Shared Goals, Shared Vision
Ending homelessness starts with breaking down silos and building new partnerships across housing groups and social support services.
For Chelsea Ross, Interim Executive Director of the Partnership for Strong Communities (PSC) in Hartford, Connecticut, fostering a sense of shared purpose among the many stakeholders working on housing and homelessness issues is a deeply personal mission.
Ross’s first-hand experience alongside a family member experiencing homelessness exposed the many challenges that every homeless individual faces when navigating such a complex system. And it strengthened her resolve to support more holistic and integrated solutions that draw on diverse voices and perspectives across sectors and communities.
One such effort is PSC’s Collective Impact approach, which for 18 years coordinated the efforts of more than 200 cross-sector partners to build the political and civic will to address homelessness in Connecticut. “The power of Collective Impact to prevent and end homelessness lies in the unity of diverse stakeholders, as government and non-government organizations join forces, pooling resources, expertise and knowledge for a holistic and sustainable approach,” says Ross.
“At its best, Collective Impact shatters silos, allowing for the flow of information to flourish, and increasing coordination and collaboration among organizations working towards the common goal of eradicating homelessness.”
In practice, however, this ideal version of an open and collaborative ecosystem is more of an exception than the rule.
While Housing First approaches have made considerable progress in reducing the numbers of homeless people in the U.S., the system continues to operate largely within independent silos. As a result, even the most well-intentioned individuals and organizations tend to focus on their own processes and outcomes, often causing some apathy around large-scale system metrics, including exploring creative strategies to annually reduce homelessness in their communities.
“They may become so involved in their own process and progress that, as things change, they don’t shift or pick up on opportunities to address the larger scope of the system, or hone in on interventions that have been shown to work towards reducing homelessness,” explains Eric Collins-Dyke, Assistant Administrator of the Milwaukee County Housing Division.
“Often there are situations where agencies could utilize each other’s specific skills and assets in order to better accomplish something that they’re striving towards anyway, or add additional services and support that they need but are unable to provide themselves.”
A System Built for Success—Or Wired to Sustain Itself?
In the U.S., a vast patchwork of organizations have varying degrees of involvement in the homelessness issue. In many cases, a city government will appoint a handful of employees to assist with housing and affordable housing measures, which includes working with state and federal stakeholders (often in conjunction with the Department of Housing and Urban Development) for the purposes of sourcing funding and fulfilling reporting requirements throughout the life of the grant.
In addition, a large network of nonprofit groups provide resources such as 211 crisis call centers, homeless shelters and assistance with outreach at the street level. Groups with qualified personnel may also assist with continuum of care services and securing housing, although this often falls to the local government employees who are holders of HUD vouchers. In some cases, downtown business groups, associations and even healthcare providers and hospitals will provide some funding assistance to help curb the homelessness issue, along with businesses that are operating in the area of homeless encampments.
During the COVID-19 pandemic
There are undeniable strengths of the system as it currently exists. Having the necessary infrastructure and support from diverse stakeholders has furthered the adoption of Housing First measures and HUD’s Coordinated Entry housing qualification program, as well as established inroads with landlords to create voucher programs that have helped reduce the numbers of chronically homeless in many cities.
But as with any cause that depends on grant-based funding for its survival, homelessness solutions tend to get bogged down in processes that focus more on servicing the grant than the needs of end-users. “There’s a lot of upkeep and checking of boxes that goes into securing federally funded housing,” says Collins-Dyke. “In an ideal world, we’d be able to focus on the nuances of our community, versus getting caught up in how the national government defines homelessness or prescribes specific solutions.”
There is also a natural desire to “keep the wheels turning” in order to continue to stay funded and employ people. After all, the closer we come to eliminating homelessness, the more individuals currently dedicated to the issue who may eventually find themselves out of a job.
This is where the complexity of the homelessness system provides an advantage to people who are looking for new opportunities without having to exit the cause entirely. “Milwaukee did this successfully with some shelters by transitioning parts of the shelter into transitional housing and allowing them to manage and take over that function, which gave them an opportunity to branch out into the spectrum of care that happens beyond sheltering,” notes Collins-Dyke.
“Additionally, as shelter needs decrease, they could look at shifting dollars to permanent housing vouchers and bring them into that program, or maybe even let them run it.”
Connecting All the Pieces of the Puzzle
Most people working on the homelessness issue understand the difficult puzzle they are being asked to solve. But most would also agree it is unfair to require highly challenged individuals like people experiencing homelessness to navigate a system that they themselves don’t fully understand. As the New York-based non-profit group Community Solutions observes, “Many stakeholders hold a piece of the solution, but no one has their eye on how all of the pieces fit together.”
This lack of visibility across the ecosystem reduces the amount of coordination and creates missed opportunities to share funding or workloads, facilitate smoother transitions and improve many other aspects of the process.
One such opportunity lies in prevention outreach through greater collaboration between housing groups and community services like food pantries. More than 53 million people received help from food banks during a 12-month stretch at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, including an untold number of individuals who may have been considered at-risk for homelessness. The information amassed by food banks with regard to income and residence status would be of great value to any housing authority that had the time and inclination to collect and analyze the data.
On the housing side, the voucher programs currently being offered to landlords could be extended to real-estate developers. In this case, outreach would be needed to facilitate background checks and to provide grants or create an incentive fee structure. Success with these types of partnerships depends on one’s ability to support and engage with multiple stakeholders without being tied to a specific agenda or single outcome.
Solving homelessness requires leaders to keep their eyes on all of these moving parts while seeking appropriately scaled and customizable solutions. And sometimes, according to Collins-Dyke, that entails seeking help from outside the community.
“Attention to getting in the weeds of the local system, and the needs of the local community instead of very broadly applicable ideas is sorely needed,” he says. “A consistent theme across all of our discussions is finding ways to simplify and scale down the efforts as opposed to trying to continuously solve the problem in one fell swoop with tons of money and a big broad plan. Keeping the money in place, but narrowing down the efforts and simplifying them would often produce better outcomes, and that’s part of what we see in the plan here.”
