Community Partner: Mayor’s Office of Human Services – Homeless Services Program
Intern: Victoria Aysola
Site Supervisor: Gabby Knighton
What is the Mayor’s Office of Human Services‐Homeless Service Program?
The Homeless Service Program deals with structural issues regarding homelessness
and offers various programs for homeless individuals
Tasks
• Helped maintain Coordinated Access database,
including providing technical assistance to service
providers and improving user guides
• Processed clients' applications for housing vouchers
and assistance with barriers to housing (such as
security deposits and utilities debt)
• Assembled guide for social workers about assembling
vital documents for clients experiencing
homelessness
• Prepared certain materials for Youth Reach Maryland
2015, an effort to gather quality data on
unaccompanied homeless youth and young adults
My summer with the City of Baltimore's Homeless Services Program proved to be both challenging and informative. I
learned about the city government's role in providing outreach, shelter, and housing programs for people
experiencing homelessness. I attended many meetings to see firsthand the collaboration of staff from various
homeless shelters, housing programs, outreach teams and behavioral and health service providers in the city. Most
of my work centered around Coordinated Access, a relatively new city‐wide database that connects clients
experiencing homelessness with permanent supportive housing (PSH). PSH is housing that includes case
management, to help clients adjust to housing and to maximize how attaining housing helps clients live a full life. I
attended regular meetings of the case managers and housing program administrators who use the database,
incorporated users' changes into database records, and even provided training to some of the database's new users.
I was nervous to train case managers on a system that I had been using for only a few weeks myself, but the session
went very well. I also enjoyed getting to know my coworkers. It would be easy to become disheartened by the
delicate role our office plays on several important issues and by the complexity of federal regulations that governs
our work, but my coworkers did not let these constraints crush their passion for serving this important and often
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overlooked population.‐ Victoria