This week Jeremi sits down in conversation with Ann Howard, Executive Director of Ending Community Homelessness Coalition (ECHO) to discuss homelessness. How do we understand the problem? What can we do as a society?

Zachary Suri's original poem, "Trees, Sleep and a Cold Christmas" sets the scene.

Ann Howard is the first Executive Director of the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition in Austin, Travis County; she has held the position since October of 2011. After 1 year of Ann's leadership, the Texas Homeless Network named ECHO as the Outstanding Coalition in 2012.  Since then, ECHO has partnered with CSH to examine feasibility for Pay for Success and plans to advance to the deal structuring stage, acquired 3 HUD HMIS grants and 1 COC Planning Grant; been included in a $3.5 million state grant, and a $3M VA SSVF grant and has increased the ECHO budget from $100,000 to over $1,000,000.  ECHO participates with the CAN Indicator Dashboard Steering Committee, the PSH Finance Leadership Committee, Travis County Criminal Justice Planning Council, the Mayor's Task Force on the Innovation Zone, the Psychiatric Stakeholders Committee and the Housing Works Board of Directors as an advisory member. Ann was an active leader in the city-wide campaign to pass the recent $65M Affordable Housing Bonds and City resolutions to dedicate proceeds from a downtown Austin Density program to support housing first PSH and to set a new goal to build 400 units of PSH with at least 200 of them being housing first and to increase funding for health and human services.

Ann is an alumnus of the University of Texas, with a JD from the School of Law, and an MPA from the LBJ School of Public Affairs.  Ann has been married to John Howard, her law school classmate for 26 years and together they have been active in Austin public schools, youth sports, scouts, The University of Texas and Baylor University and the Lutheran Church.  These activities assist Ann in her work to build collaboration and partnerships.

Website: www.austinecho.org

Volunteer sign up for the annual census of the people experiencing homelessness