Sherri Downing is a senior program manager II for Advocates for Human Potential (AHP) and the deputy director for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Homeless and Housing Resource Network (HHRN) contract. Ms. Downing is nationally recognized for her expertise in homelessness and housing with an emphasis on frontier and rural communities. She has expertise in issues that lead to and sustain homelessness, including poverty, domestic and sexual violence, trauma, and behavioral health disorders. She is an experienced coalition and capacity builder and is knowledgeable about public housing initiatives and implementing the strategies, public policies, and practices needed to address homelessness. She has led the creation of resources on a wide range of topics, including substance use treatment, homelessness prevention, homelessness among American Indians and Alaska Natives, homelessness in rural and frontier environments, Olmstead implementation, rural opioid issues, homelessness among youth, and accessing mainstream identification for people experiencing homelessness.

As the owner/principal of a Helena, Montana-based consulting firm, Ms. Downing coordinated the Governor’s Council on Homelessness and the statewide effort to create and implement Montana’s 10-year plan to prevent and end homelessness. In this capacity, Ms. Downing established Montana’s Supplemental Security Income (SSI)/Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) Outreach, Access, and Recovery (SOAR) initiative and was team lead from 2004 to 2009. Between 2003 and 2010, Ms. Downing led development of grants that brought more than $30.5 million into the local economy from Montana’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, and Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTCs).

Currently, Ms. Downing manages, crafts, and delivers targeted training and technical assistance (T/TA) on a range of topics, including cultural competence, trauma-informed practice, and services in supportive housing. She leads many teams that include providers, state and federal leaders, and people with lived experience in their efforts to create viable solutions and products. She routinely uses asset mapping, key stakeholder interviews, and feedback loops to create targeted solutions and results-oriented plans to address homelessness in specific environments. She excels at synthesizing complicated information into usable tools that can be understood and used by a range of audiences.

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