programs quickly and secure government funding to provide substantive assistance to low income residents.

The HRM project includes monthly working sessions in each of the 3 coastal counties, where interested organizations can share information about the services they offer, and learn from other organizations what community resources are available to assist clients with housing, transportation, healthcare, child care and related areas. HRM also includes a dedicated website that houses a database of affordable rental and for-sale properties, links to local service organizations, phone numbers to the Housing Resource Centers for consumer use, homeless and foreclosure prevention services and other information for residents of the lower 6 counties in the State.

By engaging organizations from the public and private sector, the HRM project insures that real-time collaborations are in place to provide immediate services and to serve as the basis for effective long-term recovery initiatives in the event of a regional disaster.