New Report: Piloting the Grace Space, a Data-Driven, Low-Threshold Daytime Resource Center

From November 2024 to April 2025, RHI and other community partners operated a low-threshold daytime resource center for people experiencing housing insecurity and homelessness. This center--the Grace Space--was housed at Grace and Holy Spirit Church in downtown Cortland. This collaboration between RHI, CAPCO, Catholic Charities, and Grace and Holy Spirit Church was a successful pilot of a data-driven, low-threshold homelessness resource center. RHI is happy to announce the release of our comprehensive report, The Grace Space: Piloting Cortland County’s Low-Threshold Daytime Homelessness Center.

This report details the work that went into planning, opening, and operating the space; it gives an overview and analysis of the data we collected through operating the space; and it lays out recommendations for Cortland County's next steps as well as for other communities that want to learn from this pilot project. 

The report has three main purposes. First, this report is a retrospective evaluation of the progress that we made toward the Housing and Homelessness Coalition’s goals. Second, and most importantly, this report makes recommendations based on what we learned starting and operating the Grace Space. Third, we wanted to explore, articulate, and explain the value of our deeply interdisciplinary approach to public health problems.

What’s in the report?

The main sections of the report describe the landscape of housing and homelessness in Cortland County. Combining data from a variety of local and state sources, we demonstrate the need for better support for people experiencing housing insecurity. We describe the work of the Cortland County Housing and Homelessness Coalition that led to the idea of a daytime space during the winter months. We also lay out the practical and philosophical approach that we took to doing this work: we worked hard to put into practice low-threshold, trauma-informed, harm reduction principles.

The bulk of the report is a discussion of how we made the Grace Space happen. That includes the preparatory design and planning work leading up to opening as well as the ongoing management and quality improvement work throughout its run. In this section, we detail the systems that we built to facilitate the operations of the space and, simultaneously, collect data. We describe our human-centered design process for the space and for our systems, interspersing this narrative with data that we collected through operation. We highlight three examples: the check in system, the evolving guest expectations and staff procedures around bathrooms, and using the space to facilitate service providers meeting guests where they were.

Finally, we make recommendations for Cortland County and for other rural communities that want to support their unhoused or housing insecure members better. 

Moving Forward

We are proud of what we accomplished with the Grace Space. It helped members of our community stay safe and simultaneously expanded our knowledge. We learned about the needs of people experiencing homelessness in Cortland and about the barriers they face in accessing services. We also learned about what it takes to run a daytime resource center like this sustainably. Most importantly, we learned that we can successfully take on big projects like this.

We hope the Grace Space’s success becomes both a practical road map for future large‐scale initiatives and a confidence‐builder, showing that bold solutions are possible. By uniting research with frontline service and centering human dignity, the Grace Space pilot encourages rural communities to imagine what can happen when public‐health, social‐service, and community partners design together.

RHI is working with key partners from the Coalition to ensure that we can offer community members the same kind of safe, warm daytime space this coming winter. We'll share more updates as we make progress!