The Planning Council Awarded Best Regional Partnership Award

On November 15th, the Continuum of Care Team at The Planning Council was awarded the Best Regional Partnership Award. The Virginia Housing Awards recognize innovative, effective efforts that address Virginia housing and community development needs. Regional collaborations are essential to maintaining safe, supportive, and affordable housing and sparking economic and community development in communities across the Commonwealth. This award is given to a regional effort that exemplifies how leveraging successful partnerships can lead to vibrant communities. Whether a collaboration of regional organizations, localities, or a public-private partnership, this award demonstrates how regional teamwork is impacting the community.

LGBT Life Center President and CEO shared how effective working with The Planning Council has been. ” Working with The Planning Council has been one of the most inclusive, collaborative processes that everybody should strive to have. You can’t ask for a better partner in this than The Planning Council.”

The Planning Council (TPC) works with more than 131 regional partners to develop and coordinate diverse systems of care to provide crisis services, housing, and other support to households who are experiencing or at risk of experiencing homelessness, serving as the administrative backbone of five Continuums of Care (CoC) in the Hampton Roads region. Despite being a small team, with only four on the Continuum of Care Coordination team and three on the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) Administration team, TPC serves as the CoC Lead Agency for the Southeastern Virginia Homeless Coalition (SVHC) and as the administrative lead for both the Greater Virginia Homelessness Consortium (GVPHC) and the Portsmouth Homeless Action Coalition (PHAC). Additionally, TPC provides reports on HMIS data that helps communities understand how many people are currently homeless in shelters, transitional housing, and on the street, how many are chronically or episodically homeless, the characteristics and service needs of those served, which households are returning to services, and which programs are most effective at reducing and ending homelessness.