Coordinated entry, also known as coordinated assessment or coordinated intake, is a process designed to quickly identify, assess, refer, and connect people in crisis to housing and assistance, no matter where they show up to ask for help. It can pave the way for more efficient homeless assistance systems.

Here’s what Coordinated Entry can do:

  • Streamline rehousing efforts — Coordinated Entry takes the burden of navigating the labyrinth of local resources, programs, and services off the person who is experiencing the trauma of homelessness, and places it on the institutions charged with responding to that crisis.
  • Reduce disparities in rehousing — Homelessness results from the collective failure of policies and systems to work in the interest of the people who ultimately show up in homeless services systems. These policies often have a direct impact on people who disproportionately experience homelessness: generations of wealth stripping from Black communities, family rejection of queer and trans youth, the devastation of the opioid crisis, or the failure of our healthcare systems to put care over profits, to name a few. Coordinated Entry is a tool to take stock, get a holistic look at the full scale of the need in communities, see clearly who is being left behind, and do something to correct it.
  • Align community resources — When communities see each of its programs as part of a whole, and coordinate and align all our work and the resources in our system we can serve more people and do so better with the resources we already have. And because none of our systems have enough, this also gives us the tools we need to advocate more effectively for the additional resources we need to serve everyone.

Read the full article about coordinated entry by diiv sternman at National Alliance to End Homelessness.