Samaritan INN the Community
It’s hard to believe, but 2026 is already off to the races, and the Inn is staying in the mix! We kicked off the year by presenting at the Collin County Homeless Coalition’s general meeting. Every year, the Inn works hard to evaluate programs and processes, and making sure to share that information with partners is key to our success. Getting to provide a clear update on The Samaritan Inn Food Pantry was a great moment—very similar to when we finally announced our move back in 2019. The presentation sparked some great discussion among our community partners, and the meeting overall was a great start to the year.
January also held the launch of the McKinney Homeless Coalition at a new level—guided by the agencies instead of the city. As the Chair of the MHC, our VP of Strategic Partnerships provided an update to the coalition of the actions and responses to the ideas and questions posed in December, and she shared the concepts and descriptors of the MHC committees. If you are interested in joining the MHC or want to know more about the committees, please email our VPSP at hmolsbee@saminn.org
On a larger scale, it was time for the Continuum of Care (CoC) to convene and discuss the Youth within our system. It was a great meeting of top providers to youth ages 16-24, where we discussed the YHDP funding award updates, where the gaps exist in the system, and how we could meet those gaps with progress and success. The youth ages 18-24 have been an area of intention and programming evaluation for the Inn over the past few years. As we see more youth return as adults after residing with us as children and recognize the difference in their needs, we know our client-centered approach will lead us in the right direction to best serve this population.
Finally, it wouldn’t be January without the requisite Point-In-Time count! Every year during the latter part of January, HUD requests that every community “count” the homeless. For the Inn, our CoC lead, Housing Forward, pulls our data from the Housing Management Information System (HMIS) to get our stats on the sheltered homeless we serve. But as a prominent community partner, we know the numbers that matter most are those who are on the streets and in the woods. Our staff put together TWO teams of four who participated in the count on January 22nd from 8 p.m. to 12 a.m. Taking this role was important to the team because we recognized the importance of treating those we serve with dignity, and we knew we could take that work to the streets. We were blessed to also have a special tagalong counter—McKinney’s very own City Manager, Paul Grimes.
Be sure to check back each month for updates to INN the Community—you never know where we’ll be!
If you’d like to provide feedback on the timing and topics for INNsights Town Hall this year, please answer a few short questions here.
