Reaching Home Launches Housing Referral Program in Missoula

Reaching Home, Missoula's 10 year plan to end homelessness, has launched a new online single point of entry housing referral program.

Reaching Home coordinator Michael Moore said the single point of entry has been one of the original goals of the project.

"When the 10 year plan came together, one of the principal goals of the first three years was developing what was called a single point of entry," Moore said. "All the people we're providing services to have to go a myriad of locations, traveling from place to place. They have to go to the food bank, the Poverello Center, the YWCA and many other locations to get the full spectrum of services. We identified people who said flat-out, this isn't just a barrier, this is enough to send us away."

Moore said the entire homeless community support system has been involved with creating the program know by the acronym cHris, Community Housing Referral and Information System.

"It's a complete one-stop online system that takes down all the relevant information in just one place, so that from that point on, clients wouldn't have to keep providing the same information over and over again," Moore said. "This system is also great for providers, because it's going to give us a ton of demographic information, as well as help to parse the various factors than can lead to being homeless."

Moore said the online system is easy to access.

"You just go to chrisdatacenter.com," Moore said. "I just went on there a little while ago, and it's very user-friendly with lots of menus to help guide you through. This is a real community achievement, not just a Reaching Home achievement."

The 10 year plan to end homelessness was officially introduced to the community in October of 2012.