Here’s a few questions that we’ll be discussing in the Community Stewardship Group (CSG) kickoff for CommonGrants. Feel free to share your thoughts in the thread.
What would make it easier for your organization to adopt or experiment with CommonGrants?
What’s missing from the current tooling or resources? What could we add to the co-planning board that you would be excited to prioritize?
What do you want future meetings to focus on?
How would you like to stay connected between CSG meetings?
The Localized, Direct-action Mission of the So7th B&B
The B&B mission is about the immediate, physical stability of the home as a frontline resource for the community. I have offered my insight toward the kickoff questions and while remaining strictly centered on my model, **So7th B&B,** and its role in supporting the homeless, those with SMI, those experiencing hunger, those needing a place to clean up, to get warm, or to cool off, somewhere to be housed long term, or simply somewhere to find a little help with benefits applications and document recovery, these responses are framed for the broader community of homeowners who serve as immediate, long-term, and emergency service providers.
We can generalize the **7th B&B** model for discussing future and immediate need. This positioning ensures that **CommonGrants** accounts for the unique needs of “Micro-Providers” who bridge the gap between homelessness and stable housing. By framing this through the lens of **direct homeowner empowerment**, it is highlighting that the most efficient way to help the homeless and those with SMI is often to support the people who have already opened their doors. Paying for a provider’s taxes and utilities isn’t just “aid”, but an investment in a localized social safety net.
1. What would make it easier for your organization to adopt or experiment with CommonGrants?
Dual-Purpose Grant Structures for community members as individual entities without business interests: Adoption would be seamless if the platform recognized grants that serve two functions: maintaining the physical asset (the home) and supporting the social service provided within it (homeless/SMI support).
Simplified Micro-Provider Verification: Establishing a verification process tailored for individual homeowners that satisfies federal requirements without the administrative overhead of a large 501(c)(3).
Direct-to-Homeowner Portals: An interface designed for the homeowner to easily report on both maintenance repairs and the “human impact” (e.g., number of people assisted with documentation or behavioral health support).
Home-as-a-Service Recognition (HaaS): The CommonGrants protocol should explicitly include “Home-as-a-Service” as a category and acknowledge that a private residence is functioning as a critical service hub that does provide high-level support for those with SMI and chronic homelessness. Grants shouldn’t just be for “organizations,” but for homeowners providing high-level support as a Grassroots movement out of pocket.
Simplified Expense Reporting: For a B&B, “overhead” is the mission. Being able to easily report utility and tax costs as direct service expenses would make the system much more usable.
## 2. What’s missing from the current tooling or resources?
Flexible Expense Categories/Overhead Inclusion (Taxes & Utilities): The co-planning board should prioritize adding “Maintenance, Utilities, and Property Taxes” as eligible grant expenses for homeowners who are housing the unhoused, supporting SMI individuals, providing long term ready-to-house services as well as short term and immediate emergency services in their immediate communities. For homeowner-providers, these are not just “bills”, but the core operational costs of keeping a sanctuary open.
Integrated Support Tracking/Service & Wellness Logging: Simple templates and tools to document “soft” support, such as behavioral health check-ins, administrative help with document recovery assistance (IDs/Social Security/Birth Certificate), and benefits application support right alongside their physical home maintenance, repairs,and up-keep.
Stability and Resilience Audits: Tools and features that help provider-homeowners assess the sustainability of their own housing and identify performance gaps in their ability to provide care while they serve others, ensuring the provider doesn’t face displacement due to the costs of service and identify performance gaps in their ability to provide care.
Maintenance & Utility Tracking: Prioritize tools that help homeowners track and claim essential property maintenance and utility costs as part of their service delivery to the homeless and SMI populations.
Behavioral Health Support Documentation: Simple templates to log the “documentation assistance” and “wellness support” provided, ensuring this labor is visible to grantors even if it isn’t a medical clinical service.
3. What do you want future meetings to focus on?
The “Micro-Provider” Model: Discussing how CommonGrants can be used as a support structure to scale the “Homeowner-Provider” model to reach more people in need of immediate, long-term emergency services, and essential services for the homeless, the hungry, those with SMI, those asking for help, and all those in need of support.
Direct Homeowner Empowerment: Shifting the focus to how grants can directly fund homeowners to pay property taxes and utilities, and exploring grant structures that prioritize essential home repairs and maintenance as part of a community’s emergency housing capacity.ensuring Homeowner-Providers don’t face displacement while they are busy housing others.
Standardizing Support without Clinical Barriers: Developing a “gold standard” for the non-medical behavioral health and documentation support provided by homeowners, ensuring it is recognized, consistent, and valued by the broader grant ecosystem.
Micro-Provider Sustainability: Focus on the “7th B&B model” to inform how individual homeowners can be sustained as the primary support system for the hungry, the unhoused. and those needing behavioral health assistance dealing with SMI.
4. How would you like to stay connected?
B&B Provider Working Group: A dedicated space specifically for Homeowner-Providers using their own homes/B&Bs as support hubs, rather than traditional large-scale shelters, to share best practices on managing property-based social services.
Resource Share Repository: A place to exchange templates for tracking the social impact of home-based housing and wellness support comparing benefits and shortcomings allowing for maximized potential for creating a central standardized resource hub for homeowner-providers