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Home/The Work/Function 01 — Street Outreach & Coordinated Entry
01Operational function 01 of 06

The front door of the system.

Street Outreach & Coordinated Entry. Reach unsheltered neighbors where they are, verify homelessness, and route neighbors onto a real-time, by-name list of people experiencing homelessness — the operational truth of who needs housing and where they are.

First contact quickly6 attempts / 2 weeksSingle CE administratorBy-name list
How it works

Street Outreach reaches people sleeping outside and connects them to housing pathways. Coordinated Entry maintains the by-name list and routes each person to the right resource at the right time. Together they decide who the system knows about, where they are, and how it reaches them.

“Nothing downstream works if the front door is leaky — this is where the by-name list is built and kept true.”

The key elements

  • 01Multiple referral pathways — self-initiated outreach, community partners (Durham One Call, Entry Point), internal DCSD programs, and City & County leadership.
  • 02Defined contact standards — first contact within one business day; six in-person attempts over two weeks, with Community Response Team backup and a department-wide BOLO before a case closes for non-contact.
  • 03A three-phase model — Outreach, Engagement (Housing Barriers Assessment, HMIS start), and housing-focused Case Management with weekly contact.
  • 04A single Coordinated Entry administrator — all housing referrals originate here, matched to by-name-list priority rather than agency allocation.

How it connects to the rest of the system.

  • It feeds the by-name list that Case Conferencing works from each week.
  • It depends on quality, real-time data (the Foundations lane).
  • It opens into the Flexible Housing Assistance Fund and Landlord Engagement once a person is matched.