Choosing the Path to End Homelessness: Expanding the Circle of Care

Every community faces a choice: keep trying to manage a growing crisis, or commit to ending homelessness for good. In our region, we are choosing the harder, braver path, one that begins and ends with home.

To us, ending homelessness doesn’t mean no one will ever experience housing instability again. It means homelessness becomes rare, brief, and one-time - a challenge our community can respond to quickly and effectively, not a condition people are trapped in.

This week’s Forum article on the United to End Homelessness (UTEH) initiative shows what that choice looks like in practice: people and organizations coming together to do what works - housing and supportive services that end homelessness for good.

Beyond Definitions: Reaching the People Left Out

One of the most innovative aspects of the UTEH pilot is our focus on people who don’t meet the federal definition of chronic homelessness, yet have been without stable housing for years and are suffering visibly in public spaces. This focus is intentional. People experiencing high-visibility homelessness represent a small but highly impactful group whose repeated interactions with emergency, health care, and law enforcement systems reveal where our community response is breaking down. By helping this group move into housing with the right supports, we not only change individual lives but also strengthen the effectiveness and efficiency of the entire system.

These are our neighbors. They have names, stories, and histories here. Many have cycled between shelters, hospitals, and nights outside. They are known to nearly every outreach worker and first responder in our community.

Through UTEH, we built a local framework that responds to the reality of someone’s homelessness, not the technicalities that keep them excluded. Using real-time data, individualized case management, and flexible local funding, we connect people with permanent housing and the resources they need to stay there. This work is not only about helping people find housing, but helping them succeed in it, with ongoing support for health, stability, and connection to community. It is what happens when a community decides that no one is beyond care.

The Work Behind the Headlines

The progress featured in The Forum, people being housed, case managers building trust, partners coordinating services, reflects only a glimpse of what it takes to create change at this scale. Behind every person moving into housing is a network of people and organizations working together to operate as one system.

That work is not easy. It means building new habits of collaboration across dozens of agencies with different missions, funding sources, and priorities. It means creating shared data systems, aligning eligibility criteria, and developing decision-making processes that hold all of us accountable to the same community goal: ending homelessness, not simply managing it as an ongoing crisis.

The work of the Cass Clay Interagency Council on Homelessness (CCICH) reflects this shared commitment in action. Across the region, outreach teams, shelter staff, housing navigators, and behavioral health providers are coordinating care and troubleshooting barriers together. City, county, nonprofit, and faith leaders are working toward aligning data, sharing information, and making joint decisions through the Council to strengthen our collective response. It takes persistence, trust, and a lot of people pulling in the same direction to turn shared vision into shared results.

True systems change takes discipline and patience. It asks all of us to stay focused on the shared goal and keep showing up for one another and for the people we serve.

And it is working. This collective effort is not only helping individuals move from the streets into homes, it is making the entire system function better. It allows us to serve more people, reduce duplication, and help local nonprofits focus more deeply on their missions. Together, we are building a stronger, more responsive, and more compassionate community response to homelessness.

Reducing the Burden of Emergency Response

Change in this work rarely happens all at once. It builds through daily coordination, shared accountability, and a commitment to do what works even when it’s hard.

We know our shelters and emergency services are stretched thin. They were built to meet urgent needs, not to carry the full weight of a housing shortage.

Through UTEH, we are asking an essential question: How do we make sure crisis response is not our only response?

The answer lies in scaling what we know ends homelessness, housing and supportive services that help people exit quickly and avoid returning, while strengthening other parts of the system that prevent it from happening in the first place.

When we stabilize those who have been homeless the longest and most visibly, we change more than individual lives. We ease the strain on shelters, hospitals, and first responders. Over time, we see measurable reductions in unsheltered homelessness and fewer people entering homelessness at all. That is how systems heal, by creating pathways that prevent suffering before it starts.

As we do this, we’re also reshaping how the entire system works, moving from fragmented efforts to shared strategy.

A Community in Motion

In less than a  year, more than seventy organizations have joined the Cass Clay Interagency Council on Homelessness. Together, we are aligning data, resources, and decision-making across city and county lines. We are expanding housing and supportive service capacity and proving that coordination, not competition, is what creates results.

This is what it looks like to move beyond managing the problem to building the solution.

The moment to act is now. Ending homelessness is not a dream or a slogan. It is a choice we make together, to build a community where safety and belonging are not reserved for some, but extended to all.

If you have not read the story, find it here: Group tasked with ending Fargo-Moorhead homelessness helps people find housing.

And if you are wondering what you can do, start here: believe that this is possible, then help us make it so.