From HUD PD&R's Edge:
When the coronavirus pandemic emerged in spring 2020, agencies devoted to providing housing resources and homelessness services scrambled to build and adapt programs to keep people safe and sheltered. In the years preceding the pandemic, the San Diego Housing Commission (SDHC), which oversees the city’s rental assistance programs as well as its shelters and services for people experiencing homelessness, had engaged in an indepth effort to improve institutional partnerships and streamline processes to improve people’s equitable access to needed resources. That work laid important groundwork for the quick pivoting that the pandemic required. Two programs for which SDHC relies on partner organizations to deliver services — the COVID-19 Housing Stability Assistance program, which provided rental support to households affected financially by the pandemic, and the Operation Shelter to Home program, which provided safe and socially distant shelter while connecting shelter residents to permanent housing and services — demonstrate how mobilizing organizational relationships for change can “break what needs to be broken” and reimagine what these systems can accomplish.
Read HUD PD&R Edge's article "Robust Partnerships Helped San Diego Deliver Effective Pandemic Relief," featuring the San Diego Housing Commission.