Community Action Hub (CAH) at the Institute for Community Health (ICH) serves the greater Boston area. This group of current and formerly homeless people have identified their systems alignment challenge as becoming effective leaders and partners at all levels of the region’s effort to end homelessness by working with public health services, medical and behavioral health providers, social service partners, and homeless continuums of care. The CAH was awarded $65,000 through the Equity Capacity Building Grant mechanism and their grant goals are:

1) To firmly establish their infrastructure to provide supportive, low-barrier employment for their community researchers (people with lived experience of homelessness); and
2) To conduct a small-scale Participatory Action Research project related to housing and homeless services to be identified using group consensus decision-making processes and in partnership with the researchers at ICH.

To effectively promote the CAH’s role as leaders and partners in ending homelessness, they emphasize the well-being of their community researchers and the elimination of barriers to their work. This grant will pay community researchers according to predictable hours and payment structures and will offer tools they need to do their jobs, including Wi-Fi, phones, and chrome books.