What We Do
Preventing and Ending Homelessness
The Partnership is the only community-based collaborative—bringing together community-based agencies, local government, private and public organizations, nonprofits, philanthropic foundations, people with lived homelessness experience, faith communities, and the greater community—committed to ending and preventing homelessness in Chester County, Pennsylvania.
Our Plan incorporates system, policy, and practice changes as well as lessons learned in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the provision and funding of homeless services. To address our community’s needs, our goals are to:
Advance Racial Equity
Advocate for Affordable Housing
End Chronic Homelessness
Create Non-Congregate Temporary Housing
Build Capacity for Data-Driven Decisions
Develop a More Diverse and Inclusive Partnership
There are multiple ways to join the partnership. Become a partner, volunteer, or get involved in a way that is best for you.
The Partnership
The Chester County Partnership to End Homelessness is committed to ending and preventing homelessness in Chester County. The Partnership is open to and inclusive of community-based organizations, nonprofits, local governments, faith communities, landlords, developers, foundations, volunteers, people with lived experience of homelessness, and concerned citizens.
The Partnership is a Continuum of Care (CoC) program that provides guidance, advocacy, and community resources to support Chester County’s homeless crisis response system—led by the Chester County Department of Community Development and powered by a network of nonprofit service providers.
Fair and Equitable Access to Housing
Through a community-wide collaborative, the Partnership provides a single point of entry for people experiencing homelessness to access emergency housing resources. The coordinated entry system is a process developed to ensure that all people experiencing a housing crisis have fair and equal access and are quickly identified, assessed for, referred, and connected to housing and assistance based on their strengths and needs.
Partner organizations provide the services offered across the coordinated entry system, which include but are not limited to: information and referral, outreach and engagement, emergency shelter and temporary housing placements, housing location services, housing resources, stability support services, and case management.
Advancing Racial Equity
The Partnership is committed to advancing racial equity in its leadership structure, membership, and policies as well as pursue housing justice by striving to eliminate disparities in system access and outcomes based on racial and ethnic identity. The Partnership will:
Engage people with lived expertise, including all racial and ethnic subpopulations experiencing homelessness in Chester County, in Partnership governance, planning, and decision-making.
Establish a Racial Equity Advisory Team to review and recommend policy changes, new programs, and partnership opportunities that may advance racial equity and housing justice in Chester County.
Collect and disaggregate major Partnership data sources, including Chester County HMIS data, to identify and reduce disparities based on race and ethnicity.
Community Advocacy
The Partnership’s Lived Experience Advisory Board relies on the voice and knowledge of people who have experienced homelessness to create and improve upon our coordinated entry system policies. The Lived Experience Advisory Board also plays a critical role in reviewing our annual Continuum of Care application, which funds many of the housing and homelessness services across the county.
We listen to those with lived experience and we use the lessons we’ve learned and the data we’ve collected to educate legislators and the greater community on best practices and policies that contribute to preventing and ending homelessness and creating affordable housing and stability.