Doing the Work Together

In FY2025, more than 40 different agencies came together at GRCoC meetings to inform and guide collaborative efforts to reduce homelessness in our region. By the numbers, we:

  • Conducted 2 regional Point in Time counts
  • The annual Point in Time (PIT) Count is one of the few efforts that brings outreach teams, shelters, local governments, volunteers, and service providers together around a shared goal. By working collaboratively to identify and count individuals and families experiencing homelessness, the GRCoC develops a more accurate understanding of community needs. This data informs local planning, funding decisions, and advocacy efforts, helping ensure resources are directed where they are needed most.
  • Facilitated 16 Connection to Homeless Services trainings
  • Connection to Homeless Services trainings help create a shared understanding of how people access and navigate the homeless response system. By bringing together staff from different organizations and sectors, these trainings strengthen coordination, improve referral practices, and help ensure individuals and families receive consistent information and support regardless of where they seek assistance.
  • Conducted 7 trainings with local government partners
  • Partnerships with local governments are essential to preventing and ending homelessness. These trainings foster stronger collaboration between municipal staff and homeless service providers, increasing awareness of community resources, system processes, and emerging needs. Through this shared knowledge, local governments are better equipped to support coordinated, community-wide solutions.
  • Facilitated over 40 community decision-making and membership meetings
  • The GRCoC provides a forum where community partners come together to share information, identify challenges, and make collective decisions that shape the region’s response to homelessness. Through membership meetings and community decision-making bodies, providers, government agencies, healthcare organizations, faith communities, and other stakeholders work collaboratively to guide policies, allocate resources, and strengthen the effectiveness of the homeless response system.


No single organization can address homelessness alone. The GRCoC provides a structure for partners across the region to work together, share information, and make coordinated decisions that strengthen the homeless response system. Through this collaboration, community organizations deliver a range of housing and service interventions that help prevent homelessness, quickly connect people to housing, and support long-term stability.

Housing-focused Homeless Service Interventions 


The collaborative work of the GRCoC takes many forms, from outreach and emergency shelter to permanent housing and supportive services. Each intervention serves a different purpose, helping individuals and families address immediate housing crises while building pathways to long-term stability. Together, these program types form a coordinated system of care designed to meet people where they are and connect them to the resources they need.


Street Outreach

Street outreach and engagement will be low barrier, meaning it will not require high involvement from clients. The target population for outreach will be all individuals living outdoors (“on the streets”) and in other places not meant for human habitation. Essential elements for outreach include a staff that visits persons experiencing homelessness in their physical locations; developing trust to engage hard to reach households experiencing homelessness; completing the continuumwide assessment packet; and providing housing-focused, comprehensive, and coordinated services. While some encounters may take place in an office or other facility, the primary role of outreach is to engage people least likely to seek services. 

Community Partners: City of Richmond, Commonwealth Catholic Charities, Daily Planet Health Services, Richmond Behavioral Health, St. Joseph's Villa, and Virginia Home for Boys and Girls.


Emergency Shelter

Emergency Shelter is defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in 24 C.F.R. § 576.2 (2012) as any facility, the primary purpose of which is to provide a temporary shelter for people experiencing homelessness in general or for specific populations of people experiencing homelessness, and which does not require occupants to sign leases or occupancy agreements. Emergency Shelters provide emergency housing to address an individual’s or family’s immediate housing crisis. Assistance is offered without preconditions (such as employment, income, absence of criminal record, or sobriety) and with few to no barriers. The resources and services provided are typically tailored to the unique needs of the individual or family. Essential elements include no or low barriers to entry, a safe and accessible physical environment, the development of a housing stability plan, and linkages to supportive and mainstream resources. 

Community Partners: CARITAS, Housing Families First, HomeAgain, and the Salvation Army.


Rapid Re-Housing (RRH)

 A short to medium term housing option that quickly moves individuals and families experiencing homelessness into permanent housing with needed services to maintain stability. Essential elements include housing-focused services, supportive services coordination, temporary financial assistance, and long-term housing stability planning. Assistance is offered without preconditions (such as employment, income, absence of criminal record, or sobriety); however, RRH recipients must have a lease. 

Community Partners: Housing Families First, HomeAgain, Hanover Safe Place, St. Joseph's Villa, Supports Works Housing, and U.S. Vets.


Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH)

Permanent, lease-based rental assistance with supportive services that are appropriate to the needs and preferences of tenants. PSH is targeted to chronically homeless individuals or chronically homeless head of household for families. This includes sheltered and unsheltered households, as well as households that are currently receiving RRH financial assistance and were chronically homeless prior to moving into housing. 

Community Partners: Commonwealth Catholic Charities, HomeAgain, Richmond Behavioral Health, St. Joseph's Villa, and SupportWorks Housing.


Housing Choice and Project-based Vouchers

Housing Choice Vouchers: A federal tenant-based rental assistance program administered by Public Housing Authorities. These vouchers are issued to individual households. Voucher holders can use this resource to pay a portion of their rent in private market rental housing. In recent years, HUD has mandated that certain Housing Choice Voucher types (Emergency Housing Vouchers, Mainstream Vouchers) receive referrals from local Coordinated Entry Systems. Project-based Vouchers: The GRCoC may develop homeless preferences and other referral partnerships in order to target certain vouchers to people experiencing homelessness or a specific subpopulation. 


Transitional Housing (TH) and Joint TH-RRH

 A short-term housing and supportive, wrap-around services (up to 12 months) to prepare individuals and families that are experiencing homelessness to secure and maintain permanent housing at exit. This intervention targets individuals and families in life stage transition with moderate to high barriers to housing. Essential elements include affordable housing, case management, provision of or formalized partnership to housing referrals and placement services, and linkage to community supports and/or wraparound system of services in relation to housing placement. 

Community Partners: Housing Families First, Liberation Veteran Services, Virginia Homes for Boys and Girls.


Who Participates?

The GRCoC is made up of organizations that bring diverse expertise and perspectives to our community's efforts to prevent and end homelessness. We thank our partners for their ongoing commitment to collaboration, innovation, and service to individuals and families experiencing housing instability.