Working to End Homelessness
oday’s guest blogger is Ali Ryder, a Planner with OrgCode Consulting.
This week, I had the privilege of being invited by the fine folks at Heartland Alliance to act as a coach at their Working to End Homelessness Innovation Workshop, part of their Connections Project. It was a fantastic opportunity to meet with great people from across the country, who were all excited to try new innovative approaches to connect homeless people with employment! I learned so much, but here are my top takeaways:
1. Everyone wants to break silos, but no one is 100% sure how to do it
A lot of project teams said that there were great housing programs in their community, and great employment programs in their community, but since they had different goals and funding streams, it was always identified as a challenge to get these programs to work together.
2. There are a lot more federal programs than people know about
Did you know that you can use Medicaid to help fund Permanent Supportive Housing? Did you know that people on disability can work and still receive their benefits? Did you know that there’s a program called the Family Self-Sufficiency program, operated by HUD that incentivizes low income families in RGI to increase their income without being penalized on rent, and that any housing providers (not just a housing authority) can implement the same program for their tenants? Did you know that there’s a new HUD program called Jobs-Plus? Or that there’s funding to help youth to expunge or seal their criminal records? Or that HUD has a $15 million annual budget to provide technical assistance for communities? I’m willing to bet you knew some of those, but not all!
3. “Collective Impact” is the new buzzword
“Collective Impact is the commitment of a group of actors from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem, using a structured form of collaboration (definition from Wikipedia).” Okay, maybe it’s not so new, but isn’t getting everyone to work together a good thing?
4. There’s a lot of talent out there
The Innovation Workshop was just the top 10 teams from across the country, and they all had great ideas! I’m sure not jealous of the team at Heartland Alliance that has to figure out which ones are the best of the best.
5. Engaging the business sector can be done, but it requires thinking a certain way
If you’re trying to engage regular business people with your program, you need to make sure you speak their language. Instead of asking them for a favor (“please, just give this guy/gal a chance!”), turn the tables. How are you helping them? Maybe they’re a landlord or employer with a high turnover rate, and they don’t want to go through yet another hunt for a new tenant/employee. Tell them how you are helping them save time and effort. And then follow through – it doesn’t work if you make a promise and don’t deliver.
6. The ending homelessness realm is actually pretty progressive
You might not believe me, but think about this. There was a way we used to do things, and then a couple people started trying to do things differently. They called it Housing First. It worked really well. Other people tried it. It caught on. The federal government is behind it. There’s funding changes that support evidence-based and evidence-informed best practices. The HEARTH act is referred to as a “game-changer.” We know things about how you can get the biggest impact by focusing on persons with the highest needs. We have assessment tools that efficiently help case managers know exactly what kind of intervention would be best for an individual.
In contrast, what is there for trying to connect a similar population for employment? The very same innovators that attended this Workshop (who were more knowledgeable about employment programs than me) said that the system was backwards, encouraging programs to help people who were “job-ready” and easy to help. And for those with higher needs, there was no tool to help service providers identify whether they would be good candidates for supported employment, job training, or something else entirely.
7. The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act is an opportunity
It’s a new piece of legislation that, among other things, requires states to develop new strategies, and look at the barriers of individual job seekers. This is an opportunity for CoC leaders to get involved in the planning process, and have input on how to make better connections to employment programs.
8. There’s a lot of interest in a tool like the SPDAT, but with an employment focus
Maybe it’s something we should work on in the future. What do you think?