Community of One: Share Your Thoughts on the City’s Updated Plan to Address Homelessness

Virginia Beach Housing & Neighborhood Preservation is updating the Community of One strategic plan and wants residents to weigh in.

The department, in collaboration with the BEACH Community Partnership, will provide recommendations to City Council for making homelessness rare, brief and nonrecurring, an initiative in the City’s FY 24-25 Focused Action Plan. The current Community of One plan was last updated in 2017.

Community of One: All In

The draft of the new plan, Community of One: All In, outlines multiple proposed strategies for FY 2025-30, each with their own initiatives, to achieve three key goals:

• Goal 1 – Create safe and healthy neighborhoods for all Virginia Beach residents by reducing the impact of unsheltered homelessness.
• Goal 2 – Increase system capacity in Virginia Beach to adequately address the primary causes of homelessness.
• Goal 3 – Preserve and increase prevention and permanent housing programs to meet the demands of households who are experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness in Virginia Beach.

Are You All In?

If you are interested in the issue of homelessness in Virginia Beach, you’re invited to learn more about our community effort and the draft plan at SpeakUpVB.com/COO-Input.

You’ll also have the opportunity to express your level of support for each of the proposed goals and related strategies and initiatives. The online survey will be available until 11:59 p.m. on Feb. 25.

As an alternative to completing the survey online, residents may complete a paper version of the survey at any Virginia Beach Public Library.

Staff will present to City Council the proposed goals and strategies for the updated plan on March 12.

• Provide Input

SpeakUpVB.com
Readers are encouraged to create a profile on SpeakUpVB.com before completing surveys. Individuals with profiles may subscribe to updates on the issues, make changes to their survey responses until the closing date, and complete other SpeakUpVB.com surveys without having to re-enter personal information. In addition, any problems can be addressed more easily for those with profiles.

Demographic information is requested at the end of surveys, and providing it is voluntary. Information is used only to help ensure that all segments of the Virginia Beach population are represented. Learn more about how the City uses information on the website from its Website Policy.

Content on SpeakUpVB.com project pages and surveys can be translated into several languages via the Google Translate tool available at the top right of the webpage.