Defining an End to Homelessness
This blog is part of the “You asked for it” series. In December, on the OrgCode FaceBook page I asked people want blogs they wanted to see. These blogs are a direct response to the most popular suggestions. This one goes out to Angela in Waterloo. She asked for a blog about “How do you define ‘ending homelessness’. Some communities are saying they’ve ‘functionally’ ended it. Provide a clear definition of that, for example.”
When a person or family is housed, their homelessness has ended. That is rather absolute. But the question, I think, has more to do with how can we define “ending homelessness” at a city, regional or national level.
Those of you north of the border having likely heard lots about how Medicine Hat in Southeast Alberta is going to be the first city in Canada to end homelessness. They are certainly on track to do that. (As an aside, Tracy from our team used to live there and organized the infrastructure and plan to end homelessness for the city; Jeff from our team still lives there and used to do SPDAT assessments for entry into Rapid Re-Housing and Housing First; and, in the first few years of the program I visited the city at least four times a year to provide training and coaching). Does it mean all shelter beds will be closed in Medicine Hat? No. Does it mean that no one will ever experience homelessness ever again in Medicine Hat? No. What it does mean is that there is a housing focus to all service delivery; that they have adjusted investment in services to reflect solutions rather than crises; and, no person experiencing homelessness will ever have to spend 30 or more days homeless before getting housed again. The last Point in Time Count they did found less than a handful of people living outdoors. Even the Mayor of Medicine Hat has become a huge convert to Housing First.
Those of you south of the 49th Parallel likely have heard plenty about Phoenix and Salt Lake City ending chronic homelessness amongst veterans. This is a slightly different kettle of fish that required some thoughtful analysis and commentary in those communities to explain the remarks. In December 2013, Mayor Stanton of Phoenix declared on MSNBC that they had ended chronic homelessness amongst veterans. Only a couple weeks later, Mayor Becker of Salt Lake City made the same claim, also on MSNBC. For the sector as a whole, in cities far away from Salt Lake and Phoenix, this was an overall win – “proof” that it was possible to align political will and services to put an end to homelessness for this population. Within Salt Lake and Phoenix, however, you could still find veterans experiencing homelessness, which caused some to question exactly why Mayors Becker and Stanton had made such claims. Were they lying? Was it all spin? Or did the truth lie in how to define what was occurring?
The biggest problem with trying to define an end to homelessness (or defining “homelessness” itself for that matter), is that homelessness is always in a state of flux. While one person gets housing, another person may become homeless. As one chronically homeless person makes his way into housing, another person reaches (for example) the length of time threshold required to qualify as chronically homeless. Because homelessness is not static, there will always need to be a balance between real time data and population prioritization data, which likely is from a list compiled historically.
Phoenix is a good example of prioritization data historically influencing how the data was interpreted and considered. In short, it went something like this: through a Stand Down event for veterans on Veterans Day in 2011 a list of chronically homeless veterans was compiled with slightly more than 220 chronically homeless veterans identified; that data was updated and augmented through other sources; the number was down to 145 in February 2013, just over 50 in October 2013, and down to zero just before Mayor Stanton made the announcement. In real time (as of the day you read this) are there zero chronically homeless veterans in Phoenix? Unlikely. But don’t interpret that as failure. More on that in a moment.
The Salt Lake experience used a similar approach, and there are some lessons that should be learned from them as well. First of all, Salt Lake City demonstrates the importance of confirming homelessness status – including chronic homeless status or veteran status – as the number decreased from the initial list collected because of ineligibility. Salt Lake also experienced a situation encountered very commonly in other communities and with other populations: difficulty locating some people when it was time to house them, even when there were vouchers available.
Is change in eligibility status just a convenient way to decrease the size of the issue? No. The reality is that definitions matter when it comes to resource allocation, so not meeting eligibility criteria is very important. Should Salt Lake have waited until they had located and housed the last of all people they had first identified? Nope. You have to work with the population you can actually work with, and with absolute uncertainty as to where the un-locatable people went, it would be foolish to spend considerable resources waiting and tracking people down, especially when they may have left town.
What can actually be ended?
Chronic homelessness can be ended. It can be defined. There are support and service interventions, as well as resources, that allow for an end to chronic homelessness. Phoenix and Sal Lake City are examples of ending homelessness within a sub-population of the chronic homeless populations: veterans. If you look at Salt Lake City you will also see that some resources were not veteran-specific that were used, in addition to veteran-specific resources. It is entirely possible that ending chronic homelessness amongst non-veterans was influenced negatively by this decision.
Episodic homelessness can be ended. It, also, can be defined. There are support and service interventions, as well as resources like shallow or time limited subsidies, that allow for episodic homelessness to not be repeated. The case of Medicine Hat is one where both chronic homelessness and episodic homelessness, by measuring acuity and aligning system resources, allowed both groups to be addressed and not just one at the expense of the other.
In both of the above (chronic and episodic homelessness), a functional zero would be occurring when the availability of resources exceeds the size of the population needing the resources. In other words, your community would have enough things like vouchers, rent geared to income housing, and case manager resources to meet the needs of everyone in the episodic or chronic homelessness group that wanted the resources.
Would all shelters close in a community where this happens? No. There will still be people that experience homelessness for the first time. We will never be able to prevent all people from never becoming dislodged from housing – nor would it be a practical use of resources to attempt to do so.
Would there never be street (outdoor) homeless where this happens? You cannot guarantee that either. Housing is a voluntary choice. Nobody should ever be forced, tricked or coerced into accepting housing. But we should know each of those people by name and have a plan for each.
Are Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Medicine Hat examples of perfect systems? Not at all. I’d argue, for example, that Medicine Hat could still improve its diversion techniques, its use of interim housing, and expand its permanent supportive housing options. I’d also argue, for example, that Phoenix needs to wrestle its behemoth campus for singles into a unified, integrated support network across multiple organizations. I’d also argue, for example, that Salt Lake City needs an improved housing focus to things like the major day resources and street outreach. Each of these cities have accomplishments to be remarkably proud of, but none of them have yet achieved a unified, system-wide, functional end to homelessness. They have achieved it for subsets of the population – or in the case of Medicine Hat, are at the precipice of doing it as a whole.
What it all comes down to when we talk about definitions and achievements is that any end to homelessness has to look at the supply to demand relationship. Because chronic and episodic homeless populations are more easily identifiable, and arguably more stable and predictable, it is possible to better target and rationalize the use of resources for these groups. It is also possible to prioritize through an acuity tool, the order in which people that meet these groups should be housed and supported. Homelessness is ended when the availability of supply means no person or family has to experience homelessness for a prolonged period of time. To ensure the system becomes aligned in this way, it is helpful to: allocate resources specifically for chronic and episodically homeless people; prioritize within these resources (the most acute persons first); support and allocate resources differently for newer homeless persons; have a strong housing orientation to the entire service delivery system (shelters, outreach, drop-ins, day centers, food programs, etc.); eliminate any program that incentivizes homelessness, even if well intentioned (for example: access to employment or health services only if homeless); and, stop trying to heal or fix people or convert people to a particular faith, and instead focus on properly supporting imperfect people in housing, regardless of faith (or lack thereof) or perceived sins or shortcomings.
If you desire an absolute end to homelessness, it will be VERY different than what it is required to have a functional end to homelessness. Anabsolute end to homelessness would require undoing the policy and program implications from the last two generations. As I lay out what this would require, you will probably realize this to be a dream, not an attainable reality in our lifetime. To achieve absolute homelessness, the supply of truly affordable housing (ample available stock across all income cohorts and household sizes) would need to exceed demand; income assistance rates and government benefits would have to increase in just about every community and be indexed to inflation annually; minimum wages would need to adjust to living wages; access to health care would need to be free and readily available; resources to assist families and persons with inter-personal conflict would need to be readily available and free; mental health resources would need to be readily available and free; availability of employment for lower skilled persons would be necessary; reintegration would need to be improved for persons leaving incarceration and we would need to remove barriers to housing and employment for persons with a history of felony convictions; community-based care and support would need to be expanded in the health care system; free long-term and nursing care for older adults and persons with acute health issues would need to be expanded and free; transition programs for persons ageing out of care would need to be more robust and resourced differently than they are currently; integration and support programs for newcomers to the country would need to be expanded and resourced much more than they are currently; inter-generational trauma for some population groups (such as indigenous persons) would need to be better resolved; domestic and intimate partner violence would need to cease; all parents would need to become fully accepting of their gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, questioning, transgendered, trans-sexual, and two-spirited children (and any variation of gender identity or sexual preference other than heterosexual) and never kick them out of the home; there would be more evidence on the types of substance use treatment is more effective than others in different situations and expanded upon, as well as being free; and, there would never be anyone displaced by fire or other unforeseen event or disaster.
So, it is probably best that we focus on a functional end to homelessness. We should look to places like Medicine Hat to see what that looks like in practice, and learn from places like Phoenix in Salt Lake City as they formed their approach and prioritized resources. We should scale the amount of resources we have to the size of the need, and allocate them through prioritization. We should do this through heightened coordination across service providers, and with the needs of the end user of services in mind always.
Diversion: Making it Work
This blog is part of the “You asked for it” series. In December, on the OrgCode FaceBook page I asked people want blogs they wanted to see. These blogs are a direct response to the most popular suggestions. This one goes out to Zach Brown. He asked for a blog about “the whole biz on diversion” because it is “sorely lacking out there in the informosphere.”
Some people think diversion is about rejecting service to people. Seriously. I have seen it happen. Other people think diversion is about finding short-term fixes like a motel room instead of having people come into shelter. I am not kidding.
Diversion is a service. It is not the absence or denial of service. It is the art and science of finding safe and appropriate alternatives to shelter use. It is about empowering the front end of the system to try and resolve problems through natural supports and progressive engagement of “lighter touch” solutions before providing a more intensive response through the shelter system or any other homeless service.
Diversion is highly effective when there is coordinated entry into shelter services because there is greater structure and control, and less variation in how it is applied. When diversion is used in a decentralized approach to shelter entry, there is a risk of “service shopping” emerging where someone that is seeking service does not get the immediate answer they want of shelter entry they go to another shelter (and another and another and another in larger cities) until they get admitted.
Let me give you an example of a place where diversion is kicking butt: Phoenix. There is a centralized intake for families known as the Family Housing Hub. Here is what they wrote in mid-December:
Great news! Since launching the Family Housing Hub in mid-August, our staff has formally diverted 100 families from emergency shelter. Rather than add them to community waiting list for services, our highly skilled staff spent at least an hour with each of these families to help them problem-solve and identify safe, affordable housing options to prevent them from entering the homeless system. We are having great success at providing information and tools so families are able to end their own homelessness. And it’s working! Only 2 of the 100 families have returned to the Family Housing Hub and entered the homeless service system.
How did they do it? And how are others like them doing it? They are treating diversion as a service, investing in training to learn how to do it properly (in this case from yours truly), and applying these nine steps, outlined generally here (and more in depth in training):
STEP ONE:
Explanation of the diversion conversation. You want to use a scripted conversation that outlines how you wish to avoid entry into shelter whenever there is a safe and appropriate alternative.
STEP TWO:
You want them to articulate why – exactly – they are seeking shelter today. As part of the same step you want to know what they have already tried or thought about trying but haven’t attempted yet.
STEP THREE:
You want to understand where they stayed last night, how long they have stayed there, and whether or not they can return there safely for at least another three days while trying to figure out next steps. If where they were staying is unsafe or they cannot return, you can skip to Step Six.
STEP FOUR:
Following on the previous step, you want them to name the MAIN reason they had to leave the place they stayed the night before. Then, as a follow up, you want to know if there are any other reasons they cannot stay there. (Sometimes what they saw as the main reason and what the more pressing reason really is from your perspective may be different and illuminating.)
STEP FIVE:
You then want to find out if their time there could be extended if the person knew that permanent solutions and referrals were being made, connecting them to other community resources. If they still say they have no way to extend, you want to ask what it would take to extend it.
STEP SIX:
If they cannot return to where they stayed the night before or if it was unsafe, you then want to explore other potential people they could stay with that may be safe and appropriate to connect with.
STEP SEVEN:
After determining there is no alternative for them to put into action, and before admitting to shelter, there are a series of exploratory questions to better understand why they are having difficulties finding permanent housing. This sometimes reveals nuggets of information that can inform an appropriate referral that can solve their housing instability.
STEP EIGHT:
This step explores what resources they may have at their disposal or through family members that would allow for an alternative to shelter and/or could help inform their pathway to permanent housing.
STEP NINE:
This step is the parting words for shelter access. It goes like this:
If admitted to shelter there is still an expectation that you will be attempting to secure permanent housing for you and your family. What is your plan at this point for securing housing if you are admitted to shelter?
We want people to know, even upon shelter entry, that shelter is not the answer. Permanent housing is the answer. Even if they do not have a plan, we want them to stay focused on housing and getting out of shelter from the first day they are in shelter.
Social Service, Community Mental Health and Homeless Service Provider Collaboration for Effective Case Management
This blog is part of the “You asked for it” series. In December, on the OrgCode FaceBook page I asked people want blogs they wanted to see. These blogs are a direct response to the most popular suggestions. This one goes out to Lauren Frederick. She asked for a blog about “Promoting efficient collaboration between social service agencies, community mental health, & homeless service providers for effective housing case management”
The last time I blogged about collaboration was the summer of 2013. I stay convinced that the five steps for effective collaboration that I outlined in that blog remain true:
Agree on how you will communicate with each other
Ensure creative conflict
Be deliberate and thoughtful in figuring out with whom you are collaborating
Have a defined process
Make certain there is accountability
And I also remain convinced that any talk of collaboration only makes sense if we are all on the same page about what is meant by collaboration. To that end, you can read this old blog gem from March 2012. One of the quotes in that blog that rings true to me whenever I go about discussing collaboration is from Thomas Stallkamp, who has had a rather successful career in business and now leads a group calledCollaborative Management, who remarked, “The secret is to gang up on the problem, rather than each other.”
That said, many people who work in this industry talk a good game about collaboration because we think it is the answer. It isn’t always. Collaboration only works when there is a genuine commitment to labor together (which, by the way, is the origins of the word). Collaboration is not partnership. It is not mutual aid. It is working together.
How do you get groups to work together?
First of all, they have to consent to do so and commit to do so. In a number of communities the way to ensure this will actually occur is a signed charter or memoranda with signatures from the parties that agree to collaborate.
Groups really only work well together when they have mutual interest. To that end, if a group wants collaboration so that, say, a behavioral health service will assist a participant in your program, that isn’t mutual interest. That is an interest in you having someone do the job that they are mandated to do. Mutual interest would be if the behavioral health service provider had something they wanted you to labor on with them.
Sometimes that we think having shared clients on caseloads creates an environment where collaboration will definitely occur. Nope. It only works if the sum of the various parties working together exceeds the impact of any one party working alone.
Let’s us assume that a group (comprised of three agencies: social services, a homeless service provider, and community mental health) agrees to collaborate. It will not all go smoothly, and it shouldn’t. We want there to be different perspectives and opinions on what should occur, in which way, and why. And let us not forget that the participant should have an active voice as well. Sometimes the best way to promote collaboration is to let prospective parties participating in the collaboration to know that you don’t expect everyone to agree.
Identifying the objectives of having the parties collaborate with each other is necessary for it to be effective and efficient. If you want people to come together and labor together without identifying the objectives, expect it to all fall apart, quickly and with considerable frustration. Why? Because chances are different parties had different objectives to achieve through the collaboration.
You would be hard-pressed to find any of these groups (social services, homeless service providers, or community mental health providers) with more staff, money or time than they know what to do with. Because everyone is overtaxed, suggesting one more meeting or get together is probably the last thing on anyone’s mind. “Many hands making light work” only succeeds if people feel that there is equal effort in participation. You also need to let people know how you plan on communicating about the work if they do agree to collaborate – Case conferences? Phone contact? All visiting participants at the same time? Emails? Skype chats?
Before you actually begin the collaboration, I would also make sure that people know how the group will have mutual accountability. That way if someone is not carrying their load or laboring in the way that was agreed to, there is recourse. If you don’t have this, people can start skipping out and avoiding participation.
How I might go about doing collaboration for the purposes of ending homelessness
Signed Memorandum of Understanding between senior managers in all three sectors of service.
One pager writing out the objectives of the collaboration signed by the frontline staff involved in all three parties.
Outline the steps that will be taken if there is operational conflict.
Identify the first five participants to collaborate on through discussion of all three parties.
Weekly email communication on tactical and operational division of labor across all three parties with specific clients.
Meet the second Friday of the month to discuss broader shared work strategically and actively create debate on approach, technique, and strategies for specific participants.
Summarize results of collaboration to Senior Managers of all three parties on a quarterly basis.
Expand to additional participants (incrementally) after at least two consecutive quarters of effective collaboration, with improved client outcomes.
Reflections on the 20K Homes Campaign from a Canadian Close to the Ground on the 100K Homes Campaign
This blog is part of the “You asked for it” series. In December, on the OrgCode FaceBook page I asked people want blogs they wanted to see. These blogs are a direct response to the most popular suggestions. This one goes out to Tim Richter of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness. He asked for reflections on the Canadian 20K Homes Campaign in light of my exposure to the 100K Homes Campaign in the United States.
My fellow Canadians, congrats on going the route of the 20K Homes Campaign!
If you were at the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness Conference last year in Vancouver, you probably heard Becky Kanis say nice things about me and the VI-SPDAT. That was pretty awesome. In the process, you learned that I was a Canadian close to the 100K Homes Campaign – if you didn’t already know that. I was the only Canadian invited to the White House along with Community Solutions staff and selected higher-performing Campaign Communities in the US. I am fairly certain that no Canadian was closer to the campaign than I was, and I am grateful for that experience and the opportunity to offer some perspective and observations about the campaign that may be helpful as you move forward with the 20K Homes Campaign in Canada.
First of all, you should know that I started as not being a strong vocal supporter of the 100K Homes Campaign. Then, I had my socks blown off by what was being achieved and how Community Solutions went about working with communities to make it happen. What I misunderstood at the start is that the campaign has more to do with reframing how we think about and end homelessness. It isn’t a program; it is a campaign. When I wrapped my head around that, there was much that I was humbled by and learned from in witnessing the progress and achievements of the campaign.
I share these thoughts with you at the invitation of Tim Richter in the hopes that we don’t miss any important lessons from the 100K Homes Campaign that can be considered, refined and improved upon (perhaps) in the Canadian adventure. In no particular order here are 20 reflections:
1. Work with the providers in your community that are on board. You will NOT get everyone on board. And that is okay.
You can have meeting after meeting after meeting trying to get people on board, or you can just start prioritizing and housing amongst the service providers that are on board. Do the latter. Homelessness has never been ended in a Committee, as the 100K Homes Campaign proved.
2. You don’t have to operate a Recovery-Oriented Scattered Site Housing Focused Assertive Community Treatment program for this to work.
When some communities hear discussion of a housing-focused approach to service delivery aligned to Housing First two things can happen: either hands get thrown up in defeat because there is not and will not be a Housing First ACT in their community; or, a group of critics will tell them that they cannot be successful because they do not have a Housing First ACT. Focus on the philosophy of Housing First, more than a particular Housing First intervention to get you started. It is especially true that you can learn how to align to Intensive Case Management aligned to the principles and service orientation with some training of existing organizations – and be successful. You can learn while you are housing people if necessary.
3. This should kick-start your communities approach to coordinated access and common assessment (or build momentum on whatever system you have). That is one of the great legacies of the campaign.
Sure, it is called a “campaign” but I like to think of it as the seeds planted to grow greater things. In dozens – if not hundreds – of communities across the US that we at OrgCode have worked with that were 100K Campaign Communities, we have taken what they have learned to put it into a highly functioning, fair system with effective triaging. This includes all parts of the service delivery sector – street outreach, health services, shelters, transitional housing, drop-in centres, etc. Communities learn how to go about matching the right person/family to the right program in the right order. Communities get out of a first come, first served mindset. They learn what prioritization really means in this line of work and how to operationalize it.
4. We can do a better job in Canada of tracking how many people stay housed and how many people pass away after moving into housing.
It is hard to say with precision how many people stayed housed in the 100K Homes Campaign. To be fair, this was never a stated objective of the 100K Homes Campaign. Also to be fair, there is a subset of data from communities that demonstrates a greater than 80% housing retention rate. Knowing how many people returned to homelessness more precisely, and how many people die after moving into housing is helpful, especially given the nature of vulnerability the program participants expected. I also would suggest having this information will help us improve public policy and programs. We can do this without a massive amount of extra work if we think it through from the beginning.
5. Get at least some supportive housing and social housing providers on board – and early.
This type of housing cannot and will not be the only solution, but they are an important part of the solutions. Higher achieving 100K Homes communities tended to get some preferred access or set asides to supportive housing and other government assisted housing. In your community, this may require thinking through modified chronological access within the legislative framework that your government assisted housing works through sooner rather than later.
6. Work to the targets you set.
The data will guide you on what you need to do in order to achieve your goal. If you work towards the data as a collective, you will reach the outputs necessary to achieve your goal. If you consider the target only an abstract or “nice to do” you will fail. You will find the targets to be audacious to some. But trust me, they are achievable if you do the right things in the right way. While I shudder at the phrase “take down target” that was used in the US campaign, the concept is an important one. You need to know how many people to house per month to reach your goal. 20,000 Canadians housed through the initiative in and of itself is pretty audacious when you consider the size of Canada. On a per capita basis it is higher than the US target.
7. There is no such thing as a perfect prioritization or assessment tool.
You have likely heard a lot about the use of Vulnerability Index (VI) or the Vulnerability Index-Service Prioritization Decision Assistance Tool (VI-SPDAT) used in the 100K Homes Campaign. No prioritization tool is perfect. Pick the one that works best. Do NOT, as some 100K Homes communities attempted early on, to create your own new tool. There isn’t enough time. And besides some other tools have already been proven to work, even with their imperfections. There are loads of Canadian communities using the VI-SPDAT and/or SPDAT products with great success – some for several years. Also, don’t confuse a prioritization tool with the campaign or think that just because you have a prioritization tool you automatically have coordinated access. The tool is just part of it.
8. You don’t need to study this to death, nor do you need the permission of academics to validate what you are doing and why.
We already know that ending homelessness saves money. Do we need another study? That would just be a waste of time. And as Becky and others have so elegantly stated, so many in the academic community are behind where the cutting edge of innovation and practice is at on a day to day basis in communities that are pioneering new ways of thinking and doing. If there are community-minded academics that are on board or want to join you along the way, great. But don’t wait.
9. Go easy on the competition aspects of it.
This was probably one of my least favourite parts of the 100K Homes Campaign. Competition was used as a device to stimulate achieving goals, and was primarily used to get entire communities to buy into achieving success. Competition may work for frontrunners or even middle of the pack communities to get further ahead. For those towards the bottom of the pack, it had little impact, in my experience. Ending homelessness matters. From the perspective of the end user of services, what matters is not who achieved it first.
10. You have the chance to fix some of the problems of your service delivery that have plagued you for a long time.
You’ll need to have some rapid decision-making for your community to reach its target. This often means needing a quick resolution to some barriers. Embrace the action. Do NOT form another committee to study it. For those Canadian communities that run most decisions through a municipal city council, you will need to figure out how to manage this in such a way that does not require taking all major decision points back to Council.
11. You’ll have to use some existing resources differently.
The Campaign doesn’t come with a plethora of new resources. That is part of the magic of it. It forces you to use some existing resources differently. And if you get your head around that, you will probably wonder why you used the resources in any other way in the past. One of the biggest things I saw across US communities and continue to see as the legacy of the Campaign is reinvesting resources that managed homelessness or the symptoms of homelessness into real and immediate solutions to homelessness.
12. Keep the focus simple: getting people housed. You will not solve all of the problems with your community’s approach to ending homelessness through the Campaign.
Your job is to house people. You job is not to fix the mental health system or the addiction recovery system or discharge planning issues. Those are important, but you don’t want to delay or hold up this process to achieve that. You can use the success of your Campaign to demonstrate to those other systems that success is possible despite the faults in the systems that impact homelessness.
13. There will be naysayers. And mean people suck.
You would be hard-pressed to not find someone in the 100K Homes campaign communities that did not absolutely hate it. Sometimes this was an existing service provider that always had done things differently. Sometimes this was a local policymaker that had been trying to coalesce the community around a different priority. Sometimes this was an advocate for homeless persons. Just accept that not everyone will welcome the campaign and what it represents, and some people will be very mean about that on a personal and professional level. You don’t need everyone to agree the Campaign is a good idea. You need to weather the storm of meanness.
14. Get your political leaders on board – if you can. Do not wait for them if you can’t.
Mayors are especially impactful to get on board, even in our weak mayor system in Canada. If nothing else this represents an issue that would benefit from all orders of government working together but essentially lands on the lap of local government to solve. To make this all work, give your local politicians a briefing and the talking points to work off of as it relates to what the Campaign does and does not do.
15. Remember this is about ending homelessness.
Simple, but true, the whole reason for doing this Campaign is to end homelessness one person/family at a time. This transcends subpopulations quite well. The campaign identifies people by name, knows their vulnerability and housing instability risks, and then houses and supports them in order. It does not attempt to solve the root causes of why particular groups of people find themselves homeless in the first place. That would be a different campaign altogether.
16. Other work can springboard from this experience.
Do this well and prove to people it can be done and other major change work can follow suit. But don’t make the mistake of trying to do this and 8 other things at the same time. One of the things the Campaign can teach you and your colleagues in your community (which I wish I had learned earlier in my career) is how narrowly focused attention on doing this Campaign well can provide proof and motivation that change is possible.
17. Get traction in 100 days.
The most important time, I would argue (and many involved in the US Campaign would agree) is the first 100 days. This sets the stage for instant results. Will you make mistakes? Yup. And what you learn in that mistake will lay the groundwork for future success. You may want to learn more about how the amazing folks at the Rapid Results Institute helped accelerate change and achieving results.
18. Have a local spokesperson that knows all of the ins and outs operationally as well as what the broader objectives of the Campaign are about.
You will need a local spokesperson about the Campaign for service providers, homeless persons, media inquiries, elected officials, policy staff, the general public, etc. When I reflect on communities that kicked butt at the Campaign in the US there is one person that comes to mind in each of those cities that I could easily identify as the local spokesperson. There was never ambiguity of who was in charge, who knew all the operational details, etc. This wasn’t always the most typical, highest ranking person historically in the local homeless service delivery system.
19. Prove success and watch more investment come your way.
While not a guarantee, one of the things that has happened in a number of communities is the ability to prove that housing people with really acute needs is possible and that homelessness can be reduced – and quickly! Proving this to government and other funders can actually result in increased investment to the community, as well as a reprofiling of existing resources into those services that are proven to work. It can also spotlight the need for increased investment for particular populations. For example, the Americans showed us that being successful can result in new, larger investment in addressing homelessness amongst veterans. Imagine if in Canada we could get more resources for youth homelessness or homelessness amongst aboriginal persons – and not at the cost of other populations already being served!
20. Community Solutions are the real deal.
These cats know exactly what they are doing. You may feel “But they are American” in the same way that many of our US clients say to us at OrgCode “But you are Canadian”. Great ideas don’t know passports. I know of no organization around the world that makes social change happen at such a pace when it comes to homelessness. They are smart. They are passionate. They know what they are talking about. What they are sharing is a damn good idea – not an American way of thinking about homelessness that won’t work in the Canadian context.
Housing People in Communities with Low Vacancy Rates
This blog is part of the “You asked for it” series. In December, on the OrgCode FaceBook page I asked people want blogs they wanted to see. These blogs are a direct response to the most popular suggestions. This one goes out to Matt Ashdown.
I get it – you want to house people out of homelessness. But – and this is making your life difficult and their life hell – you cannot find any place to rent because the vacancy rate is low. Let me give you three things to ponder for your community.
First of all, the vacancy rate is misleading. Depending on what country you are in, it is captured in different ways. For example, in Canada many may be familiar with CMHC’s Rental Market Survey that comes out in October. Check the fine print. It only reflects buildings with 6 or more units, with three or more storeys. Does it capture the secondary market? No. So while it may tell you what is going on in larger property management firms, it doesn’t tell you much about the entire universe of rental housing stock. Another way the vacancy rate can be misleading is that it doesn’t do a great job at looking at seasonal fluctuations in the rental universe. It is a point in time, which can be a good barometer, but I think we can all agree that communities that are influenced by their college population or seasonal jobs like tourism are bound to experience changes at different times of year. If all people do is look at the vacancy rate and feel defeated and think there is no reason to even bother looking for housing, that is a problem.
Second, once a community gets to a certain size (say 100,000 give or take) it makes more sense to have a housing locator team for the entire community rather than having each organization hunting for and fighting over the same housing stock. If you have done coordinated access and common assessment properly, this is the next step in the evolution of coordination. You want a housing locator that is an expert in the rental market. You don’t want a social worker trying to be a housing locator.
Third – and this one has been a huge boost to several communities I have done work with over the last couple years – go to some of the neighbourhoods known to have the lowest incomes in your city. What will you find? A whole bunch of people that never experience homelessness despite living on meager and insufficient welfare, or having no formal source of income at all (though may participate in the informal economy). Start asking them how they are able to find and maintain housing and then replicate it. Sometimes our problem is that we apply a middle class lens to the issue and are oblivious to how a whole contingent of the community stay housed in tight and unaffordable rental markets.
Re-Housing is Not Failure
Welcome to 2015! Like many others, I suspect you have made a resolution or two for the year ahead. Let me go out on a limb and suggest you – or someone you know – has resolved to lose weight this year.
Obesity is an epidemic. The percentage of the population over-weight is staggering. No doubt, people that are not a healthy body weight deciding to become a health body weight is a good idea.
The science of weight loss is simple: a reduction of 3,500 calories is equal to a reduction of one pound. If you reduce your caloric intake and increase your aerobic exercise, weight will come off.
Some people with their resolution for 2015 are trying a miracle diet of some sort. Even though the science is clear that these are less likely to be sustained changes, people will do anything to find a shortcut to get the weight off.
Many people planning on losing weight have a shiny new gym membership right now. The fitness industry counts on you showing up about now. The first few weeks of this month the gym will be crowded. Then the herd will thin.
See, you know that making a decision to change is relatively easy. Maintaining the change is relatively hard.
By February, the miracle diet will be a thing of the past. People get fed up feeling hungry all the time, or the bland food, or the taste of cabbage or whatever. By February, hitting the gym three or four times a week will become once or twice. By March you may get there once every two weeks. By April you may be regretting buying the 12 month membership.
BUT…
If you are serious about losing weight, you can get right back to it. You can learn from what worked and what did not in the changes to your eating habits. You may come to realize that evidence is your friend, and that appropriate portion control and caloric intake coupled with physical activity is the way to go. You probably recalibrate your expectations and timelines for losing weight. You may enlist the assistance of someone to support you – whether that be a professional or a friend.
What am I getting at?
Sustained change is really difficult. Whether it is losing weight or quitting smoking or reducing drinking or budgeting better or having a more positive peer network or packing a lunch more than going out – any of these sorts of things are hard to maintain.
Then consider, if you will, the experience of a person or family that has been homeless for some time and has a range of things happening in their life that they are coping with on a daily basis. Once they move into housing it may not stick the first time. Being housed represents a dramatic change in their life. There are experiences and skills and challenges that they may be under-prepared to handle.
We shouldn’t punish any household if their housing doesn’t stick the first time. The worst thing we can do is put them to the bottom of some list or not see them as a priority. If they were prioritized by their depth of need to get housed the first time, why would they be a lower priority the next time?
Much like the attempt at weight loss that comes up short the first time (or two or three or ten), so too might the first attempt at being housed out of homelessness. We can learn from the first experience to increase the likelihood of success the second go around (or third or fourth or tenth). The metric that matters isn’t how many people stay at the first address they move into. The metric that matters is how many people stay housed regardless of how many address changes it takes to get to that state of being. Re-housing is not failure. For a large number of people you support you might even say it is expected.