Homeless Response System Online Learning Clinic 2018 – Part I: From Managing to Ending Homelessness

Imagine We Could End Homelessness

There are many social ills of the past, that seemed intractable, that people would have said we would never get rid of, from slavery to segregation, from child labor to keeping children with special needs out of school. Imagine we could end homelessness. Not just help individuals. Not just manage homelessness. Imagine we could eradicate it. Imagine we could make this intractable social ill a thing of the past, too.

What do we mean by ending homelessness? We do not mean no one ever becomes homeless. It is a given that in a capitalist economy, there is economic churn, and that that cannot be fully prevented. This is why even Scandinavian social welfare states have some degree of homelessness. What we do mean is that homelessness rarely happens, when it does happen it is brief, and that it never happens to that person again. This is no pipe dream. Research[i] has shown that it is entirely doable.

Out with the Old – Managing Homelessness

The origins of the modern homelessness crisis begin in the late 1970s-early 1980s. It is difficult to narrow down one decisive cause for any social problem. However, roughly speaking, there are two major, somewhat technical, societal shifts that brought about this crisis. First, many persons with mental illness, were deinstitutionalized, and the hospitals they resided in were shut down. Second, a type of cheap housing, primarily for single underemployed, unskilled and/or disabled men, known as single resident occupancies (SROs) was largely discontinued. Many of those affected by these changes became homeless.

Though homelessness had existed before, it had not existed in the numbers akin to this crisis. Much in the way we deal with natural disasters, in the 1980s, our society attempted to deal with this problem through the use of emergency shelter. This did not solve the problem. In the 1990s, the Federal Government and related public and private entities decided through transitional housing programs, replete with myriad rules that the homeless needed to abide by, to help them address all their problems. The hope was that the homeless would graduate from these (often lengthy 24 month) programs “housing ready” and be able to move on their own into stable permanent housing. Unfortunately, only a minority of those who enrolled in these programs ever reached that goal. The Federal Government and local communities needed a viable alternative, but one did not seem evident.

In with the New – Ending Homelessness

Around the same time, a small program in New York City was being tested and was slowly gaining ground. This program/philosophy was called Housing First. The idea of Housing First was simple. Rather than trying to “fix” people, and then house them, these practitioners suggested standing the classic model on its head. House people, with two conditions only: They would need to abide by the terms of their leases, and meet periodically with a case manager. They would be offered wrap-around services to help them deal with their challenges, and they would be encouraged to use them. However, unlike in the traditional model, they would not be forced to do so. 

As opposed to the classical program that worked only for a minority of participants, the Housing First program worked for about 85%(!) of those enrolled in it. These 85% were able to achieve stable permanent housing. Though this program began with a small group of chronically homeless persons in New York City, these numbers held up in study after study, in community after community, in setting after setting. This led the consensus of scholars in the field to endorse Housing First, and the Federal Government to eventually follow suit, and mandate that all programs follow this philosophy[ii]. The message to all American communities was clear: The Federal Government would no longer fund the management of homelessness. It was time for the modern homelessness crisis to end.
 

 

As this was happening, in the 2000s-2010s, communities were developing more and more permanent supportive housing programs for the chronically homeless and others in need of a permanent setting with intense wrap around supports. And, during the Great Recession of the late Aughts, a related idea called Rapid Rehousing, for non-chronically homeless persons proved promising. The idea was that most of these individuals could be quickly housed, offered intense wrap around services for a limited time, and get back on their feet and move on in 90-180 days. As these settings gained ground, the Federal Government encouraged communities to shift their resources to these settings. Conversely, it began to discourage starting new transitional housing programs, due to their low success rate and high cost.

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[i] Much of this blog post draws ideas and language from two sources:

• Opening Doors, the national strategic plan to end homelessness as amended in 2015,  http://usich.gov/resources/uploads/asset_library/USICH_OpeningDoors_Amendment2015_FINAL.pdf
• Housing First: Ending Homelessness, Transforming Systems, and Changing Lives, by Deborah Padgett, Benjamin Henwood, and Sam Tsemberis (2016)

[ii] Randy Mayeux’s book synopsis of the above-mentioned book by Tsemberis and his colleagues is a great primer on the book and the issue. See https://youtu.be/GGlPME5yGa8

Single-Loop Learning, Double-Loop Learning and Homelessness – Part II – Rethinking Our Investments

The idea of single-loop learning and double-loop learning can be further useful in thinking about how we, as a nation, have decided (implicitly and explicitly) to address the modern homelessness crisis.

All one needs to do is look at how much we spend on the main federal program to house the homeless, the Continuum of Care Program: $2 billion. That may sound like a lot of money, however, out of a budget of $4 trillion, it is a drop in the bucket. One aircraft carrier, for comparison, costs $13 billion.

Especially over the last decade, we have become extremely skillful at building systems that maximize the impact of these $2 billion. However, as a nation, we have not explored the idea of significantly adding to that funding. We have accepted the governing variable that around $2 billion, in 2017 dollars, is enough to defeat a social ill that has been with us for forty years and counting.

Underinvestment in housing for those who are in critical need of help is not confined to the fight to end homelessness. We see this also in what the federal government calls “worst case housing needs.” “Worst case needs are defined as renters with very low incomes – no more than 50 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI) – who do not receive government housing assistance and who pay more than one-half of their income for rent, live in severely inadequate conditions, or both.” While those experiencing homelessness at any one time, number around 554,000 persons, this other category includes around 8.3 million households! 

It’s not that we don’t invest in housing, in aggregate; it is just that federal support for housing is heavily skewed towards those on the upper rungs of the economic ladder. Will Fischer and Barbara Sard present this in a strikingly visual way. Here are just two of their charts:

 

 

They further clarify that, “The federal government spent $190 billion in 2015 to help Americans buy or rent homes, but little of that spending went to the families who struggle the most to afford housing… Federal housing expenditures are unbalanced in two respects: they target a disproportionate share of subsidies on higher-income households and they favor homeownership over renting. Lower-income renters are far likelier than homeowners or higher-income renters to pay very high shares of their income for housing and to experience problems such as homelessness, housing instability, and overcrowding. Federal rental assistance is highly effective at helping these vulnerable families, but rental assistance programs are deeply underfunded and as a result reach only about one in four eligible households.”

Of course, this is still only part of the story. Dr. Barbara DiPietro, who shared these charts with us, also shared this fascinating video, which clarifies the larger picture of income inequality in America, and how it is driven by policies we, as a nation, have put in place:  

 

Barbara urged us to think about all the policy decisions we have made as a nation. Nothing is preventing us, as a society, from investing more in ending homelessness. Nothing is preventing us from investing more in housing for those on the lower rungs of the economic scale, than we do for those on the upper rungs. Nothing is preventing us from enacting policies that will make all the investments we make, as a nation, in a more equitable manner. We can create a more equitable society, with much less income and wealth inequality.

 

 

However, there is only one way we will get there. We can’t just engage in single-loop learning. We can’t just adjust what we do. Different strategies and actions alone will not help. We need to break out of our current paradigms, and engage in double-loop learning. We need to question the values and beliefs that led to the current crises, in which we find our nation. We need to change the governing variables, and act upon them. Will we have the courage to do so?

CoC Strategic Work Plan Online Learning Clinic - Increase Access to Affordable Housing - The MDHA Flex Fund

Read the first blog post in our CoC Strategic Work Plan Online Learning Clinic series, Rapidly House Youth, here. Each post drills down into another aspect of the plan, to encourage you to get involved, and help us make measurable progress in ending homelessness. To maximize your learning and your ability to make an impact, we recommend you carefully read the entire first page now. Then review the entire page or pages that the individual blog post pertains to, as you read each post.

This time we focus on Goal I on page 2: Increase Access to Affordable Housing. The only thing that truly ends homelessness is housing. However, like any other scarce resource, you need a delivery system to ensure that this resource is deployed in the most efficient manner. This delivery system is made up of all of the different entities who are working together in our community to end homelessness. Our role is to serve as the backbone organization that brings these partners together, and turns them into a unified homeless response system. This is systems thinking at its best.

Now, proper systems thinking entails, at its very basic level, figuring out what input is needed to arrive at the optimal output. Our homeless response system is a leader in recognizing that one of the most important inputs in such a system, is a flexible assistance fund, like the MDHA Flex Fund. This is why one of the action items under this goal is to raise money for this fund. Since its founding by MDHA and United Way of Metropolitan Dallas in late August 2015, it has proven to be one of the most powerful weapons we wield in the fight to end homelessness in Dallas and Collin Counties.

The idea behind the MDHA Flex Fund is simple: A minor but impactful expenditure inhibits a person from ending his or her homelessness. The MDHA Flex Fund pays that expenditure, and the person can make progress in ending his or her homelessness, if not end it altogether, in short order.

Much of what we do is, well, complicated. I usually say that if you need our elevator speech, we better be going up to the top floor of a very tall building! This why we have a Strategic Work Plan and a Playbook. In that context, one of the most beautiful things about the MDHA Flex Fund is its simplicity. In fact, we can even tell stories about it backwards, starting from the end, and as long as we include a link, you not only understand what it’s all about, but probably need a tissue to dab your eyes:

• $103.53. $103.53 allowed Jonathan to reconnect his electricity, and avoid a return to homelessness (and a miserable Christmas).
• $120.75. $120.75 allowed Daniel and Karla to remain housed, Abraham to pursue a job, and Richard to become eligible for a housing voucher. No, not $120.75 each; $120.75 total.
• $95, $149, $200. $95, $149, $200, respectively, allowed Kisha, Sarah and Laura to move from shelter into housing.

Recently, as a requirement of our United Way funding, we were asked to submit a detailed report on the MDHA Flex Fund’s impact for July 1, 2016-June 30, 2017. A few months ago, I wrote about how I love site visits, and I equally love having to report on our performance. A report, when done well, forces you to take a step back, reflect on how you are doing, learn what is working well and what is not, and move forward with renewed vigor and purpose. This is why we actually chose, in the site visit and in our reporting, to go a few steps farther than what United Way requires, and report on the MDHA Flex Fund in a more granular manner. We broke down the solutions provided by the MDHA Flex Fund into 17 categories:

Even a cursory observation of these numbers tells you a number of interesting things. Most of us don’t realize how important critical documents are in escaping homelessness, yet this category is the top category in sheer numbers, while not being that high in cost.  If you took the statement we opened with, “The only thing that truly ends homelessness is housing,” too simplistically, you might not realize the importance of basic furniture in ending homelessness. This is the fifth highest category in sheer numbers and the fourth highest in cost. And, not surprisingly, almost $30,000 was spent on categories that have the word “rent” in them.

These numbers remind us, when we dig a little deeper, that this program is fully dependent on the folks we call our “unsung heroes,” case managers, whom we celebrate in just a few days. The MDHA Flex Fund is an important tool in their hands, and any tool is only as good as the person wielding it. They also remind us that our system is most powerful when partners join hands to work together, be it these case managers, utilizing the MDHA Flex Fund, be it the MDHA Flex Fund and the Dallas Furniture Bank, be it MDHA and DART.

Based on the numbers we reported, here is our current estimate for MDHA Flex Fund expenditures for July 1, 2017-June 30, 2018:

 

This is why it remains vital, as this action item states, to continue to raise funds for this important and vital tool: the MDHA Flex Fund. Through adept use of this tool, we can and will increase access to affordable housing for our homeless friends.