Allison Winston, MSW

Allison Winston has over a decade of experience in the homelessness response system, with deep expertise in unsheltered homelessness and street outreach. She began her career on a PATH street outreach team and later led a team of outreach workers at a large homeless services agency in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her work included serving directly in a high-volume day services center and working inside a large emergency men's shelter.​

​

She went on to become an HMIS administrator, improving community-wide data collection, reporting, and performance monitoring. Allison has co-led multiple unsheltered Point in Time Counts and played a key role in Continuum of Care (CoC) efforts to end chronic and veteran homelessness. Most recently, she worked within a police department, where she developed and led the city’s first civilian-led 911 alternative response team focused on unsheltered homelessness.​

 

She founded Street Outreach Consulting, LLC in 2025 to help communities build more strategic, coordinated, and outcome-oriented responses to unsheltered homelessness.​

 

Allison holds a Master of Social Work degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Bachelor's degree in Human and Organizational Development from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. She lives in Charlotte, NC with her senior poodle and enjoys traveling, running, going to sporting events, watching reality tv, and spending time with her friends and family.