Program Design and Development

Who We Are

Karl Bertrand, LMSW, President/C.E.O.

Karl Bertrand, L.M.S.W. is founder and President of Program Design and Development, LLC. PD&D specializes in helping public and private organizations develop effective and innovative programs, with particular expertise in creating and managing multi-agency collaborations. Karl is a graduate of Cornell University and the City University of New York’s Hunter College School of Social Work.

At age 26, while still a social work student at Hunter, he founded Yonkers’ first homeless shelter, The Sharing Community. Over the next 6 years he grew The Sharing Community into a multi-million dollar agency that included a multi-tiered shelter system, Westchester’s largest soup kitchen and Yonkers’ largest community-based HIV/AIDS program.

Grant Writing Experience

Karl now describes his job as “Village Dreamer.” In 1989 he founded Program Design and Development, LLC, a consulting company that specializes in helping non-profits and governments design and fund innovative services for the poor. Karl has served as consultant to schools, police departments, housing authorities, city planning departments, county agencies, and dozens of private agencies with annual budgets ranging from $60,000 to $530 million. He’s helped develop hundreds of new services in housing, health care, substance abuse treatment and prevention, AIDS treatment and prevention, job training, mental health, street outreach, nutrition, youth services, childcare, law enforcement, crime prevention, and truancy prevention. To date PD&D has prepared over 3,200 grant applications and secured over $787 million in grants. 

Community Organizing Experience

Karl is also a lifelong advocate and community organizer. Within months of co-founding the Sharing Community, Karl worked with the New York City Coalition for the Homeless to organize Westchester’s first countywide public hearings on homelessness. Karl built on the contacts he established through those hearings to organize Westchester’s first countywide homeless advocacy group, the Coalition for the Homeless of Westchester, in 1984. He served as the Coalition’s President from 1986 to 1991. When 3 people froze to death on the streets in December 1989, Karl helped organize a candlelight vigil that carried three empty coffins through the streets of White Plains to the County Office Building, resulting in creation of a low-demand safety-net shelter system that persists today. In 2007 when Westchester County started restricting shelter access and insisting that safety-net shelters provide only chairs instead of beds, he helped organize a “Beds, Not Chairs” demonstration that resulted in the county abandoning that policy.

Experience Working With HUD

In 2009 the City of New Rochelle Department of Development hired Karl to plan and prepare a substantial amendment to New Rochelle’s HUD Consolidated Plan and corresponding grant application to HUD’s new Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Rehousing Program (HPRP). Karl researched the HPRP program requirements, worked with the New Rochelle Department of Development to design a program that met local needs, identified agencies that could provide the needed array of services, and prepared and submitted New Rochelle’s application to HUD. 

Karl’s HPRP application was successful resulting in New Rochelle receiving its maximum possible award of $686,935 over three years. The City of New Rochelle Department of Development then hired Karl to help it manage the program and coordinate the activities of its HPRP subcontractors over the life of the three-year program.

At the same time the City of Yonkers Planning Department and the City of Mount Vernon Planning Department each hired Karl to plan and prepare their HPRP applications. He did so successfully, resulting in both cities receiving their maximum allowable HPRP awards of $1,533,003 and $745,701 respectively.

Karl began writing HUD grants and planning HUD-funded programs for the Municipal Housing Authority for the City of Yonkers in 1993. He wrote 8 consecutive successful grant applications to HUD’s Public Housing Drug Elimination Program until HUD ended the program in 2001. These grants included subcontracts for drug treatment, law enforcement, parenting education, and other services. Karl helped plan the components, prepared the annual grant applications, and helped manage the subcontracts including chairing monthly meetings of the subgrantees.

PD&D provided program planning, grant writing and technical assistance with program administration for the Municipal Housing Authority for the City of Yonkers (MHACY) from 1993 until 2020. PD&D has successfully secured HUD grant funding for MHACY from the following ten HUD programs:

1.       Public Housing Drug Elimination,
2.       Youth Sports,
3.       HOPE VI Neighborhood Networks,
4.       Emergency Safety and Security,
5.       Economic Development and Supportive Services for Seniors,
6.       Resident Opportunity and Self Sufficiency (ROSS) for the Elderly and Disabled,
7.       ROSS Service Coordinators (for both families and elderly/disabled),
8.       Section 8 Fair Share Increment Voucher programs,
9.       Continuum of Care for the Homeless – Shelter Plus Care, and
10.    Continuum of Care for the Homeless – Supportive Housing Program.

HUD’s Continuum of Care (C0C) for the Homeless is HUD’s largest and most complex source of funding for homeless housing and services. Karl has more experience with HUD’s CoC process than anyone else in Westchester.

HUD first created the Continuum of Care funding process in 1995. It combined several previously distinct funding streams and for the first time insisted that whole communities come together, representing diverse population groups and constituencies, to develop a coordinated community-wide application that included a list of projects that had been identified and prioritized by community consensus.

In just six weeks, working on behalf of the Municipal Housing Authority for the City of Yonkers, Karl brought together a dozen agencies, created new joint planning and project prioritization processes, and wrote a successful CoC application for Yonkers’ first CoC-funded program. In 1996 Karl reshaped the Yonkers CoC to include 13 CoC-funded agencies. MHACY has been awarded CoC funding every year since Karl began its process in 1995.

In 1996 Karl helped the City of Mount Vernon organize a similar local CoC planning process and prepare its local CoC application to HUD. Mount Vernon’s first attempt to apply on its own for CoC funding in 1995 was unsuccessful, but since Karl began organizing the process in 1996, Mount Vernon has received CoC funding every year up to the present. 

In 2008 the Westchester County Department of Community Mental Health (WCDCMH) hired PD&D to help them plan and prepare the grant application for a new CoC project. In 2009  WCDCMH hired PD&D to help it plan and manage its CoC-funded projects as well as prepare its portion of Weschester’s consolidated countywide CoC application.

In 2010 the Westchester County Department of Social Services (WCDSS) hired PD&D to help it plan and manage its CoC-funded projects as well as prepare its portion of Weschester’s consolidated countywide CoC application. 

Today Karl co-chairs the Westchester County Continuum of Care (CoC) Partnership for the Homeless, a public-private partnership that is responsible for managing nearly $21 million in annual HUD funding that comes to agencies in Westchester for homeless housing and services, and for planning and coordinating all housing and services needed by all subgroups of Westchester’s homeless. The CoC includes 19 public and private agencies including the Westchester County Department of Social Services, Westchester County Department of Community Mental Health, the Municipal Housing Authority for the City of Yonkers, the City of Mount Vernon, and 15 leading non-profit providers of supportive housing, mental health and substance abuse services, employment services, services for the elderly and disabled, HIV/AIDS services, emergency and transitional shelter providers, housing developers, and residential programs for youth in or recently exited from foster care. 

In August 2013 Karl accompanied a dozen community leaders, including the WCDSS Deputy Commissioner, to a “Veterans Rapid Rehousing Boot Camp” in Philadelphia that was sponsored by HUD, the Veterans Administration, the 100,000 Homes Campaign, and the Rapid Results Institute. The group decided that Westchester County would accept the national challenge to achieve an audacious goal: end homelessness among veterans in Westchester by 2015. Karl was chosen by the group to lead the Westchester Patriot Housing Initiative, created to end homelessness among veterans in Westchester by 2015. Now with two co-chairs including Karl, Patriot Housing achieved the following outcomes as of 3/23/2018:

 • To date 638 homeless veterans have moved to permanent housing.
 • All but 13 of the homeless veterans identified by Patriot Housing have either left the county or been housed in either permanent housing or VA-funded residential programs.
 • Zero homeless veterans are currently known to be living on the streets, in cars or in other places not meant for human habitation in Westchester.
 • Only one currently homeless veteran in Westchester has remained homeless on the streets or in shelters for over a year.

In 2014 HUD announced that it would hold a special funding competition as a distinct part of its FY14 Continuum of Care annual application process. It had $32 million in annually renewable funding that it would award as an FY14 Permanent Supportive Housing Bonus (PSHB) to CoCs that developed the best plans to help chronically homeless adults and families secure and retain permanent supportive housing. Karl thought through how the program could work in Westchester and dovetail most effectively with existing rehousing programs and supports. He developed a simplified RFP pre-application process that detailed the program’s parameters and solicited local provider’s plans to participate. He explained the Federal requirements and the locally developed process general program parameters to local providers. The CoC collected the preapplications and then the CoC’s general membership voted to rank which provider’s plans would be included in our CoC’s application for the FY14 Permanent Supportive Housing Bonus (PSHB). Karl then wrote the PSHB application combining all of the locally selected subcontractor’s plans into a single unified project that would be administered by WCDSS.

Westchester’s PSHB project is called Turning Point for two reasons.

  • The permanent housing rent subsidies and mobile support services provided will be a Turning Point in the lives of 82 chronically homeless individuals and 8 chronically homeless families because it will enable them to move off the streets and out of shelters into permanent homes of their own.
  • This funding will also represent a Turning Point in Westchester County's efforts to end homelessness. This grant enabled Westchester to offer permanent housing to 50% of all Westchester’s then-identified chronically homeless single adults.

The Permanent Supportive Housing Bonus application that Karl drafted was so strong that it was awarded $2.1 millionper year in annually renewable PSHB funding in a very tight national CoC competition for only $32 million. Because our plan was ranked the best in New York State, we won the largest award in New York and even beat out New York City – always an impressive feat! The award means that Westchester can offer rent subsidies at Fair Market Rent rates plus intensive mobile support services to 90 chronically homeless households. This is an unprecedented opportunity for us to provide lifetime housing stability for Westchester County’s highest-need chronically homeless adults and families.

Other Program Planning, Organizing and Grant Writing Experience

Another of Karl’s passions is youth services. Having begun his career working with homeless adults, Karl says that he has worked his way upstream all the way to making sure that elementary school students show up in first grade to learn how to read.

Karl has coordinated citywide youth violence reduction planning for the Yonkers Police Department. He authored Yonkers’ 2008 Juvenile Justice Strategy and Action Plan, for the Yonkers Police Department and the Yonkers Juvenile Crime Enforcement Coalition. During the planning process he developed the concept of “evidence-based targeting.” He led groundbreaking research in Yonkers that for the first time was able to measure actual 1, 2, and  3-year arrest rates for specific risk factors and combinations of risk factors. 

Yonkers’ Mayor Philip Amicone summarized the research results in the Plan’s introduction.[1]

“The Yonkers Police Department has been very effective in using hard data to target its resources where they can have the greatest impact. This Plan shows how we can use the same approach to prevent youth crime. Lots of studies have identified risk factors for juvenile crime but until now, none have been able to identify which risk factors were most significant. Our police department and school district have worked together to develop a Pyramid of Risk that shows us how to use objective school data on truancy and suspensions to most effectively target prevention dollars. They have developed a new concept, Evidence-Based Targeting, explained in this Action Plan, that has the potential to transform how communities nationwide work to prevent juvenile crime. They have also collected data showing that chronic truancy is the tipping point that can change the trajectory of kids’ lives toward a future of educational failure, poverty and crime.”

The Yonkers Action Plan described the potential impact of addressing chronic truancy.

“The potential long-term benefits of addressing chronic truancy, especially in early grades, are enormous. New procedures could identify and help bring early intervention services to hundreds of high-risk youth in high-risk families who would otherwise in most cases float through the system unaided until they emerged again into public view as teenage delinquents, dropouts, and criminals. The early intervention services provided will not be able to save every student or turn around every dysfunctional family, but they offer our best hope for reducing school failure, violence, drug abuse and crime....” 

Karl has made presentations on Evidence-Based Targeting at conferences sponsored by the NYS Division of Criminal Justice Services, the NYS chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, and the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justices and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP).

Karl organized and facilitated a Yonkers Truancy Reduction Strategy Group from 2007-2013 that coordinated efforts to reduce chronic truancy in Yonkers, New York’s 4^th largest school district. He helped the City of Mount Vernon implement a similar truancy reduction effort and a parallel effort to reduce multiple suspensions in the Mount Vernon public schools from 2009-2012. Mount Vernon schools reduced total absenteeism by 19.8% in two years and reduced the number of students with 20+ unexcused absences from 1,005 in 2006-2007 to 146 in 2011-2012.

In August 2012 Karl began a major school and community organizing effort in Rochester, New York’s 3^rd largest school district. He served as a consultant to the Rochester City School District helping it design and implement an school/community collaboration designed to reduce chronic absenteeism in grades K-3 in Rochester’s schools with the highest absenteeism rates. The project began in 4 target schools in 2012-2013, expanded to 8 in 2013-2014 and then to 13 in 2014-2015. As of 5/28/15 the effort has reduced the number of chronically absent students in Rochester’s elementary schools by over 800 students.

In October 2013 Westchester County released a Safer Communities Blueprint designed to show how Westchester communities can work together to reduce youth violence. The initial Safer Communities effort was built around Karl’s research in Yonkers and the experience that he and others have gained working with school districts in Yonkers, Mount Vernon, White Plains, and Rochester. It calls on schools and communities to come together to target support services to students who are most chronically absent and those most frequently suspended.

During the summer of 2013 Karl wove together his passions for addressing homelessness and for changing the life trajectories of high-need youth. The U.S. Administration for Children and Families (ACF) offered to provide two-year $720,000 planning grants for 18 communities that could develop strategies for ensuring that children aging out of foster care did not become homeless. After the two year planning process, 6 of the 18 communities will receive $5 million over 4 that annually comes to agencies in Westchester for homeless housing and services5 years to implement their plans. Children aging out into homelessness is a problem nationwide and ACF acknowledged that there were no established best practices or evidence-based models.

As Karl described the challenge, “All we have to do is to figure out how to make our homeless, child welfare, education, job training, mental health, substance abuse, and community support systems work together seamlessly for youth who are often multiply disabled and free at last at age 18 to tell all grown-ups to leave them alone, and to do it in a way that is rigorously evaluated, evidence-based, trauma-informed, and capable of being replicated nationwide in a world of scarce resources!” Karl persuaded the Westchester County Department of Social Services to apply for the grant, persuaded 40 of Westchester’s best and brightest to drop everything to plan the application in just 3 weeks in July, prepared the 125-page application and submitted it just under the deadline.

Westchester’s application was approved and fully funded. It began in October 2013 as the Westchester Building Futures Initiative. In May 2015 he prepared and submitted WCDSS’ application for 3-year WBF implementation funding. This application was approved and funded for over $2 million.

Karl has considerable experience in law enforcement, crime prevention and child abuse prevention. He coordinated development of Westchester’s first Drug Treatment Courts in Mount Vernon, Yonkers and Greenburgh. He has planned and written over $3 million in successful grant applications for the Yonkers Police Department, including two five-year USDOJ-funded Weed & Seed projects in Yonkers’ highest crime areas. He spearheaded Yonkers’ Family Strengthening Initiative, funded by a grant Karl planned and wrote to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP), resulting in Yonkers’ first formal replication of a CSAP-recommended evidence-based prevention program. He helped Westchester County design and forge a federally-funded 5-year program targeting private sector child welfare services to high-risk children of parents in substance abuse treatment. 

Karl has worked as a grantwriter and strategic planning consultant for all the hospitals in Yonkers, Mount Vernon and New Rochelle. He has raised $67 million for hospital services and capital needs, including over $30 million to help save Mount Vernon Hospital. Karl has planned and prepared multiple applications for specialized supportive housing for Medicaid Health Home participants, building on his 40+ years of experience engaging, stabilizing and housing homeless adults with complex social, medical, mental and behavioral health needs.

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