Social Sustainability Planning Documents

Social Sustainability Planning Efforts#

The Social Sustainability Department is currently working on two major planning efforts: the Human Services and Homelessness Priority Platforms and the HUD 2025-2029 Consolidated Plan.

The Human Services and Homelessness Priority Platforms are living documents that will be reviewed annually and inform the allocation of local grant funds and staff resources.

In contrast, the HUD Consolidated Plan is a five-year planning document required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that outlines how federal funding will be used to improve housing and living conditions in the community. The Consolidated Plan supports the Housing Strategic Plan and the Homelessness Priority Platform. Click HERE to learn more about the Consolidated Plan and to provide feedback on the Draft Goals.

The Social Sustainability Department, along with other City staff, collaborated to create an extensive, deliberative process to inform these three planning documents. Through this process, focus areas were aligned with various funding sources and staffing resources to ensure a strategic approach grounded in equity.

Draft Priorities & Goals#

Click each tab below for summary information. Click HERE to read the full draft document.

The Human Services Priorities Platform is an adaptable, role-clarifying blueprint for how the City’s Social Sustainability Department delivers resources, programming and partnership toward human services in the community. The Platform profiles the human service issues of greatest significance to Social Sustainability and will form the basis for future work. Preserving the values of equity, diversity and inclusion are foundational in the Platform, and the adversities realized by residents with disproportionately impacted identities are recognized throughout this work.

The key priorities identified will inform staff activities and grant-making for the next five years, beginning in FY25. To ensure the Platform remains relevant and responsive, community conditions will be scanned annually to identify necessary updates.

Caregiving

Scope: Programs that provide caregiving services to children, youth, adults and seniors. Importance is placed on services that subsidize direct care costs for clients, develop or enhance quality caregiving sites and spaces, and/or invest in the training, retention and self-care of their workforce.

Prevention

Scope: Programs that provide education, training, or direct client services to reduce risk factors that may lead to further/future involvement in human services.

Intervention

Scope: Programs and local initiatives that increase accessibility to:

Counseling: programs that create access to mental and behavioral health counseling services.
Social Connections: programs that encourage social and multigenerational engagement.
Case Management: programs that assess, plan, implement, coordinate, monitor, and evaluate care or assistance for a client.

Food Security

Scope: Programs and local initiatives that increase accessibility to nutritious food, address food insecurity, and/or provide community education of food-related issues.

Financial Stability and Opportunity

Scope: Programs that ensure residents have equal access to tools and resources to develop their short-term and long-term capacity, including:

Direct Client Assistance
Career pathways that narrow skill gaps and remove barriers to employment
Transportation to get to essential services, products and places

The City’s goal for homelessness is to put systems in place so that when a person does experience homelessness, it is rare, brief, and non-recurring, and the number of people entering homelessness does not exceed the system’s housing capacity. This is called “functionally ending homelessness” or “functional zero."

The Homelessness Priorities Platform will inform how Social Sustainability supports local systems with resources, programming and partnership towards achieving a functional zero community. The Platform will identify leverage points along the spectrum of intervention and prioritize programs of highest impact.

Sheltering

Scope: Programs that provide 24/7 shelter, seasonal overflow shelter, non-congregate shelter, and emergency shelter.

Supportive Services

Scope: Variety of services to empower and build agency with persons experiencing homelessness, including: wraparound models, mental and behavioral health, resource navigation, rapid rehousing, rental subsidies/affordable rent, case management, and permanent supportive services.

Prevention

Scope: Services that reduce the likelihood that someone will experience homelessness; intervening to stabilize when someone is at-risk of becoming unhoused.

Increase the supply of affordable housing units

Increase both rental and ownership housing with the following priorities: mixed-income housing, permanent supportive housing, and/or housing with co-location of services (case management, childcare, etc.). Prioritize projects serving special populations including people experiencing homelessness, families, seniors, unaccompanied youth, people with disabilities, and people with very low incomes. Prioritize projects that have nearby access to transit, grocery, employment, and other community amenities/resources. May include construction, acquisition, adaptive re-use, down payment assistance, etc.

Preserve existing affordable housing

Invest in preservation activities that maintain and/or improve affordable housing stock conditions and numbers. Includes rehabilitation of existing units and acquisition to prevent conversion to market rate. Rehabilitation efforts will extend the life of the preserved unit for a minimum of 15 years and prioritize healthy indoor and outdoor spaces for residents and energy efficiency upgrades. May also include ownership supports such as emergency repairs, energy efficiency upgrades, and accessibility modifications.

Provide emergency sheltering and services

Support projects that provide emergency shelter, shelter-related services, and/or residency programs for individuals and families experiencing homelessness, including comprehensive case management for long-term stabilization. May include extreme weather emergency sheltering for people experiencing homelessness and other vulnerable populations.

Provide housing stabilization services

Includes displacement, eviction, foreclosure, and homelessness prevention services such as short-term financial assistance (rent, utilities, etc.), housing counseling, comprehensive case management, and direct service coordination.

**All funding recommendations will include additional consideration for projects that serve historically underrepresented populations and disproportionately impacted identities, such as seniors, individuals with disabilities, unaccompanied youth, persons experiencing homelessness, LGBTQIA+, victims of abuse and persons of color.

Outreach & Other Inputs#

The Social Sustainability Department conducted over 50 interviews with community leaders to gain their insights into community needs, barriers to providing services, and the highest and best use of the funds available for competitive allocation through the Social Sustainability department. Consultations included leaders in physical & mental health, education, victims’ services, seniors & aging, corrections, childcare, disabilities, housing, homelessness, food access, transportation, children & youth, case management, other funders, and general social services.

Service providers were invited to attend a series of engagement opportunities including a listening session with City leadership, a prioritization workshop, and interest-specific focus groups. Focus groups topics included homelessness, children & youth, housing, seniors & aging, disabilities, food insecurity, and health.

Community members were invited to participate in a broad-reaching questionnaire to gauge public perception on community need in the areas of affordable housing, supportive services, homelessness, community development, economic development, and public facilities. The questionnaire was available in English and Spanish and received over 350 responses. Staff attended Project Homeless Connect and the Food Bank to solicit input on the questionnaire. Staff also collaborated with four local service providers to gain insights from their clientele through lived experience listening sessions including people who have experienced/are experiencing homelessness, people living in permanent supportive housing, and people living in affordable housing.

As a first step in the process, several local data sources were reviewed to minimize repeatedly asking community members for input and to make use of data published within the last five years. The following reports were analyzed:

City of Fort Collins Plans & Reports (Resilient Recovery Plan, Housing Strategic Plan, Social Sustainability Gaps Analysis 2020, Equity Indicators, City of Fort Collins Strategic Plan, Fort Collins HUD Consolidated Plan, Fort Collins Community Survey 2023, American Community Survey Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice, Fort Collins Equity Plan 2023)
Larimer County Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP)
Larimer County Root Cause Report
Health District Community Survey
Homelessness Point-in-Time Count
Poudre River Public Library Community Conversations Report
Community Foundation of Northern Colorado Regional Intersections
Homeward Alliance Community Health Survey
NoCo Works Barriers to Getting and Keeping Employment in Northern Colorado

Regional funding interests were reviewed to prevent duplication, identify opportunities for collaboration, enhance impact, make informed decisions, and strategically address unmet or underfunded needs.

Community data has been collected and is currently being analyzed in the areas of housing conditions, cost burden, homelessness, community development, existing social services, special populations needs, public facilities, affordable housing, and poverty. The data sources used include the U.S. Census, HUD, the Colorado Department of Housing, the Coordinated Assessment and Housing Placement System (CAHPS), the Point in Time (PIT) Count, Housing Catalyst, Poudre School District, Multiple Listing Service (MLS), the City of Fort Collins, and others.