All homeless service
providers must practice full transparency, by reporting all data into the
Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), the federally-mandated
community wide database, that drives improvement of homeless services programs,
without exception (barring issues of safety). Reporting into HMIS is not simply
an issue of bureaucratic compliance. This is the only way we know if and how
much progress our community is making. More importantly, this is the only way
we can improve and self-correct, where we are not[i].
In the last three years, Dallas made huge strides,
specifically, in this area. For instance, as late as 2014, no emergency
shelter beds were reported into HMIS. It is impossible to assess system performance,
in the absence of data on the point of entry into homelessness. Therefore,
communities that do not have that data in their HMIS are routinely penalized
for it, as Dallas
was. However, unlike the housing programs, funded through the Continuum of Care
(CoC) Program, MDHA cannot simply require shelters to enter their data. MDHA
methodically worked with each of the major shelters, and over the last three
years brought most of them into the system. As of December 2017, with the
Salvation Army adding all of their 700 beds into the system, 57% of shelter
beds are now entered into HMIS. In 2018, we will meet and exceed the
standard set by the Federal Government, 86%. These simple numbers,
important as they are, bely a more fundamental shift in the HMIS, here
in Dallas. In
early 2015, MDHA and its partners began a discovery process that led the Continuum
of Care (CoC) to adopt a new HMIS system, built from the ground up, by a
non-profit founded by the Parkland
Health and Hospital System, PCCI[ii],and its for-profit affiliate,Pieces Tech[iii].This system was designed to be part of a larger ecosystem tracking individuals
as they move through the healthcare system and social service organizations, Pieces
Iris.
Dr.
Steve Miff, PCCI
Pieces Iris was born out of the recognition that limited
communication between the healthcare system and social service organizations,
may cause vital information to slip through the cracks. The idea was to create
a seamless system that connects healthcare and community-based organizations,
allowing for smart sharing of information that makes a tangible difference in
the lives of the most vulnerable populations[iv].
As PCCI President and CEO, Dr. Steve Miff, told theBecker Hospital Review[v],
in September 2017, “Up to 50 percent of clinical outcomes are driven by social,
economic or environmental factors, and not necessarily related to the direct
care the individual received. That has basically set the stage and created the
need for this solution to connect communities, and through that, to drive
personalized medicine." Over the course of the last
three years, MDHA, PCCI and Pieces Tech worked hand in hand to launch the new
HMIS, which went live in mid-2017. AsPolitico Magazine[vi]wrote in December 2017, Pieces Iris is already, “having a powerful impact on
overwhelmed homeless organizations in Dallas…
The availability of data showed… that homeless people were 167% more likely to
have emergency room visits than the non-homeless population, and that from 300
to 400 homeless were arrested in Dallas
each month. Neither of these pieces of information was shocking, but they gave
[MDHA President and CEO, Cindy J.] Crain data she could take to officials to
try to influence policy on homelessness. If she could show that housed people
needed fewer EMS transports, ER visits and less time in jail, then, she
reasoned, ‘I can make a business case to say, it’s not only the moral thing to
bring housing to these homeless, mentally ill people. It’s going to save you
money. If you don’t serve these people they’ll die in the street or eat you
alive with these public response systems.’” Finally, one glaring fact
that “jumps out” at anyone who analyzes the data on homelessness in Dallas, is the overrepresentation
of African Americans in the homeless population. Since late 2016, with the
support of theUnited Way of Metropolitan Dallas[vii]Unite Dallas Relief Fund[viii],we are
partnering with six other cities, towards establishing more racial equity in
homeless services, through SPARC (Supporting Partnerships
for Anti-Racist Communities)[ix],
a new research and action program from the Center
for Social Innovation(C4)[x].
I know what you are saying
to yourself: Great, another hot take onBlack Panther, the zillionth one so far. Hear me out,
though. I am not really into comic
books. I can think of only one comic book series, recently, which I have
watched in full, Jessica Jones. That should tell you something. I have gone to
comic book movies, because my children have dragged me to them, but these
experiences have only reinforced my understanding that I am not the audience
for these flicks. So, I really didn’t know what to expect when my 17-year-old
wanted me to go to Black Panther with him, but go I did.
Wow. Like many people, I was blown away, and you can
read critics’ reviews, to find out
why. You don’t need me for that. I did want to address the message, which I
found uplifting, even if my kid is right that the way it was presented was a
little too ham-fisted. I really could not stop thinking about the film and its
message, and I wondered why. Then I got it. I could not stop thinking about it,
because it is so close to the work we do here every day.
Earlier this week on this
blog, and last week on social media and via email, we shared the news of the Center
for Social Innovation’s first public reporton incredible
work they have engaged in with the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance (MDHA),
and five other cities, towards establishing racial equity in homeless services,
throughSPARC(Supporting
Partnerships for Anti-Racist Communities), a new research and action program. One of the ideas that we, at
MDHA, have brought to the forefront of Dallas
consciousness these last 16 months, is that homelessness in Dallas is largely about race. When around
60-70% of those experiencing homelessness are African-American, the question
Larry James, CEO of CitySquare was asked in public in mid-2016, “Why do you
have to make this about race,” is self-evident in its willful blindness. Once you remove the scales
from your eyes, be it regarding homelessness in Dallas, be it regarding the history of
colonialism, you have two options that can explain the challenges Africans and
African-Americans face. Option 1, and this is the option our region of the
country held on to firmly into the mid-sixties: There is something wrong with
Africans and African-Americans. Hopefully, that sentence just made you flinch,
but don’t think that approach does not still exist in our world. The “great”
thing about this approach is that it demands no action on our part, as a local
or global society. Option 2, and, spoiler
alert, this option is the one backed up by a pesky thing called data or facts:
What we see today is the result of how colonial powers treated Africa, and our
society in Dallas
treated and often still treats African Americans.
Black Panther allows us to
imagine what would have happened had colonial powers not plundered Africa of its natural and human resources. Beyond that,
it imagines an Africa with superior natural
resources, that breeds technology beyond our wildest dreams. Though my
17-year-old might think this is a little too inelegant a presentation, I find
the simplicity of it refreshing. The message of the Afro-Futuristic past and
present of Wakanda is: The only difference between the condition of real world Africa and its diaspora and Wakanda is that the former
lacks the resources of the latter, and that the latter suffered the trauma that
did not befall the former. To bring it back to homelessness in Dallas: The
difference between the white person who is housed and the black person
experiencing homelessness, is that the black person comes from a traumatized
community, robbed of its resources, and the white person does not.
Ok, so practically speaking,
what now? The movie explores three paths. Path 1 is the status quo, the path of
Wakanda up until that point, which was, essentially, to do nothing. Both Killmongerand the Black Panther realize that that path is no
longer tenable. Path 2 is the path of Killmonger, the villain, who is
uncharacteristically for comic books, rather nuanced. He favors the Wakandans
treating the world like the world treated Africa.
Path 3 is the path that the Black Panther chooses, that Wakanda begin to share
its resources with the African Diasporas, in order to create racial
equity.
We, as Americans,
confronting a crisis of homelessness, that has lasted for forty years have to
decide what to do in our real world. TheSPARC reportis unflinching in
its assessment: The homelessness field
stands at a crossroads: continue to use color-blind strategies to solve an
entrenched social problem that disproportionately impacts people of color, or
embrace a racial equity approach to addressing homelessness… Commitment to
racial equity must permeate all other tactics and strategies that cities,
counties, states, and the nation use to prevent and end homelessness… Unless we
as a field address structural racism within housing, homelessness response,
criminal justice, child welfare, employment, education, and health care, we
will continue to witness high rates of homelessness for people of color. Our
responses must be ambitious and focused on dismantling racist structures,
systems, and programs. We, in Dallas, stand at a crossroads too. There is
no escaping that. Will we have the courage to rise to the challenge? Will we
have the courage to marshal our abundant resources to end homelessness and
create racial equity in this and all other areas? Only time will tell.
Since late 2016, with the
support of theUnited Way of Metropolitan Dallas'Unite Dallas Relief Fund, we, at
the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance (MDHA), have been partnering with five
other cities, towards establishing racial equity in homeless services, throughSPARC(Supporting Partnerships for Anti-Racist
Communities), a new research and action program from the Center for Social Innovation(C4). Our motivation to join this
effort was born out of the deeply tragic and difficult
work of assisting in closing multiple large homeless encampments, in 2016. MDHA
President and CEO, Cindy J. Crain, described the realization that experience
brought about, “The truth of the dramatic overrepresentation of persons of
color, predominantly black, in this population, was right in front of us. Our
annual homeless counts and periodic reporting to the Federal Government
affirmed these facts too. We wanted our community’s experience to be a part of
a greater body of research and action necessary to effect system change and
address this racial disparity head on.”
Cindy J. Crain, with a
friend, in 2016
Today, March 2, 2018, the
Center for Social Innovation released itsfirst public report, based on
careful analysis of qualitative and quantitative data, from Dallas and five
other cities, including, “111,563 individual records of people from HMIS
(homeless management information systems)… 148 oral histories of people and data
from 18 focus groups in six communities across the United States.” (pg. 4) The research and action over
the course of the last 16 months has shown us, as it has shown the Center for
Social Innovation researchers that, “it is critical to understand that racial
equity should not simply be another initiative or program that is implemented
in the mix with other strategies. Instead, commitment to racial equity must
permeate all other tactics and strategies that cities, counties, states, and
the nation use to prevent and end homelessness.” (pg. 21) We are thankful to United Way of
Metropolitan Dallas, and to all our friends and supporters who have traveled
and continue to travel with us on this journey of social justice, and we invite
you read thefull report.
One glaring fact that
"jumps out" at anyone who analyzes the data on homelessness in Dallas, is the
overrepresentation of African Americans in the homeless population. Since late
2016, with the support of theUnited Way of Metropolitan Dallas' Unite Dallas Relief Fund, we are partnering with six
other cities, towards establishing more racial equity in homeless services,
through SPARC(Supporting Partnerships for Anti-Racist Communities), a new research and
action program from the Center
for Social Innovation(C4).
Cindy J. Crain and Rev. Dr.
Michael W. Waters
In Early
February theRaikes
Foundationand the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundationinvited all of the
six cities, as well as national leaders and funders to participate in the Center
for Social Innovation's first-of-its-kind national summit on Racial
Equity and Homelessness, at the headquarters of the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation, in Seattle, Washington. Representing MDHA and Dallas
were Cindy J. Crain, MDHA President and CEO, David S. Gruber,
MDHA Development and Communications Director, and Rev. Dr. Michael W. Waters,
Pastor of Joy
Tabernacle AME Church.
We are already putting what
we learned into action, and Cindy will share more of our upcoming plans in this
area during the State of the Homeless Address. That's just one more
reason to RSVP
today!
TheMDHA Homeless Response System Community
Dashboard Race Addendum, highlights the above mentioned overrepresentation,
and zeros in on three specific groups, veterans, emergency shelter (ES) guests
and permanent supportive housing (PSH) residents. In all three groups, it
includes overall percentages. With regards to veterans, it highlights percentages
of those housed and those newly coming into the system. With regards to emergency
shelter (ES) guests and permanent supportive housing (PSH) residents, it
highlights positive exits to permanent housing (PH), as well as negative exits.
As with the MDHA Homeless Response System Community
Dashboard last released, it includes a Housing Priority List
(HPL) tracker. This HPL tracker, however, is broken down specifically by
race. This provides a visually arresting display of the overrepresentation of African
Americans in the homeless population, over the course of the last twelve
months. As Lester R. Collins, Jr., our Continuum of Care Performance Analyst
points out, when viewed in tandem,with the standard HPL tracker,
what stands out is how little difference one sees. With the overrepresentation
of African Americans in the homeless population being so high, this is not
surprising.
This coming February, MDHA
will participate in SPARC’s 2018 Racial Equity and Homelessness Summit: Redesign with Racial Equity, in Seattle, Washington,
underwritten by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the
Raikes Foundation. Attending on our behalf are Cindy J. Crain, MDHA
President and CEO, Shanette Eaden, City of Plano Housing and Community Services
Manager and MDHA board member, David S. Gruber, MDHA Development and
Communications Director, Larry James, CitySquare CEO, and Rev. Dr. Michael W.
Waters, founder and Senior Pastor of Joy Tabernacle African Methodist Episcopal
(A.M.E.) Church. This summit will bring together SPARC communities, national
and local leaders, and philanthropic partners for an in-depth conversation
about how to center racial equity within homelessness prevention and response
systems. We look forward to sharing these innovative tools, highlighted here
today, with summit attendees.
It’s hard to believe that
the first time we discussed the disproportionate representation of African
Americans in Dallas’ homeless population, on this blog, was just a little
over nine months ago. Since then, we have endeavored to make the glaring racial
disparities in homelessness an integral part of every conversation surrounding
homelessness in our community.
With the help of a generous
grant fromUnited Way of Metropolitan Dallas’ Unite Dallas Relief Fund, we are
in the midst of a research and action program from the Center
for Social Innovation(C4) titled “Racism and Homelessness - Addressing
Inequity in 10 American Cities”, nicknamed SPARC (Supporting
Partnerships for Anti-Racist Communities). In the words of C4, “While no single
initiative can end structural racism across all systems, we believe,” that
through this initiative we can, “create positive change in attitudes and
behaviors that will begin to close the racial gap that has led to the
disproportionate prevalence… of homelessness among African Americans.”
Hard Conversations: Racism
and Homelessness
We launched the program,
with a number of activities in late November 2016, including a
first round of training for service providers, and the first meeting of a
planning body to help MDHA and C4 shepherd this program in Dallas. The highlight that month was an
installment of our Hard Conversations series onRacism
and Homelessness. It was a packed house, in what could only be
described as a combination of a church service and rock concert, with some
serious learning and consciousness raising.
In February, C4 staff spent
a week here in Dallas
collecting qualitative data. They held focus groups with individuals
experiencing homelessness, case managers and other front-line professionals,
and mid to upper management personnel of service providers. They recorded about
twenty Story corps style interviews with persons experiencing homelessness,
where these individuals shared their life histories. Through this qualitative
research, which they are conducting in all participating cities, they are looking
for patterns in how people of color enter homelessness and what barriers
prevent them from rapidly and permanently exiting homelessness.
We also spent time that
week, MDHA and C4 staff together, meeting with a variety of stakeholders in the
community to seek their guidance and input, including a large group of
African-American and allied clergy, and leaders of other anti-racism efforts in
our community. We also had another in-person meeting of the local planning body
we had formed to help us shepherd this effort, whom we have and continue to
meet with regularly over the phone.
2017 State of the Homeless
Address
During the State of the Homeless Address in March,
Cindy J. Crain, MDHA’s President and CEO, shared the relevant data on racism
and homelessness, from the 2017 Homeless Count, and the Homeless Management
Information System (HMIS). These numbers reiterated what the 2016 Homeless
Count numbers showed us already: 60-70% of those experiencing homelessness in
our community are African-American. She vowed that MDHA would continue to work
to, “counter the systemic influences that created such extraordinary disparity
with systemic changes.”
Currently, as C4 analyzes
the qualitative data collected here in Dallas at the end of February, they are
also in the process of collecting quantative data from the HMIS system, which
they will subject to rigorous analysis. They have also begun to connect us with
the other cities they are working with in a budding online learning
collaborative, where we are sharing our challenges, and how we are beginning to
tackle them. It is fascinating to see the commonalities and differences between
the different communities regarding the connections between racism and
homelessness.
C4 encouraged us, from the
beginning of this process, to develop and incorporate structural changes that
could begin to move the needle on racism and homelessness in Dallas. To that end, as we developed our newContinuum of Care (CoC) Strategic Work Plan,
with our partners in theCoCGeneral Assembly, we included
as an overarching goal, addressing racial disparities in homelessness and
service delivery. We encourage you, the reader, to review these action items to
see how you can help.
A key action item pertains
to one of our most important innovations in our homeless response system this
year, theMDHA Homeless Response System Community
Dashboard. It provides a quarterly snapshotof the core
system metrics that inform us on achievements in moving individuals to
permanent housing. We will add an addendum to this important tool, which will
capture, along racial and ethnic lines, who is homeless and in need of housing.
Even more importantly, it will inform the community on how well we are
utilizing the housing resources we have, in a way that promotes racial equity
and begins to eliminate racial disparities in service delivery.
Promoting racial equity in
service delivery begins “at home”. What do we mean by that? During the State of
the Homeless Address, Cindy Crain shared a slide that showed the racial and
gender breakdown of the CEOs/Executive Directors of the main thirty-two service
providers in the homeless arena in Dallas.
The numbers are troubling, to put it mildly: 44% white males, 44% white
females, 6% black males, 6% black females. A key action item is to build on
this, and conduct and publish an annual demographic survey of all senior
management and board officers of federally funded homeless response system
agencies. We can and must begin to move to a more diverse make-up of senior staff,
as well as lay and professional leadership, that better reflects the population
we are all here to serve.
Last Hard Conversation with
Randy Mayeux on Housing First
Later this month, we will
host another public event, related to racism and homelessness, as we seek to
keep this issue front and center in our work.MDHA, CitySquare, and the Dallas
Public Librarywill present a book synopsis of Toxic Inequality: How America’s Wealth Gap
Destroys Mobility, Deepens the Racial Divide, and Threatens Our Future.
Randy Mayeux, renowned scholar and longtime book reviewer at
CitySquare’s Urban Engagement Book Club, will lead the discussion. Larry James
and Rev. Dr. Michael Waters, will join him for the Q&A portion. They will
expound on how the lessons of Toxic Inequality can be applied to race, poverty
and homelessness in Dallas.RSVP today,
so you don’t miss this exciting and informative event!
We look forward to
continuing to work with C4, with our partners, and with the community at large
on addressing this important issue. Together, we can fulfill the vision we
started this process with, and “create positive change in attitudes and
behaviors that will begin to close the racial gap that has led to the
disproportionate prevalence… of homelessness among African Americans.”
It is my privilege to tell
the story of the incredible work my twelve MDHA colleagues are doing, and
beyond that the story of all those who play a part in our homeless response
system. These include funders, policy makers, organizational management, case
managers, and those experiencing homelessness themselves. Every time I write,
from social media to grant requests, and every time I speak, from a one on one
conversation to an invocation in front of hundreds, I try to tell the story of
homelessness, and how we are working to make it rare, brief and nonrecurring.
And every communication includes a call to action, be it implicit or explicit.
Now, this one overarching
story of homelessness has many facets. Consequently, making homelessness rare,
brief and nonrecurring, rarely involves silver bullets; it is usually all about
silver buckshot. However, the more you carefully analyze the
different facets of the problem and its solutions, the more you see that the same
ideas, themes and challenges show up again and again.
Logo of United Way of
Metropolitan Dallas
I noticed this again these
last few days. I am currently working on a grant request we will be submitting
shortly toUnited Way of Metropolitan Dallas,
within the scope of their Basic Needs funding stream. We are seeking to renew their
existing grant that provides funding for the MDHA
Flex Fund.
If you know me, you know
that I constantly talk about and write about the Flex Fund, which pays for
minor but impactful expenditures that can help folks end their homelessness. We
track every one of these expenditures in the Homeless Management Information
System (HMIS), and we break them down into 16-17 different categories. This
helps us better understand exactly what the current needs are. That way we,
from the system level down to the case manager level, can better address those
needs.
For the United Way of
Metropolitan Dallas Basic Needs grant application, we are asked to produce
detailed information not only regarding the individual solutions the Flex Fund provides,
but also detailed demographic information about the population that is helped through
the Flex Fund. Our HMIS team pored through the records, and gave me this
demographic information, and one thing immediately jumped out at me.
The Flex Fund helped 129
persons or families during the second half of 2016, and here is their breakdown
by race:
American Indian: 1
Asian: 1 Black: 87 Two or More Races: 5 White: 34 Unknown: 1 Without even calculating
percentages, the number of persons of color, in general, and African-Americans,
specifically, is immediately noticeable. When you actually do the math, and
divide 87 by 129, the result is shocking yet eerily familiar – about 67%. If
you are familiar with ourprevious postson Racism and
Homelessness, you have seen this percentage before. When we look at the
homeless population, in DallasCounty, as a whole, we
find exactly the same percentage of African Americans!
Logo of the Unite Dallas Relief Fund
No matter what angle or
facet of this problem we analyze, the story of homelessness in Dallas
keeps coming back to one simple truth: Homelessness in Dallas, to our shame, is inextricably tied to
race. Without addressing this, we won't be able to make homelessness rare,
brief and nonrecurring. This is why United
Way of Metropolitan Dallas' Unite Dallas Relief Fundawarded us
$32,700 late last year to partner with the Center for Social
Innovationand nine other cities to address Racism and
Homelessness. Through this research and action program,we
will begin to gain a better understanding of this problem, while we act to
tackle it. That is the only way we can, in the words of United Way, lay “the foundation for a
successful, just and united future in North Texas.”
