WS Chronicle

United Way of Forsyth County’s Rapid Response Housing Project has been selected to receive $135,300 in funding through Cardinal Innovations Healthcare’s Community Reinvestment Initiative.

Over the last 10 years the Winston-Salem Forsyth County Continuum of Care (CoC) has been working on the community’s goal of ending chronic homelessness. The greatest challenge currently is housing individuals who are long-term homeless and frequent users of hospital based services, many of whom do not meet the technical definition of homelessness, and therefore are ineligible for current permanent housing programs. The Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Continuum of Care, the governing body for homeless services in our community, has over the last three years designed this Rapid Response project to address the permanent housing needs for this target population. This project is based on designs from Pathways to Housing in New York City, and Moore Place in Charlotte, NC.

United Way of Forsyth County, Chief Impact Officer, Debbie Wilson notes, “We are so thankful to Cardinal Innovations Healthcare for their support and this grant. Rapid Re-Housing is a vital part of reducing homelessness and this grant will enable the UWFC to continue our work in eradicating chronic homelessness in our community”.

Cardinal Innovations created the Community Reinvestment Initiative as a way to make stable, sustainable investments across its 20-county service area. Through this initiative, Cardinal Innovations asked organizations to submit proposals for programs that would improve health outcomes for its members with intellectual and developmental disabilities, mental health conditions, and substance use disorders.

“The goal of this effort was to identify and fund high-impact projects in our communities,” said Cardinal Innovations Chief Executive Officer Trey Sutten. “We could not have been more pleased with the number of responses and the broad range of requests we received from organizations throughout our geography.”

During the three-month submission period ending May 1, Cardinal Innovations received hundreds of proposals from entities and organizations across its 20-county service area: Alamance, Cabarrus, Caswell, Chatham, Davidson, Davie, Forsyth, Franklin, Granville, Halifax, Mecklenburg, Orange, Person, Rockingham, Rowan, Stanly, Stokes, Union, Vance and Warren Counties. Per the submission requirements, proposals were accepted from municipalities, counties, public school systems, colleges and universities as well as other qualifying non-profits.

Projects were selected for funding through a comprehensive process, which included reviews by members of a cross-departmental evaluation committees.

well as reviews by the Cardinal Innovations Executive Leadership Team and Board of Directors, followed by approval by the N.C. Department of   and Human Services.