2025 SCHH Agenda
Marcella Roberts & Ketcia Barlow
Affordable housing supports mental health by reducing the financial stress and instability that often come with high housing costs or insecure living conditions. When individuals and families can access safe, stable, and affordable homes, they are less likely to experience chronic anxiety about eviction, homelessness, or meeting other basic needs. We will discuss how housing stability fosters a sense of security and belonging, which can lower stress hormones, improve sleep, and enhance emotional well-being. Affordable housing can also often connect residents to supportive services, community networks, and safe environments, all of which promote social connection, resilience, and access to mental health resources. We will show how over time these factors can reduce depression, anxiety, and other mental health challenges, leading to healthier, more productive lives. Attendees will participate in case studies, live feedback, and group discussions.
Strong tenant protections are essential for ensuring safe, stable housing and preventing displacement—yet too often, renters face limited rights and uneven enforcement. This panel brings together tenant leaders and housing experts to discuss why tenant protections matter, what gaps remain, and how policy and practice can be strengthened. Attendees will hear directly from those with lived experience alongside advocates and practitioners working on the frontlines, offering both personal insight and policy expertise to guide the path forward.
Creating safe, quality, and affordable homes takes more than good intentions—it takes smart strategies, funding, and strong partnerships. In this session, we’ll break down the key tools that make affordable housing development possible.
We’ll start by exploring major funding sources like Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, HOME and CDBG programs, and local initiatives offering grants, land, or infrastructure support. Then we’ll dive into gap financing—the crucial funds that fill the space between project costs and traditional financing. These often come from soft loans, deferred payments, philanthropy, or special-purpose funds.
You’ll learn not just where to find these resources, but how to combine them effectively, align them with your goals, and set your project up for long-term success. Through case studies, live feedback, and group discussions, we’ll build a practical roadmap—one funding source at a time.
This session will provide information about upcoming updates to the HUD Data Standards and their impact on the Continuum of Care (CoC). It will cover key changes related to data collection and reporting for FY2026. There will be updates to both Universal Data Elements and Program Specific Data Elements, which may prompt CoCs to review their HMIS data privacy and security policies. The session will also address HMIS Privacy Notices, as well as permissible data uses and disclosures.
This session will discuss barriers to stable housing as they relate to health issues, including HIV, and health outcomes. The discussion will also include mental health and substance abuse issues surrounding housing stability.
This session explores cutting-edge affordable housing innovations that are transforming how communities address homelessness and housing insecurity. Through real-world case studies and interactive group activities, participants will examine community-centered design strategies, such as trauma-informed environments and shared spaces that foster belonging. Attendees will engage in a collaborative design sprint to prototype their own housing solutions, drawing on examples of cross-sector collaboration between housing, healthcare, and social services. The session will also highlight sustainable housing solutions, including modular construction and green technologies, and discuss how these models can be scaled through equity and systems change. Participants will leave with actionable tools and a deeper understanding of how to implement innovative practices in their own communities.
This dynamic, interactive session invites participants into an empathetic exploration of housing best practices, affordable housing strategies, and the often-overlooked impact of trauma stemming from homelessness. Through engaging dialogue, real-world case studies, and collaborative activities, attendees will uncover:
- Housing Best Practices: Proven models from communities tackling housing instability with innovation, equity, and sustainability.
- Understanding Homelessness-Related Trauma: Insights from trauma-informed care professionals and individuals with lived experience, sparking discussion on how systems can better support recovery and dignity.
- Affordable Housing Strategies: Creative policy, financing, and design approaches for expanding access to secure, permanent housing.
Compassion fatigue, apathy, burn-out, and illness can manifest as symptoms of secondary traumatic stress in case managers and other helping professionals who interface with those impacted by trauma. Without selfcare, healthy boundaries, and trauma-informed strategy, case managers can cause harm that can contribute to the cycle of homelessness. Through relevant training on trauma-informed care, lively engagement, visual aid, and interactive quiz games led by a developmental trauma survivor with lived experience and over 20 years of professional experience in working with and for disadvantaged populations, participants gain awareness, insight, and transformative tools that can create positive impact and foster environments conducive to self-actualization for themselves and their clients and families.
To ensure an engaging and interactive experience, this session will combine storytelling, real-time data visualization, and audience-driven discussion. We'll begin with a brief, compelling overview of Birmingham's Home For All initiative using multimedia content -- including images from program sites -- to humanize the impact of homelessness and showcase the dignity-centered design of micro-shelter communities.
Attendees will participate in a live poll and possibly a word cloud activity to surface common perceptions, assumptions, and concerns about homelessness. Throughout the session, we will integrate breakout discussions and facilitated Q&A moments to invite diverse perspectives and community insights. A case study simulation will allow small groups to walk through the journey of a program participant, making choices based on real-world scenarios related to housing access, mental health care, and service navigation.
By closing with an activity, participants will collaborate on identifying scalable solutions for their own communities. This format not only educates, but empowers attendees to take an active role in shaping more innovative housing opportunities.
This panel brings together voices from across the housing field—affordable housing development, homeless Continuums of Care, public housing authorities, and community development—to explore what “housing looks like now” in the midst of shifting priorities, funding uncertainty, and increasing community need. Panelists will share perspectives on today’s challenges, innovative responses, and what it will take to sustain and expand housing opportunities in this moment of change.
Policy and social change don’t happen in silos. This session brings together policy and program experts to highlight the importance of working in coalition, building collective power, and amplifying a shared voice to drive meaningful change. Panelists will explore strategies for aligning advocacy efforts, strengthening partnerships, and leveraging collective influence to move the needle on housing and homelessness efforts. Participants will walk away with insights and inspiration on how collaboration can accelerate progress toward just and lasting solutions.