What I Shared at United Way’s Speed Networking Event: Housing Folks with a Criminal Background is about to Become a Lot Easier in Texas

Today I participated in a really cool networking event at United Way of Metropolitan Dallas, “Chat. Connect. Repeat. Speed Networking Event.” The theme for the event was “Referral Guide: Criminal History Backgrounds”. I got to meet some great providers, who are doing excellent work in this area. We each were able to share what each of our organizations do, and how we can mutually learn how to help each other in this area.

Carol Lucky, CEO of Child and Family Guidance Centers, at Chat. Connect. Repeat. (Picture courtesy of United Way of Metropolitan Dallas)

So, first I shared what we do: MDHA leads the development of an effective homeless response system that will make the experience of homelessness in Dallas and Collin Counties rare, brief, and non-recurring.

Then I shared just two system level items we are working on to help with folks’ reentry into society, after coming out of prison. I told them about HB 1510. Here is the summary of this important bill from the Texas Legislature Website:

House Bill 1510 amends the Property Code to establish that a cause of action does not accrue against a landlord or a landlord's manager or agent solely for leasing a dwelling to a tenant with a criminal record. The bill does not preclude a cause of action for negligence in leasing if the tenant was convicted of certain more serious offenses or is subject to sex offender registration and the landlord, manager, or agent knew or should have known of the conviction or adjudication.

Let’s “translate” that into English (with the obvious disclaimer, that I am NOT an attorney, and so none of this should be construed as legal advice). As Calvin Coolidge famously said, the business of the American People is business. And the business of business is to make money. Unfortunately, a corollary to that, is that folks do not want to get sued out of business. So, my business may be to rent out my apartments. However, if I think that if I rent to you, I could get sued, guess who I will not be renting an apartment to? You.

Why might I get sued? Well, say you have a criminal background, and I rent you an apartment. Then you beat up your neighbor. Your neighbor, in our litigious society, might claim that I was negligent simply for renting you the apartment, and I could get sued. Makes sense, right?

Well, no, not really. The facts do not bear out such a concern. As the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition argued in advocating for this legislation, studies have actually shown that, “leasing property to someone with a criminal history who meets the application criteria actually serves to decrease the risk that he or she will commit a new offense… Housing stability has been identified as one of the most critical factors in preventing recidivism and parole violation…”  So, what HB1510 does is remove the danger of that type of lawsuit. Property owners will no longer have to face the danger of a lawsuit, simply for renting property to someone with a criminal history (with some obvious exclusions). This law goes into effect on 1/16/16.

Now, getting the law passed is just the start. Now, we need to educate everyone, landlords, social service providers (especially front line case workers) and consumers about this. The beauty of this is that this is a system change, that requires little if any investment. We don’t need another costly program or complicated grant to use this law to decrease homelessness. We just need to increase knowledge across the system. 

What else did I share with the folks I met with today? Well, we’ve gone a little long, so in the next blog post I will tell you all about that.

(Really) Coping With Tent City (and Homelessness, In General) by Building an Effective Homeless Response System

Two-three months ago Cindy Crain, MDHA President and CEO pulled together a multi-agency Outreach Taskforce to help the folks living in the encampment under I-45. We have been meeting regularly to methodically and thoughtfully address this challenge, with the ultimate goal, of connecting every one of those folks to housing.

On Wednesday morning, MDHA Vice President, Rebecca Cox, along with other members of the Taskforce, was doing her regularly scheduled weekly visit with the folks at the encampment. She discovered something she had not seen during previous visits – a one year old baby.  Rebecca texted Cindy, and they decided then and there that that child and her mother would NOT spend another night there. It turned out that the mother had been connected to housing already. Why was she still there? She needed about $50 for the apartment application fee. This was a classic case of the agency connecting her to housing not being able to pay for that fee due to the specifications of their housing grant. Cindy immediately had cut a check for this. Rebecca picked it up, and hand-delivered it, and the problem was solved.  


Courtesy of Edd Eason, CoC Chair

This is just the type of small expense that often prevents folks from resolving their homelessness situation, and which necessitates a quick, nimble, red-tape-free "Flex Fund." This is one of the programs Cindy mentioned to me her first day on the job in Dallas. She called for it explicitly in her State of the Homeless Address, and we incorporated it into the Continuum of Care Strategic Work Plan. United Way of Metropolitan Dallas, stepped up to the plate, and offered to fund a pilot program for just this purpose. Officially this program hasn’t even begun yet, and we have already helped one mother and her child with it! I will be writing more here and elsewhere about the idea of flex funds, and how they can help make homelessness rare, brief and non-recurring.

On Friday, following careful and methodical work these last two-three months, the same Taskforce was able to connect a good number of folks in the encampment to housing. The Taskforce members will continue to work with the others to connect more and more of them to housing. As part of this effort, Cindy had invited Christopher Herring, of the University of California–Berkeley to advise us, homeless advocates, and community leaders on this issue. 

Chris, who has done extensive field research on tent cities, delivered a fascinating, erudite and down to earth presentation titled, “Coping With Tent City” during our “Hard Conversation” at United Way of Metropolitan Dallas (co-sponsored by CitySquare), with about eighty people in attendance. He talked about commonalities and differences in the roots, nature and character of such encampments, and the constructive and less constructive responses to them. His main argument is that encampment growth correlates not with rises in poverty and homelessness, rather with criminalization of various acts associated with homelessness. This pushes folks experiencing homelessness figuratively and literally to the margins.

You can read more about Friday’s exciting developments and Chris’ presentation in this great piece by our good friend, Tasha Tsiaperas, on the Dallas Morning News blog: Social workers find housing for 21 people living in homeless camp under I-45 - http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2015/08/social-workers-find-housing-for-21-people-living-in-homeless-camp-under-i-45.html/  Tasha references a promising development. The Justice Department just announced last week, that they are taking legal action to contest laws that criminalize homelessness, as violations of the 8th Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Hopefully, this will encourage other communities to approach this issue in a more constructive way, as we are here in Dallas. It’s about time we as a nation, solve problems and not just slap ill-fitting dehumanizing “band-aids” on symptoms. How do you do that? You do that, by building an effective homeless response system, as we are doing at MDHA today.

Rare, Brief and Non-Recurring

Perhaps the most important national body in the homelessness arena is the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH). USICH is an independent Federal agency. Its job is to “coordinate the Federal response to homelessness and to create a national partnership at every level of government and with the private sector to reduce and end homelessness in the nation while maximizing the effectiveness of the Federal Government in contributing to the end of homelessness.” In this capacity, in 2010, it wrote Opening Doors, a national strategic plan to end homelessness. The plan was amended and updated in 2012, updated in 2013, and has just been amended and updated once again.

Check out the full version here: http://usich.gov/resources/uploads/asset_library/USICH_OpeningDoors_Amendment2015_FINAL.pdf

Check out just the 2015 amendments here: http://usich.gov/resources/uploads/asset_library/Summary_Changes_2015_OD_Amendment.pdf



Opening Doors 2015

The following is from the Opening Doors page on the USICH website. I have copied it here and put the main items and functions that MDHA and bodies like it in every community figure heavily into, in bold.

“Opening Doors presents objectives and themes that build upon the lesson that mainstream housing, health, education, and human service programs must be fully engaged and coordinated to prevent and end homelessness. These include:

• Increasing leadership, collaboration, and civic engagement, with a focus on providing and promoting collaborative leadership at all levels of government and across all sectors, and strengthening the capacity of public and private organizations by increasing knowledge about collaboration and successful interventions to prevent and end homelessness.
• Increasing access to stable and affordable housing, by providing affordable housing and permanent supportive housing.
• Increasing economic security, by improving access to education and increasing meaningful and sustainable employment and improving access to mainstream programs and services to reduce financial vulnerability to homelessness.
• Improving health and stability, by linking health care with homeless assistance programs and housing, advancing stability for unaccompanied youth experiencing homelessness and youth aging out of systems such as foster care and juvenile justice, and improving discharge planning for people who have frequent contact with hospitals and criminal justice systems.
• Retooling the homeless response system, by transforming homeless services to crisis response systems that prevent homelessness and rapidly return people who experience homelessness to stable housing.”

I put the entire final point in bold text, because this is the core of where we go from here, but really where we have been headed from the start. After all, the idea of service providers working together as a homeless response system is not new to Dallas. Indeed, Dallas’ ten year plan envisioned such a system, led by MDHA: “A seamless system of care needs to be developed…” Why?  “Individuals benefit from client-centered services that place the burden of coordination on the systems that serve them.”

Laura Green Zellinger, former Executive Director of the USICH, elaborates on this important point in the national context: “With true coordination and collaboration, homeless providers and mainstream systems can work together to create a seamless response that does not expect people to navigate multiple programs in an effort to get their needs met…” This Zellinger emphasizes is the only way we can, “prevent homelessness whenever possible or otherwise ensure that homelessness is a rare, brief, and nonrecurring experience.”

Now, we have to really make this happen. That is why the 2015 amendment provides, “An operational definition for an end to homelessness... An end to homelessness means that every community will have a system in place that ensures homelessness is prevented whenever possible or is otherwise a rare, brief, and non-recurring experience.” (Emphasis mine – DSG.)

This is why MDHA and the Dallas area Continuum of Care developed the Continuum of Care Strategic Work Plan (CoCSWP). It is no coincidence that the subtitle of this document that guides our work this year and next is "Building an Effective Homeless Response System". Through this plan, we are building a system that will deliver on the promise to, “prevent homelessness whenever possible or otherwise ensure that homelessness is a rare, brief, and nonrecurring experience.”

Are you with us?

No, seriously, are you with us? This is not a rhetorical question. As Opening Doors clarifies on the national level and the Continuum of Care Strategic Work Plan (CoCSWP) emphasizes on a local level, the only way we end homelessness is through community wide commitment to making homelessness rare, brief and non-recurring. "Community" means each and every one of us. So, review the CoCSWP, and see where you fit in, and how you can be part of the systemic solution. In other words, we humbly disagree with Pink Floyd. You are not just another brick in the wall.

Duh!

There are complicated areas, where research ends up contradicting and flying in the face of common sense. The Freakonomics books, podcasts etc. are great examples of this. This always makes news too, since man bites dog is news, while dog bites man is not.

Then there is the issue of homelessness. I am surely not the first one to observe that though research is important, it ends up backing up common sense, almost always, so much so, that it leaves you saying to yourself and others, “Duh!” Homelessness is a result of poverty? Duh! Kids that grow up homeless are more likely to be homeless as adults. Really?! We can end homelessness by (wait for it…) housing people. Who’d have thunk it?!

The importance of research in the area of homelessness is not to tell us something we don’t know. It is to remind of what we do know, prod us to stop flogging dead horses, and get on with delivering solutions that really work. Daniel Patrick Moynihan may have said that you are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own set of facts, but we all know that today that seldom holds true. We need to be reminded of what the data indicates, so can get on with finishing the job of ending homelessness, instead of just managing it.

This study reported last week by the Seattle Times’ Caitlin Moran is a perfect example of this. The title is clearly in the dog bites man category, “Study finds housing vouchers best way to keep kids in same school.” The subtitle won’t make you fall off your seat either, “Students who change schools are likely to fall behind academically, and helping families get stable housing can prevent that.”

In the introduction to the study itself Katherine M. O’Regan, Assistant Secretary for Policy Development & Research, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, says, “This report documents outcomes at 18 months, presenting striking evidence of the power of offering a permanent subsidy to a homeless family. Families who were offered a housing voucher experienced significant reductions in subsequent homelessness, mobility, child separations, adult psychological distress, experiences of intimate partner violence, school mobility among children, and food insecurity at 18 months. Moreover, the benefits of the voucher intervention were achieved at a comparable cost to rapid re-housing and emergency shelter and at a lower cost than transitional housing.”

To summarize the study, one word, “Duh!”

Rapid Rehousing is Resting Comfortably…

Dr. Iain De Jong

I spent years teaching in various formal and informal settings, from middle school through graduate school, from sitting around a campfire with kids to sitting down with doctors and teaching them continuing medical education. I always tried to emphasize that you always need to question what you are told, what you hear, what you read. I always cautioned that you need to keep in mind that very few issues have black and white explanations or silver bullet solutions. You must read between the lines, and always question the agenda, motive and point of view of the writer or speaker.

I mention this in light of the recent reports of the supposed demise and failure of Rapid Rehousing, not in some partisan rag, but on NPR (shudder!) Well, thankfully, Dr. Iain De Jong, of OrgCode, reminds us in an excellent blog post that, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of Rapid Rehousing have been greatly exaggerated. If anything, when programs work properly, the evidence points to the very opposite. Read the full blog post here: Does Rapid ReHousing Work? Well, it depends.

While there, check out this cool video, which De Jong links to in the blog post, where he walks us through “Housing First 101”. Stay tuned for more to come in August about Dr. De Jong’s visit to Dallas. We will be hosting a Hard Conversation, where he will discuss this issue, in a talk entitled, “Who Deserves Housing First?”

9 Easy Things You Can Do Today to Really Truly Help MDHA

I know; it is mid-summer, and you are sitting there saying to yourself, “Self, how can I help MDHA?” I am glad you asked. Here is the answer (or nine answers, really):

1. Tell three people about what we do. Use www.mdhadallas.org as a cheat sheet.

2. Read our CoC Strategic Work Plan, and find an item or task you can help us and the community with to help end homelessness in Dallas and Collin Counties.

3. Read our e-newsletter, forward it to others, and ask them to sign up by texting MDHA to 22828 or sending an email to david.gruber@mdhadallas.org

4. Add (something like) this to your email signature: End Homelessness – Support MDHA - www.mdhadallas.org

5. “Like” us and “invite” others to “like” us on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/MDHADallas

6. Follow our Twitter feed at https://twitter.com/MDHA2

7. Come to our next Hard Conversation

8. Become an MDHA Champion - http://mdhadallas.org/donate

9. Copy this to your calendar on September 17, 2015: North Texas Giving Day - Don’t Forget to Give to MDHA! Click here: http://northtexasgivingday.org/#npo/metro-dallas-homeless-alliance

As a Consumer – What Do I Need From the Homeless Response System?

If possible not to become homeless, by self-resolving, with the system's assistance – I need the system’s light touch;

If I am homeless, and can rapidly rehouse and get on with my life, do so quickly, efficiently and in a way that will end my homelessness – I need the system's moderate touch;

If I am homeless, especially if I am chronically homeless, and due to disability, substance abuse or other long term and entrenched challenges, cannot rapidly rehouse, be housed in permanent supportive housing, in a way that will end my homelessness – I need the system's heavy touch.

Regardless, whoever I approach should ensure I connect with a homeless response system, which views me as a distinct individual, objectively assesses my needs, and addresses them through this one lens: "What solutions does this person need to quickly and efficiently end their homelessness?"