Overwhelmingly Affordable Housing
192 units of housing. For as low as $25 per month.
Seriously. It’s called The Tower. And it’s owned and operated by Crossroads Rhode Island in Providence.
The Tower is 100% subsidized. This makes it possible for rents to be as low as $25 for individuals with $0 income, and others paying slightly more based upon her/his income (and only paying 30% of their income on housing). The balance of the subsidy comes either through Providence Housing Authority Section 8 or the State Rental Subsidy Program.
When communities talk about having no housing for people that do not have an income, I wish they could learn more about housing opportunities like this one.
The 9-storey building is about 100 years old. It was previously owned by the YMCA, and then came to be part of Crossroads’ housing portfolio. How did Crossroads secure this gem? The building was purchased from the Y in 2002. At the time of the purchase, it was divided into condominiums, the Tower being one, 16 apartments being another, and the Crossroads Agency space being a third. Funds to purchase and renovate the Tower and Apartments came from a variety of sources including LIHTC, HOME, and mortgage financing to name a few.
On two floors of the Tower there are the 16 full, spacious apartments. They are complete with a full bathroom and full kitchen. The only condition to access these apartments is having a disability and have been formerly homeless.
On all of the other floors, there are 176 private single room occupancy units that, while not as spacious as the apartments, offer a private, secure place to sleep. One of the floors is solely for women. There are shared bathroom and shower facilities on each of these floors. On these floors, residents can have a microwave in her/his unit, but cannot have a hot plate. Good news, there is a community agency close by that serves breakfast and lunch every day, and Crossroads offers dinner to the residents each day.
This isn’t transitional housing. Residents can stay as long as they like. It is permanently affordable for those that need it to be and choose to stay there.
Like many housing providers, they have struggled over the years to balance the needs and safety of residents with guest management. Appreciating the shared washroom spaces and public spaces within the building, after many consultations with residents the decision was made to restrict access and not allow overnight guests. On site security provides a concierge type function to ensure that residents are safe.
Crossroads personnel make strategic efforts to be involved with the residents in the Tower. There are case management services. There are socio-recreational activities like an arts class.
Crossroads has been going through a detailed, deliberate process for about a year now to align their programs and services with ending homelessness. The Tower is an important tool that the organization is able to leverage in this pursuit. Access to a unit in the Tower when there is a vacancy is moving towards being based on acuity.
How much does it cost to operate the housing on an annual basis? The annual operating budget for Tower and 16 Apartments is approximately $1,179,000. Additionally, there is another $80,000 in supportive service expenses, which do not flow through the LP, but are targeted to it and included in the Crossroads budget.
If you want to learn more, feel free to contact Karen Santilli with Crossroads Rhode Island: Karen Santilli ksantilli@crossroadsri.org
5 Internal Thoughts of Program Leaders
Over the past month or so I have been tapping some managers, team leaders, supervisors and directors on the shoulder to get their input on a range of matters as I revamp some of our leadership training. Every one is in some type of middle-management position. These are all people I respect on many levels and where trust has been built over time. Because of that trust, one of the things I have been interested in knowing from a handful of them are the internal thoughts that they can never share with their staff, but which goes through their minds more than perhaps they’d like to admit. This is by no means scientific, but the common threads of the responses even though they work in different cities and different types of services I found to be quite illuminating.
If you are a leader of people, perhaps you can see yourself in these. If you are a frontline staff person, know that it is quite possible your boss is thinking these very things today. And if you are the boss of the boss, you may want to think about how you can provide support to these five common internal thoughts.
1. “I miss the rush of the frontline.”
You can work your butt off to move up the ladder and end up in a supervisory position. You may do so because you think you have perspective and expertise that will be of value to an entire staff team, and perhaps do even better things for all the people that are served by your organization. And while you were exhausted in all those years in the trenches, there is something that is missing in the day to day routine of supervising people instead of interacting with end users of your organization’s services. Some days the boss wishes they weren’t the boss anymore and were right back up to their eyeballs in interacting with service users.
2. “I wish people knew how to solve their own problems.”
Pretty much everyone in a supervisory position knows that part of their job is going to be managing difficult situations or navigating new terrain, along with settling conflicts. But managing people is not always the reason people were attracted to supervision and can really wear a supervisor down. Every one I connected with wished their staff team spent more time trying to solve their own problems and less time dumping the problem on the supervisor’s lap to be solved for them.
3. “I don’t have this all figured out…at least not all the time.”
Supervisors are rarely in a position where they can be candid with their staff and say “I don’t know” and not end up being eaten alive, losing the trust and confidence of the team, or even losing their job. While staff members may second guess decisions made or even think the boss has her/his head stuck up their butt on some matters, they at least think the boss has a plan. What has become clear in these conversations is that a lot of the time supervisors don’t have the answers to problems or situations that their staff thinks that they have. And sometimes that is very scary.
4. “I am lonely.”
You have no doubt heard that things are lonely at the top. Turns out they are lonely in the middle to. You can be friendly with your staff, but they aren’t your friends. And you can’t always turn to your own boss out of fear of them thinking you don’t know how to be competent at your job. And so it would seem a lot of supervisors acknowledge their own loneliness without having an outlet for it. Plus, as a supervisor you know some of the candid details of the inner-workings of the organization like financial and legal stuff that you can’t share with any of the people that report to you and which you spend the bulk of your day with, so there is no capacity to process it with other people. And on top of all that, it is lonely to know that people that report to you are likely bad-mouthing or second-guessing you…at least some of the time.
5. “I don’t make as much money as you think I do.”
Supervisors that I spoke with are struggling to pay their bills and get by each month not unlike their own staff. They are not making obscene gobs of cash more than the people that report to them. But they point out that when there is any sort of staff event or a chat over a coffee or an accepted lunch invitation by staff there always seems to be an expectation that they will pick up the tab.
Bring Your Work – and Passion for it – To Life
What are the core values of your organization? Do you know? Are they buried in an orientation manual? Somewhere on your website, but your just not sure where? Are they something you are required to recite but you don’t really know what they mean – or even how to live them in your work?
Values fuel the passion that allows us to bring our work to life. It is the thing that resonates with us on a personal, emotional level that drives us to not only show up each day, but to be the best that we can be.
I beg you not just to talk about your organization’s core values. Write them down. Then put them everywhere. Posters on doors. Near the mailroom. In the lunchroom. On the elevator. At the entrance to the workplace. In offices. Front and center on your website and throughout your digital presence. It may sound like overload, but this will provide tangible evidence of what is valued in your organization. And heck, on our worst, busiest days having a visual reminder may just be the nugget that keeps us going.
Start every staff meeting and training session you have with a discussion about your values and how to live and practice it in your work. Make it real and operational. The more people can talk about how they are living their values, the more value they get out of their work.
Perhaps you are reading this and thinking: But I’ve got a talented group that seems to like coming to work and we don’t have this, so I don’t see why we need it.
First of all, I think you are lucky to have such a talented group of A+ people that are driven and seem happy. This exercise allows you to keep galvanizing that amazing group around the core values.
Secondly, see this as a way of establishing a sustainable culture of excellence within your organization. The amazing, talented group of driven people will not be there forever. Some will retire. Others may move on to other organizations or types of work. If you want to have a legacy of staff that are anchored in a set of shared values, this is a great way to do it.
Thirdly, it is rare for an organization nowadays to not change some of its services or offerings throughout the years. This may mean expansion. Can you carry your values through expansion? Will the values go away if the team you have is dismantled or reconfigured in any way? What if you have to downsize part of what you do…will the values survive if there are a smaller number of people involved?
Fourthly, you can recruit people who are a more natural fit for your awesome team if you can speak to the values that are important. People that are considering working with you know that there is a shared values set, and that those values drive the work.
Bring your passions to life in work by focusing on those core values. Write them down. Plaster them everywhere. Talk about them in staff meetings. Make them much more than just a token exercise and you’ll see the benefits.
Embracing the “I Don’t Know”: How Admitting Blind Spots Helps you Get Better
One of the keys to success is to never stop learning. One of the most certain roads to failure is to think you have it all figured out. And yet we have a culture of false confidence, bravado, fake assuredness, and feelings of failure when we don’t have all the answers. Admitting to others we don’t have all the answers (or maybe don’t even know all the questions to ask) positions us into the realm of vulnerability. It is unfortunate that being vulnerable in this regard in our society is so often seen as weakness instead of strength.
Whenever possible we should continue to do our due diligence to research answers, analyze the possibilities of adaptation to circumstance, and replicate practices, procedures and programs when there is an evidence base to support it.
But take a step back and ask yourself: How did those people ever get to a place where they created this (thing, knowledge, solution, etc.) because of the same/similar problem or circumstance?
They got there from embracing the “I Don’t Know”.
“I Don’t Know” stimulates discussion of possibilities.
“I Don’t Know” inspires involvement.
“I Don’t Know” gets people out of thinking they know everything.
“I Don’t Know” is the fuel for continuous improvement.
“I Don’t Know” creates new solutions that become part of the library of potential answers to others when they don’t know.
If you/your organization/your community never says, “I Don’t Know” you are essentially stating you have complete expertise…that you have all the answers. Sometimes it will be possible to find the answer you are looking for elsewhere and truly replicate it with meaning where you are. In other instances the journey that starts with “I Don’t Know” leads down a road of innovation to find or create the answer that never previously existed.
Create a culture where people are encouraged to admit when they don’t know things; when they are seeking answers to situations or problems for which no answer is immediately known. Don’t shame people for having the absence of information. Embrace the possibility of finding the information required or creating a solution where one did not previously exist.
Learning to Let Go of Envy
That guy is always on the news talking about his program.
Why does the funder always take people to look at their program?
I wish I had their donor pool.
Why were they selected for pro bono technical assistance?
I think our community deserves some national attention for all of our great ideas compared to some of the other places I always hear about.
Envy. I hear it. I see it. I have been subject to it. I have felt it. I am learning more about it and thought I would use this blog to share some thoughts on it that one of my mentors recently shared with me, and which I found very helpful:
1. Don’t deny when you are feeling envious
Envy is fueled by our emotions, rationalized by the context that we find ourselves in. If we deny that we are feeling envious we are more likely to become disconnected from the things we are passionate about, or worse, become hostile towards those that we are envious of.
2. Consider the big picture
Perhaps you have felt envious only to later learn that the person or program that you held up on a pedestal was secretly dealing with its own struggles, fears, irrational thoughts, insecurity, or even envy of others? What we are envious of is often just part of the complete package, and when taken out of context, can even dehumanize the others involved, seeing those that we are envious of as objects, not people with feelings.
3. Take time to acknowledge your own talents, strengths and accomplishments without being conceited or boastful
To be clear, being self-aware and self-appreciating is not intended to be an exercise in inflated ego. When we take time to acknowledge our own talents, strengths and accomplishments we are more likely to understand and appreciate how we are making contributions too. And when we can’t see it in ourselves, one of the things that I feel important about in teams (as some of you have experienced in my trainings) is how and when to acknowledge the contributions of others.
4. Figure out how what you are feeling envious about can actually make you better
Envy can make us aware of things in our life that are attainable to us as well if we seize opportunities, apply ourselves and gain the experience. Envious that someone is the Executive Director of a program? Gather mentors that are EDs, find work experience that can help prepare you, and actually apply for ED jobs when they become available. Envious that someone seems to be the “go to” person for the media on matters that are important to you? Cultivate contacts in the media and put out your own media availability and press releases. And I could go on.
There is much that can be learned about envy and our emotional responses to the situation that cause us to feel the emotion. Turning those natural feelings into a strength and opportunity for growth is an important lesson.
Why We Need to Think and Act Like a System if We Want to End Homelessness, Improve Housing Options or Solve Any Other Major Social Issue
“Systems-thinking” isn’t just the flavor du jour. It isn’t a fancy way of talking about organizations working cooperatively or in partnership with one another. It is critical for addressing complexity inherent in human service systems given the diversity of service recipients, service organizations, and context(s) in which both the recipients and organizations function.
Many types of human service delivery try to figure out how to get the right person/family to the right type of service at the right time. That is a great thing. But in order to really tackle that issue, we have to accept three things:
The experience of each individual/family is complex that lead them to seeking or needing service. We can neither control nor predict all of the influences on the individual/family nor the response the individual/family has to each influence.
Organizing services and benefits is complicated across multiple entities. Without a “brain” function to provide influence organizations do not self-regulate and manage particularly well and are more likely to be self-centered than end-user centered. Let me put this another way…without a “mission control” function a person/family would likely need to go to or call multiple organizations to find the one that best meets their needs rather than having a central place to get that information. Throughout this process the organization is more likely to try to determine if the person/family is a good fit for their program rather than trying to determine of all the programs that exist within a particular geographic area which one is the best one based upon assessed needs.
When there is an evidence-base (rather than luck or just what “feels right”) in human service delivery, the intervention side of things is actually quite simple. If person x presents with a certain condition and intervention y is provided then it is reasonable to expect z. Now “simple” doesn’t mean it is easy. Goodness knows there are no shortage of individuals and families that seeking services that exhibit a range of emotional reactions and behaviors as a result of a plethora of reasons in their life. But, separating the interpersonal interaction from the work that will achieve the most likely positive outcome is functionally different in how we go about delivering services to people.
Human service delivery is too dynamic to come to a complete standstill. Nor is the human condition such that people stop seeking/needing services for any period of time as a collective mass. Services don’t stop and people don’t stop wanting service at the same time that changes may be desired to the service delivery system.
Getting nerdy here, but Critically Systemic Discourse is valuable as we think about the collection of agents and organizations and actors therein. One of my students, Fleurie, recently reminded me of this in her Plan of Study. She notes “all systems maps and models are inherently incomplete”.
Communities don’t need a perfect system for trying to ensure that a person or family gets the best possible results from the organization best designed to meet their needs. The system will always be in somewhat of a state of flux, hopefully moving towards true continuous improvement. However, while the system will always be in motion, that doesn’t mean steps can’t be taken to improve the system as a whole while it is moving. Some advice in that regard:
Make sure the tool that assesses people’s needs is grounded in evidence and is oriented to getting the right person/family to the organization best designed to meet their needs.
Examine your assets across organizations in the community. You cannot fund the same services in the same organizations year after year and actually have a responsive system. Needs will change. So too should the service offerings and organizations delivering the services.
The most compelling proof of where and how the system needs to be moving comes not from the organizations but from the end users of services as well as those that tried to have service needs met but could not within the current array of service offerings. Unfortunately, policy makers are more likely to ask service providers about service gaps rather than speaking directly to those that do not have needs fully met within the current service offerings.
If you are serious about improving the human condition, you likely need an agent whose sole job is to move, coordinate, evaluate and challenge the system as a whole. Impartial and not tied to the funding of any particular program, this person is not beholden to existing solely for the sake of existing. As my business partner and the Founder of OrgCode, John Whitesell is quick to point out (I’m paraphrasing what he would say much more eloquently), “Never underestimate an organization’s desire for self-preservation.