Three County Racial Equity Workgroup

The Three County CoC Racial Equity Workgroup - began meeting in February of 2020 after the CoC was provided funding by the Western Mass Network to End Homelessness to address Racial Disparities in our housing and homelessness response. This committee is working closely with consultants from Jo Consulting to provide community trainings, strategy sessions, and leadership opportunities in leading anti-racist work in the Three County area.

This committee has created a CoC-wide Racial Equity Action Plan for our housing and supportive services in 6 areas:

COORDINATED ENTRY: Redesign the coordinated entry, assessment and prioritization system to center racial equity
DATA: Dive more deeply into the data, including geographic eviction patterns, criminal justice data, return to homelessness and others
LIVED EXPERIENCE: Bring people with lived experience of homelessness into decision-making roles.
ORGANIZATIONAL TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT: Create more diverse and inclusive organizations: training staff on antiracism; people of color at all levels of the organizations
AFFORDABLE HOUSING: Create more housing, develop more low-barrier housing
LEGISLATIVE POLICY: Influence local and state policy and funding to support communities of color to prevent and end homelessness
- Racial Equity Reading Resources:
Unequal Opportunities Race: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX_Vzl-r8NY
Detour Spotting: https://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/olson.pdf
Beginning Courageous Conversations about Race: https://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/BTB_23_PRECON_Make_It_Plain_2.pdf
The Value of Interracial Facilitation: https://kappanonline.org/value-interracial-facilitation-racial-equity-training-ngounou-gutierrez/
10 Lessons on Taking Leadership on Racial Equity: https://assets.aspeninstitute.org/content/uploads/files/content/docs/pubs/Lessons_final.pdf?_ga=2.31559294.1723847549.1590011802-1607299713.1590011802
the SPARC study: https://c4innovates.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/SPARC-Phase-1-Findings-March-2018.pdf
- Racial Equity in COVID:
- https://www.newamerica.org/future-property-rights/reports/displaced-america/
The Three County Coordinated Entry System was evaluated in 2022 by C4 Innovations as a partnership with the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance for racial equity and disparities. You can find the results & findings/recommendations here.