THE PROBLEM
Our housing systems aren’t building a robust pipeline of affordable and supportive housing. There needs to be a dedicated local effort to create an affordable and supportive housing pipeline – relying on the market, existing providers, and shallow incentives isn’t working.
Our systems of care are broken. And rely on referrals instead of true integrated care to connect health, housing, and homeless services.
Our homeless response systems are exhausted. We need renewed community-wide partnerships and governance models that pull in health care, philanthropy, and business leaders.
Taking Housing First to scale by focusing on building the capacity of local providers and redesigning the systems that work at the intersection of homeless services and behavioral health.
The struggle is in the implementation and the sustainability. Let’s intentionally move past the analysis to action.
What We Do
Hemlock & Forge is a community development corporation focused on addressing homelessness and housing equity in Pennsylvania and Delaware.
Community
Housing
Facilitate our LaunchPad Accelerators, cohorts of community developers dedicated to adapting their practices to develop more supportive and deeply affordable housing.
Create a Supportive Housing Playbook as a roadmap to increasing housing dedicated to ending homelessness.
Community
COALITION
Lead action-oriented coalitions of philanthropy, community developers, service providers, and government in transforming their governance.
Expand the reach of your local Continuum of Care.
Community
Capital
Conduct a Feasibility and Readiness Study of your pathway to increase high-quality, sustainable supportive housing.
Implement regional ‘Housing Accelerator Funds’ that bring new, pooled impact capital, braid service funding and rental assistance.
Community
Capacity
Increase Housing- based Integrated Care at a systems, provider, and program level to align behavioral health and housing systems
Support Housing + Health Equity Work to support and train providers and housing operators to provide intensive services to quality standards
OUR APPROACH
At Hemlock & Forge, we pride ourselves in pushing the work beyond planning to implementation. Our background in direct services informs the urgency of our pace. Our work is rooted in action, where specific people with specific names move into specific housing units.
Housing and services work is dynamic and community-based. We will physically walk alongside you on every step of this journey. This includes visiting our communities frequently, walking neighborhoods to analyze their potential for supportive housing, leading trainings with service staff, and acting as embedded staff in our management of our PSH pipelines.
Our Commitments
These are our commitments as a benefit corporation and the foundation of our work together:
Housing First
Our firm is rooted in the evidence-based model of Housing First and shaped by our commitment to harm reduction and trauma-informed care.
Equity-Driven
We work for equity and justice, striving to build a world without systemic racism, prejudice, and oppression.
Active Project & Partnership Management
We take an active role in our project management, acting as embedded staff for the partnership. We build teams and facilitate their success.
Rooted in Best Practices
Continuous learning to continuously improve. We work to research our approach and ensure we are aligned with evidence-based practices and scanning for emerging trends.
Proximity Deepens the Work
Continuous learning to continuously improve. We work to research our approach and ensure we are aligned with evidence-based practices and scanning for emerging trends.
Systems Thinkers with a Bias for Action
This work is part of a robust ecosystem. We create systems change by making direct, immediate actions that improve important pillars of our homeless response system.
Supportive Housing
To stably house and serve someone experiencing homelessness, we must be multidisciplinary. We will work with you to design a supportive housing model that embraces:
- Community development best practices
- Permanent housing with universal design
- Integrated supportive services
- Sustainable capital and operating models
let's get CONNECTED
Please feel free to reach out, even if it’s just to let us buy you a cup of coffee. We would love to connect!