Teaching and Empowering Communities To Find Solutions For Homelessness
We work alongside communities to design, implement, and strengthen homelessness response systems — from outreach and shelter to housing and long-term stability.
We work together with local leaders and nonprofits to find solutions that improve communities.
We stay engaged beyond planning to help communities implement what they build.
Every community — whether a city, county, or local organization — is working to respond to a growing homeless population. The lack of safe shelter, affordable housing, and coordinated services continues to strain communities across the country, particularly on the West Coast.
Homeless Solutions Consultants is here to help. Our team spans the entire housing continuum, bringing experience from public housing authority leadership, shelter operations, supportive services, and system coordination. With more than 70 years of combined experience, we understand how decisions made at one level of the system impact outcomes across the whole.
Our work focuses on helping communities identify where people are getting stuck, where gaps exist, and how partnerships can be strengthened to close those gaps. We listen first and work collaboratively with local leaders and organizations to develop practical, community-specific plans and roadmaps that strengthen shelter and housing safety nets over time.
Together, we help communities build the capacity to outgrow homelessness, intergenerational poverty, and trauma — not through one program or solution, but through aligned systems that work..
Our Work
Our work begins with listening. We partner with communities to conduct listening tours that engage people with lived experience, service providers, local leaders, and the broader community. These conversations help surface what is working, where gaps exist, and where people are getting stuck across shelter, housing, and service systems. Insights are compiled and shared in a clear, actionable way to support informed local decision-making.
From there, we work collaboratively to develop practical, community-specific strategic roadmaps. These roadmaps are designed to strengthen shelter, housing, and service capacity in a coordinated and realistic way — grounded in local conditions, resources, and readiness.
Planning is only part of the work. Homeless Solutions Consultants stays engaged as communities move from strategy to implementation. We provide coaching, customized training, and technical support to leadership teams, supervisors, and frontline staff as systems evolve. This includes trainings in areas such as shelter supervision, boundaries and ethics, time management, policy development, operational practices, and site design feedback to support safety, flow, and dignity.
In addition to live training and coaching, we build customized training hubs for clients that support ongoing staff training and onboarding. These hubs provide a centralized place for foundational and role-specific training, aligned with local policies and practices, helping organizations maintain consistency and build capacity as staff and leadership change over time.
In many cases, we also act as a resource broker — helping communities access additional training, tools, and specialized expertise when needed. Our goal is not to own every solution, but to help communities build the internal capacity and partnerships required to sustain progress.
Our vision is a society where everyone has access to a safe place to live. We believe this work happens one community at a time — through listening, collaboration, and long-term capacity building. We invite you to work alongside us as we help communities strengthen systems that are humane, effective, and built to last.
Our Books
Oasis Village
Oasis Village in Redmond, Oregon is a transitional housing village offering dignified, small-home living with wrap-around support for people experiencing homelessness. It provides a strong example of how community-based village models can create safety, stability, and pathways forward.
👉 Learn more about Oasis Village: https://www.oasisvillageor.org
Del Norte Mission Possible (DNMP)
Del Norte Mission Possible (DNMP) is partnering with Del Norte County to create a comprehensive response to homelessness in the North Coast of California, including outreach, shelter, supportive services, and a new shelter campus designed to provide safety, dignity, and stability. DNMP’s work focuses on meeting immediate needs while creating pathways toward long-term housing and recovery.
Our team supports DNMP across the full scope of this work — including planning, system design, implementation, staff training, operational readiness, donor development, and building a sustainable marketing and communications arm — as the organization moves from vision into full operations.
👉 Learn more about Del Norte Mission Possible: https://delnortemissionpossible.org
Joy Community
Joy Community provides permanent, community-based forever homes for homeless seniors, offering stability, dignity, and a place to age safely with support. Built without public funding and now grown beyond 10 housing units, Joy Community demonstrates how community-driven housing can create lasting solutions for vulnerable older adults.
👉 Learn more about Joy Community: https://joycommunity.org
Our Blog
Meet The Team
Chad McComas
Chad McComas is a longtime nonprofit leader and systems builder with decades of experience developing and operating comprehensive homelessness response programs. He is the founder of a large homeless services organization that created a multi-level continuum of care designed to move individuals from crisis to stability and self-sufficiency. At its height, the organization provided housing for more than 500 individuals each night.
A defining element of Chad’s work has been the development of a five-level coaching model that supported people as people moved from survival to long-term stability. The effectiveness of this approach drew national attention, with leaders from cities, counties, universities, and state agencies visiting to learn from the model and apply its principles in their own communities.
Chad also founded Set Free Services, which has grown into one of Medford’s largest community service programs, serving hundreds of unhoused and working-poor individuals each week through food distribution, hot meals, clothing, showers, laundry, and essential support services.
Throughout his career, Chad has invested deeply in developing people as well as programs. While serving on the board of Compass House, he worked closely with Matt Vorderstrasse and later encouraged him to step into homeless services leadership — first through board-level engagement and eventually by bringing him on as Development Director. That mentorship helped shape a coaching-based, systems-oriented approach that continues to inform their shared work today.
Chad is currently the founder and Executive Director of Joy Community, a housing-focused organization serving homeless seniors through a permanent, community-based model. Joy Community provides forever homes for older adults who have experienced homelessness, prioritizing long-term stability, dignity, and community over time-limited solutions. What began as a small pilot has grown beyond 10 housing units, with continued expansion underway to meet rising need. Notably, Joy Community has been built entirely without public funding, demonstrating a community-driven approach to creating permanent housing for vulnerable seniors.
Through Homeless Solutions Consultants, Chad brings deep operational insight, coaching expertise, and frontline experience to communities working to build humane, effective, and sustainable homelessness response systems.
Matt Vorderstrasse
Matt Vorderstrasse is the Executive Director of the North Bend City Housing Authority and the Coos-Curry Housing Authority, where he oversees housing operations, development, and regional coordination efforts on Oregon’s South Coast. His work spans public housing, vouchers, preservation, new development, and the integration of services into housing systems.
Under Matt’s leadership, the Housing Authorities are advancing some of the most significant housing investments the South Coast has seen in more than 40 years. North Bend Family Housing represents the first large-scale affordable housing investment in the region by any entity in over four decades. Matt played a key role in aligning local governments, partners, and the region with Oregon Housing and Community Services to make this work possible, helping bridge local readiness with state investment priorities. A core element of this effort has been the intentional integration of Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) services, creating a direct pathway from shelter beds into long-term housing stability.
Matt is also leading the Ellensburg Housing project in Gold Beach, expanding affordable housing access in Curry County and addressing long-standing gaps in rural housing supply. Together, these developments reflect a strategy focused not only on adding units, but on building coordinated pathways that support stability.
Matt was born into nonprofit work and has spent most of his life working alongside mission-driven organizations. His experience includes work with the Addictions Recovery Center, Compass House — a clubhouse model serving individuals experiencing mental illness — and serving as Development Director for a large homeless services organization. In that role, he led a team that raised millions of dollars and helped launch the organization’s consulting arm, supporting communities in developing shelter, housing, and homelessness response plans.
In addition to his role as a housing authority executive, Matt is the architect of the SPARC Network (Service Providers and Regional Connections), a regional systems-building framework designed to align outreach, shelter, housing, services, and workforce pathways across communities. Through SPARC, the goal is to create clear, intentional pathways — from shelter beds to permanent housing, and ultimately to affordable homeownership opportunities — so communities are not just responding to homelessness, but building lasting exits from it.
Through Homeless Solutions Consultants, Matt brings together his experience in public housing authority leadership, nonprofit operations, fundraising, system design, and community collaboration to help communities strengthen their homelessness response systems. His background in political science supports his ability to work effectively with elected officials, local governments, nonprofits, and community partners across Oregon.
Phil Johncock
Phil Johncock is an author, educator, administrator, expert grant writer, and technical assistance consultant based in Ashland, Oregon, with more than four decades of experience supporting nonprofits, community organizations, tribes, and local governments. His work focuses on community capacity building, leadership development, grant strategy, and practical, systems-oriented responses to homelessness.
Phil has been directly involved in addressing homelessness in communities across Southern Oregon. In Ashland, he worked alongside local leaders and service providers to respond to the city’s evolving homelessness challenges, helping navigate the balance between community concerns, shelter capacity, and long-term solutions. He also helped manage the Grants Pass winter shelter, gaining firsthand experience in seasonal shelter operations, community dynamics, and crisis response.
Beyond Ashland and Grants Pass, Phil has supported the development of village-style shelter and housing models across the region. He assisted the Klamath Tribes in developing their village program and contributed to the planning and implementation of Oasis Village, helping communities translate vision into operational reality.
Phil is widely recognized for his grant-writing expertise and has helped organizations secure funding for shelters, housing, services, and long-term capacity-building efforts. He is the author of more than 30 books on grant writing, organizational sustainability, and community-based solutions to complex social challenges, including homelessness. His work is known for translating complex systems into clear, actionable strategies. He led our effort to author Rural Solutions to Homelessness.
Phil also builds customized learning hubs, develops training curricula, and acts as a resource broker, helping communities and organizations access the right tools, training, and expertise to support ongoing staff development and onboarding. Phil played a central role in helping author and shape Homeless Solutions Consultants, contributing to its training frameworks, technical assistance approach, and coaching-based philosophy. In this role, he helps keep the work grounded, organized, and responsive as the team supports communities working to strengthen their homelessness response systems.
In addition to the numerous roles mentiones above, Phil serves as the Administrator for Homeless Solutions Consultants, where he manages operations and supports the consulting team.