While front line staff understand the importance of listening to those with lived experience of homelessness, this belief is not always shared by top leadership or those in power. In this highly interactive presentation Noah at Central will share their efforts to engage individuals with lived experience of homelessness in the housing design process. Noah’s CEO and staff as well as our housing development partner will share strategies for authentic engagement and reflections on how to ensure that individuals with lived experience are empowered to actually shape decisions. We will cover the following topics: - Our philosophy around centering the perspective of those with lived experience. - Efforts to seek a development partner with shared values around elevating the voices of those with lived experience. - Decisions around funding sources that allowed us to pursue a more creative approach to engagement of those with lived experience along with communicating this work to create buy-in from funders. - The process we used to hire an individual for the leadership position, including the role of lived experience consultants. - Strategies around engagement, including board membership and creating a lived experience steering committee. - Various challenges in working with the steering committee, such as group dynamics, compensation and meeting structure. - How we engaged these individuals in the design process. - The importance of trust as the driver for engagement. We would welcome the opportunity to share our presentation with another organization that is doing similar work as it could offer the chance to identify both commonalities and differences, plus brainstorm new solutions.