119 units. Six weeks. Three households ready. A pandemic.
When Casa de Esperanza — a new permanent supportive housing development in Tarrant County — came online in late 2020, the CoC had an extraordinary and unforgiving opportunity: house 119 chronically homeless households in eight weeks. Then construction delays compressed that to six.
At the first planning meeting in September 2020, three households were document-ready. The target was over 140 — because experience showed you needed to work with at least 20% more households than available units to account for those who would fall out of the process. That meant getting 140+ chronically homeless individuals — among the most complex population to house, with frequently missing documentation, inconsistent case manager relationships, and high barriers — through a complete housing process in less than two months.
During the first week of actual housing placements, the CoC's leading outreach team contracted COVID-19. The system had to hold without them.
Four decisions that made it work.
Email-based case management fails at speed and scale — messages get lost, accountability diffuses, and when things go wrong it becomes a blame game. A shared real-time cohort system in Open Path replaced email entirely, giving every partner agency visibility into every client's status simultaneously.
Paper applications create a loop of errors, missing signatures, and back-and-forth corrections. The Fort Worth Housing Solutions application was replicated directly in ETO/HMIS — the system case managers already used daily — so errors could be corrected in minutes, not days.
The Open Path cohort system tracked every client's document checklist in real time, visible to every authorized partner. Notes could simultaneously email anyone with access. When something was missing, the responsible case manager was notified immediately — and the communication trail was preserved for everyone to see.
Standard practice required a VI-SPDAT score of 9 or higher for PSH consideration. Casa de Esperanza successfully housed individuals with scores as low as 4. When a concrete housing opportunity exists, rigid thresholds that leave units empty are a system failure, not a fidelity achievement.
"The cohort system kept everyone honest. If a client was missing documents, we contacted their case manager immediately. Because everyone with access could see all communication in real time, it provided 100% transparency. We knew who dropped the ball — and we fixed it before it cost someone their housing opportunity."
Three teams drove the majority of placements.
Casa de Esperanza was a CoC-wide effort. The cohort model made it possible to coordinate across multiple agencies without losing track of any single client. Three partner teams distinguished themselves:
| Agency / Team | Lead | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Presbyterian Night Shelter (PNS) | Debbi Rabalais | Top placement volume across the initiative |
| DRC Mobile Assessors / Outreach | Tony Wilson | Near-top placements despite contracting COVID in week one |
| Union Gospel Mission (UGM) | Keith Ackerman | Significant volume from chronic shelter population |
The DRC team's performance under COVID conditions is the clearest evidence that the system design worked. No single team's absence could collapse the process because no client's status was locked inside a single team's workflow.
Casa de Esperanza was a proof of concept — and a platform.
Every operational decision made at Casa de Esperanza — the cohort model, the HMIS-integrated application, the cross-agency accountability structure — was directly transferable to the next initiative. When 307 Emergency Housing Vouchers arrived under the American Rescue Plan Act in 2021, the infrastructure was already built and tested. The CoC filled all EHV referrals in six weeks, earned an additional 382 vouchers from state and federal sources, and generated $8.8 million in new community housing resources.
That outcome didn't start with the EHV allocation. It started with Casa de Esperanza.
What communities managing time-sensitive housing opportunities need to know.
- 1Replace email with shared infrastructure before the first referral. In any initiative where speed and accountability are both required, email coordination will fail. Build a shared tracking system first.
- 2Put the housing application in the system case managers already use. Every format change introduces delay. An HMIS-integrated application gets corrected in minutes, not days.
- 3Transparency is an accountability tool. When every partner can see every client's status in real time, the diffusion of responsibility that causes delays disappears.
- 4Design each initiative as a platform for the next one. The tools, relationships, and norms built at Casa de Esperanza directly enabled $8.8M in new resources the following year. Build with the future in mind.