Briefs · Durham Strategic Framework

Implementation Structure

How Durham organizes for five years of coordinated action.

City of Durham · Durham County · Durham Community Safety Department

Why It Matters

A five-year strategic framework only works if there is a structure underneath it that can execute, learn, and adjust. Durham’s implementation architecture separates strategic direction-setting, HUD-funded program governance/funding/compliance, day-to-day coordination, and frontline action — each with a defined role, none doing the others’ work. The structure exists so that when a family’s case stalls, there is always a table with the authority to un-stall it — frontline teams escalate, the Executive Table clears blocked pathways, and the Champions Table moves the barriers no single agency can.

The Approach

Durham will follow a backbone collaborative model: a single coordinating entity anchors the work and convenes the rest of the system through clearly differentiated bodies. HUD-funded program governance, funding, and compliance authority lives at the CoC Governing Board. Homelessness system alignment and pathway clearing are shouldered by the Executive Directors Table. System-level barrier-busting and strategic guidance live with the Champions Table. Frontline learning and improvement live in Improvement Teams, case conferencing tables, and Communities of Practice. Communication and feedback loop continuously across all of them.

Key Elements

• Champions Table. A small, cross-sector leadership body of 11–13 members that guides strategic direction, clears barriers, aligns resources, and holds the plan accountable.
• Continuum of Care Governing Board. Reconstituted from HSAC on July 1, 2026. Thirteen voting members. Holds governance, funding prioritization, and compliance authority only for HUD-funded homelessness programs and related HUD requirements, including HEARTH Act/CoC Program oversight, HMIS, the annual Point-in-Time Count, Coordinated Entry and written standards where required by HUD, and the HUD CoC Consolidated Application.
• Community Safety Department as backbone. Leads day-to-day operations, manages communications, coordinates across groups and projects, facilitates groups for action. Carries out the City of Durham’s CoC Lead Agency function.
• Durham County as implementation partner. Coordinates prevention resources, DSS programs, behavioral health, and cross-sector partnerships upstream of homelessness.
• Executive Table. Ensures alignment across the homelessness system, identifies blocked pathways within homelessness processes, and provides feedback to the backbone agency on strategic direction and areas in need of improvement.
• Improvement Teams, Communities of Practice, and Case Conferencing Tables. System-focused teams that test process changes, affinity-based groups that build shared capability, and population-specific tables focused on individual outcomes. Where frontline barriers get named and tested.
• Lived Experience Table, and adjacent working groups. Centering people with lived experience and engaging the sectors whose decisions shape inflow and housing supply.
• Communications and feedback loop. Strategic Framework implementation continuously informs CoC planning, funding, and policies and procedures — and vice versa.

Why This Works

Each body does what only it can do, and no body carries weight that belongs somewhere else. Strategic decisions land at the Champions Table, HUD-funded program governance/funding/compliance lives at the Governing Board, homelessness system alignment is carried by the Executive Table, frontline learning happens in Improvement Teams, and the backbone keeps it all in motion. When each part of the system focuses on what it is built for, the whole system moves faster.