MCH Board Welcomes Two Seasoned Advocates

The Coalition recently added two new members to its board of directors:

• Lisa Graphenteen has worked with local planning efforts since 2000 when she joined the Central MN Housing Partnership, coordinated the Central MN COC, and participated in several local groups such as FHPAP and Communities Investing in Families Housing Subcommittee. She is now working for the Southwest Minnesota Housing Partnership and is actively involved with the SW COC. She has discovered that without a metropolitan center (like St. Cloud in Central), homelessness in Southwest Minnesota is more invisible; and because of the size difference emergency shelter options are limited to hotel/motel vouchers and a battered women’s shelter. One of the region’s major focuses is to secure supportive services and homeless prevention funds that have either been lost or were never available to some parts of the continuum.
  
  She believes that supportive housing–both the services and housing pieces–will be essential to ending homelessness: “The housing is just one piece of the puzzle…We can’t be successful in providing housing if our service providers do not have the funding to provide the critical supportive services; and the service providers can’t be successful if affordable units and Section 8 vouchers aren’t available.” We are grateful for Lisa’s energy and the expertise in rural planning she brings to the ongoing work of the Coalition.
• Guy Gambill took his first Emergency Assistance application while working as a bi-lingual intake worker for Social Services in 1989. He holds a B.A. in Spanish and German and is currently working on finishing up a MAT program for second language instruction. He played a key role with the Decrim Task Force and its work on repealing the vagrancy statute and funding the pilot outreach program.
  
  Guy’s philosophy on ending homelessness is to be a bit more aggressive: “Those opposing affordable housing and social justice will not suddenly just fold and do the right thing. There comes a point when you stop worrying about niceties and you just demand that something be done. It’s time for all of us to get a bit more insistent.” Guy brings with him to the Coalition many years of direct service work as well as his experience as a U.S. Army Veteran–we appreciate his passion and hard work.