I’ll Take that as a Compliment Because I am Okay with That
A buddy of mine on the west coast was recently talking to the office of an elected official about a speaking engagement I had there in late 2012. The response in an email, “The [community] reaction was, well….mixed. But I think he is on to something big.”
Now, you might be thinking wouldn’t a unanimous positive reaction to your speaking engagements be better?
Perhaps, but that is not the world I live in. It is not the world that any change catalyst lives in. I hope to bring people along to the reality that ending homelessness is better than maintaining it. I try to break down barriers to serving those that are very vulnerable and marginalized. I try to put common service delivery systems upside down in the hopes that a paradigm shift can be realized. I speak truth to power. I use evidence to back up my positions.
This is not easy work. It is ongoing work. It is iterative work. Many days I can relate to Sisyphus rolling a rock uphill. At times it is very lonely work, even when I lead a very talented team and have the privilege of knowing some excellent service providers.
Am I bold and provocative in doing so? Sometimes. But I warn people that I am about to do so. Now whether they heed my warning, I cannot say. And truth is, when some people hear things they never wanted to hear they shut their ears. I know that between the bold statements I make, statistics I throw around, and the jokes that I tell, that I get people’s attention.
Recently, in an interview for a project on the east coast (now a client) something similar came up when they were considering hiring OrgCode. I am paraphrasing, but the overall gist was, “How can you undertake detailed work to improve homeless services in communities when what you say can be upsetting to folks to hear?”
Allow me to quote my longtime professional colleague Becky Kanis of the 100k Homes Campaign who, I think, sums this up beautifully:
“We are resolute in our belief that complex social problems demand a sometimes frightening degree of honesty: difficult facts must be faced head on and traditional assumptions must be subjected to scrutiny and possible reinvention.”
Ditto. Though I admit Becky said it more eloquently than I might.
Some people are upset that in my public appearances I go out of my way to state homelessness should be ended rather than managed. When I point out the ways in which – even without consciously doing so – their service approach focuses more on managing homeless than ending it, some service providers can react sensitively. I am not insulting their compassion. I am not dissing their desire to serve others. So, when these people are upset, I am okay with that.
Some people are bothered in my written reports that I critique how their homeless service delivery approach can be better, even though countless of volunteers have given hundreds of hours of their time and efforts and non-profits have been doing the work for decades. It is a respectful critique. It is a call to do things better. It doesn’t discount the fact that people tried hard; but trying hard is not the same as performing well. So, when some people are bothered, I am okay with that.
Some people get their knickers in a knot when I talk about how sobriety is not a precondition for being successfully housed or when mental health treatment is not a precondition for being successfully housed. It can collide with their worldview or personal values. It can also be at odds with an anecdote that they wish to share about a specific client or even themselves. Overall data trumps anecdotes in how I see the world. So, when some people get their knickers in a knot, I am okay with that.
Some people get frustrated when I challenge how a criminal background check is a barrier to shelter and housing access. It can be the opposite of how they have thought about corrective punishment through incarceration and the courts, while I have thought about justice and time served. They state that the safety of shelter workers and volunteers is at risk, while I promote risk assessment & minimization and a desire to not have homeless encampments filled with people whose barrier to service was a criminal background. So, when some people get frustrated, I am okay with that.
Some people get vexed when I lay out the case for turning transitional housing into Permanent Supportive Housing, Transition-in-Place, or Interim Housing. I respect they have worked hard to develop the Transitional Housing. I have no doubt many believe it works really well in their hearts, even though the data suggests differently when considered on a national scale. I appreciate that they thought they were doing the right thing. So, when some people get vexed, I am okay with that.
And I could go on. Frankly, I don’t always understand “some people”. But I do understand that the facts of the matter as it relates to working towards ending homelessness can be different than what people think or the traditions that have reinforced that thinking. A fact is a fact, and it may be inconvenient, but facts are the punch in the gut that can require us to look at things different. I am okay with being the lens through which they may see things different. The reaction may be mixed, but I – like Becky Kanis and others that work so hard to change the way that homeless services are oriented and operate – understand that this change is something big. Work on ending homelessness is the most important work I will ever do.
Can’t We Have Both? Short-term and Long-term Shelters
Can your community have short-term and long-term shelters? Sure. Should you? Absolutely not.
Unless you have no desire to ever end homelessness. If that is the case – if you want homelessness to continue so that all shelter employees will have a job for life – try to make all of your shelters as long-term as possible. Heck – make them people’s homes and just call them shelters. Let people put up posters and personal knick-knacks around their bed. Give your long-term stayers special jobs like sweeping the floors or helping in the kitchen. Ensure that you have as much programming in your shelter as possible.
I do not hate shelters. In fact, I think shelters are quite important. But as I outlined in a recent friendly video rant, I want shelters to perform their intended function – short-term, infrequent stays. They are intended for housing emergencies. A focus on helping people through rapid re-housing or housing first is NOT anti-shelter. It just means that shelters are places that people can get out of homelessness and into housing as fast as possible; not places where people are trapped or expected to stay long term.
I know a lot of shelter providers were well intentioned as their program models evolved. Some of the things I have seen a lot of in my travels (and I figure I have been in over 200 homeless shelters):
Employment programs in shelters. The thinking is that people can get the employment skills they need towards self-sufficiency. There are a couple of problems with this. One, long-term employment access and stability is unlikely to follow, according to available data. Two, it keeps people in shelter for a longer period of time. This is a rather expensive way to provide an employment program. Get people out of the shelter and into housing, and connect them to employment assistance as they are moving into their housing.
Treatment/sober living supports in shelter. The thinking is that helping people achieve sobriety will put them on a pathway of ongoing success when they are in housing. There are a few problems with this. One, sobriety is not a precondition for housing success. Most people with addiction to alcohol or other substances will never experience homelessness. People can be housed just fine and still use. Two, a lot of the shelter operators with this sort of programming call what they do a “homeless shelter” but they are really operating as an un-licensed and un-regulated treatment facility. Three, many (though certainly not all) of the people I have met that operate these sorts of programs in shelters have zero training in addiction treatment. Sobriety should never be a condition of shelter access. Perhaps behavior, but never sobriety. If sobriety was a condition for having a roof over your head, I suspect many of you reading this blog would have to turn over your keys and become homeless every weekend (unless you are one of those people who enjoy a glass of wine with dinner each day).
Socio-recreational programs offered through shelters that require a person to be homeless in order to participate. The thinking is that you can help people establish social relationships and networks that will help them when they are housed. The problem is that if we want to reinforce social relationships and networks we should do it within the broader community, not ghettoize people into only hanging out with other lower-income, homeless shelter dwellers.
Life skills training. Sigh. This is probably one of my biggest beefs. First of all, I have not met many people who want to raise their hand and say “My life skills suck. Please, let me be part of your highly structured, condescending, deficit based approach to putting me in a room with all of my peers so we can demonstrate our incompetence to each other.” Okay, that may be paraphrasing and a tad harsh. You want people to know how to cook, clean, do laundry, create and follow a budget, grocery shop, etc? Great. Do it within their natural settings of where they live – in their home! Make life skills training one on one, catered to specific strengths and in a place where people can best practice their skills.
Those are the biggies. There are others too. But I will leave it at that.
So how do you make shelters work well for ending homelessness?
Divert as many people as possible from the shelter system. Make sure people have no other natural supports they can rely on that are safe and appropriate before admitting someone to shelter.
Have coordinated access and a common intake for all shelters in your community. This increases the likelihood of getting the right person/family to the right shelter. Clear shelter standards help in this regard too in order to get everyone on the same page.
Triage housing assistance resources to those with the deepest needs that have been in the shelter longest. Yup, these are probably some of the same people you or others have declared that helping them get into housing would be “setting them up for failure” or that they were not “housing ready”. Right. Maybe the true failure is the shelter provider that hasn’t found the way to get them out of shelter and into housing. Oh, and I suspect they were never asked if they were “homeless ready”. The key is to provide the right supports in housing.
Most people will end their own homelessness within a short period of time and are never homeless again. For every person that comes into shelter for the first time in their life, give them about 7-10 days to try and figure things out on their own before you go about offering supports. And when you do start to offer supports, focus on progressive engagement – the least amount of service to get them out of shelter and into stable housing. No point drowning people in an ocean wave of support when a turkey baster of support is all that is needed.
Make shelters as open and accessible as possible, while supporting emotional and physical safety. If someone is going to be denied shelter entry it should be only in extreme cases, for a short period of time, and with some sort of resolution process. Denying someone access only because they drink or have a previous criminal offence (which may even be decades ago) is absolutely ludicrous. And where there is perceived adverse behavior, that requires risk assessment and modified engagement strategies. It doesn’t mean people should be left outside. (Yes, I can hear the sort of dude I heard a couple of weeks ago arguing with me that people will never learn natural consequences in life unless they learn to alter their actions to conform with what shelters expect from them. All wrong; the human mind does not work that way, even though your own personal values may want the change in others to occur that way.)
Ensure shelters are open during the day, BUT only offer supports that help people get out of the shelter. If a shelter is only open at night, people who stay there will likely spend their day going from place to place just trying to survive rather than actually being able to take care of their housing needs. During the day, shelters should be filled with housing locators and housing case managers helping everyone who has been there longer than 10 days to locate housing and figure out the supports that are needed. Do NOT put any socio-recreational programming or any other events like that in the shelter during the day. Do not let people just hang around and watch TV all day. Be friendly and persistent, using assertive engagement as necessary, to break through and help people realize the importance of being supported and housed.
Shelters are invaluable. Let’s promote their invaluable contributions by having them do the right things to end homelessness. I frequently say shelters are like fire stations – you never want there to be a fire, but you sure are glad they are close by when a fire starts. Can you imagine if the fire department refused to put out your fire because you were a drinker or smoker? Or refused to put out the fire because you didn’t take your medication? Or refused to put out the fire because in 1991 you started an 8 year sentence in a federal prison? Or determined that your entire house and all of your belongings burn to the ground just to teach you a lesson and allow you to truly start all over again? No. I didn’t think you could imagine that. Now I hope you will never be able to imagine shelters as something other than a place where emergency needs are met.
All a Matter of Perspective
To the pessimist, a breath mint is empty calories. To the optimist, it means fresh breath. It is all a matter of perspective.
Ending homelessness is all a matter of perspective too.
All too common for me this past year has been debate over what it means to “end homelessness”. At first I found this frustrating, but the more time I have had to reflect the more I think it warrants definition.
We can end chronic homelessness. How do I know this? Well, we created it through policy and program instruments that either didn’t serve certain populations or prolonged people’s experience of homelessness through therapeutic incarceration. There is also enough of a body of evidence that proves certain interventions work effectively with this population.
We can end episodic homelessness. How do I know this? Because if we provide supports that address people’s presenting issues rather than just providing housing, the issues that keep causing the household to come back for services are mitigated. There is also enough of a body of evidence that proves certain interventions work effectively with this population.
There are others that want to have the debate about ending homelessness starting with prevention. Truth is, we suck at predicting who will become homeless and who will not even when two households have seemingly identical characteristics. Most prevention efforts that provide financial assistance to households are a complete waste of money if you want to prove that the money was well spent and that your investment is what actually prevented the homelessness. Prevention assistance should go only to those people that most clearly resemble the existing chronically homeless people in your community.
Others with the prevention argument will focus on broader social policy issues. Are these important? You bet. But I won’t wait for them to get solved. Those that do direct service delivery need to focus their primary attention on those who are presenting as homeless NOW. So yes, I would love for youth in care processes, income supports, disability determination, assistance for veterans, inventory of affordable housing, living wage, an end to economic poverty, access to appropriate health care, etc to all be addressed. But do I think all of that has to be fixed before homelessness can be ended? No. Going back to my breath mint analogy, this is like someone saying we would never need breath mints if we just got rid of all foods that caused bad breath. Chances of that happening are slim to none.
This is usually the point in a discussion (debate?) where someone says “Aha, told you there will always be homeless people!”
And you are right. There will always be people without a home. Ending homelessness means that it is infrequent, rare and short in duration. In other words, ending homelessness will resemble the majority of people who ever use a homeless shelter – once in a lifetime, for a short period of time, and they never come back again.
Ending homelessness means that shelters have to be centers of opportunity that get people out of homelessness as quickly as possible and back into housing as quickly as possible. They cannot be places where people languish in programs. It means that the intake into your homeless service delivery system has to: a) truly function like a system; and, b) exhaust all natural support options before accepting people into your services.
I say homeless shelters have the same role to play as your local fire hall. Do you want there to ever be a fire? No. Do you go to great lengths to try and make sure you never need to call the fire department? Indeed you do. Does that mean you want to get rid of all the fire halls? No. You just want them to respond as quickly as possible when you need them, address the emergency as professionally and least destructively as possible, and then get out of your life. (And I suppose for some of you having the firefighters be good looking would be an added benefit, though not compulsory to get the job done…which reminds me there is never a Social Worker Calendar but there is a Fireman Calendar in most communities…but I digress…)
Then there are those that try to convince me that they cannot end homelessness because they have tried for 3 or 4 or 5 years (or whatever length of time) and that they invested tons of time and energy creating a Plan to End Homelessness and it just didn’t work. Dig a little deeper, though, and there are certain things that I find more often than not:
There was never an investment in professional development of service providers to actually do something different and get different results. Instead they were doing the same things as before, just calling it something different, and wondering why nothing changed. If you want to move service delivery forward, the community has to invest in teaching people how to deliver their services in a way that is aligned to what those services should achieve. It is all a matter of perspective – lipstick on a pig is still a pig in my books. Okay, maybe that is harsh. Try this on for size – asking a plumber to become an electrician overnight without any training and expecting something not to burn down is a crap shoot at best, a calculated catastrophe at worst.
Their Plan stinks. If you have lousy directions you will never reach your destination regardless of how hard you try. The Plan is supposed to be a blueprint of not just what you want to do, but how you will get there. Invest in some subject matter expertise to update or re-write your Plan and get things back on track. It is all a matter of perspective – you can have community write down inspirational messages that have unrealistic targets and a lack of clarity on when and how things will get done by whom; or you can invest time and energy in a Plan that provides clear, unifying direction.
There is an absence of leadership within the largest service providing organizations or the community as a whole that wants to end homelessness. It’s all a matter of perspective – if people are in the business of homeless service delivery they should be working their tails off to put themselves out of a job eventually, not keeping themselves in a job forever.
The Continuum of Care is a few French fries short of a Happy Meal, clueless of how to orient, organize, hold accountable or fund a service delivery system that is oriented towards ending homelessness or else is “bullied” by providers into maintaining the status quo. It is all a matter of perspective when it comes to a CoC. Either they are there to keep the peace or they are there to champion change. Either they are there to keep organizations funded and happy or they are there to put homeless people and their needs front and center in service delivery.
The Plan does not speak to triaging or prioritizing people seeking service. To me this is akin to a person showing up at an emergency department of a hospital with the common cold getting the same level of treatment as someone who has just had a heart attack. This is a ludicrous proposition and I think most of us would agree is a skewed perspective. And yet many Plans do not appropriately dimension which groups of homeless people are served under which conditions to get which intended results. It is a matter of perspective – the Plan provides clear priorities of which people should be served first and why; or it tries to be all things to all people…a jack-of-all-trades, but a master of none so to speak.
So, do I think homelessness can be ended? You bet your butt I do. But it is my passionate perspective and driving desire to understand and replicate practices that work with strong empirical evidence that give me the confidence to say so. Ending homelessness for me is not a fantasy. It is not something nice to do if the conditions lend themselves to the possibility. Ending homelessness is an operational imperative, striving to achieve results regardless of context, and ensuring there is planning and resource allocation to support the efforts. Does that mean no one will ever be homeless again? Hardly. But we will divert all those that we can and house the rest as quickly as possible after they become homeless. We will take the service rich shelter environment that exists in so many places and reorient that towards supporting people in their homes based upon presenting issues. We will track our progress and make refinements over time as new evidence emerges on how best to do the work.
It’s Fun to Stay at the YMCA?
My daughter is 4 years old. This morning she was singing “YMCA” complete with the arm actions. You know the song – made famous by the Village People and a standard pretty much every time there is a mixed-age crowd and the DJ is playing songs to get people up on the dance floor.
Got me wondering how many people have actually considered that this peppy piece is about homelessness and people experiencing economic poverty, especially young gay men who had to leave the town they were living and wind up in a new city.
The song came out in 1978 on the album Cruisin’. It never hit #1 on US Billboard (that would be Rod Stewart’s Do You Think I’m Sexy? at the same time, featuring perhaps the tightest pants ever seen on a man in a music video.) Yet the song YMCA remains popular and even inter-generational. My parent’s generation knows it. My generation knows it. My kids know it.
Here is the underlying narrative to the song: a young man is new in town and is short on money so it is recommended that he go to the YMCA to stay, get clean and have a meal.
There are also many homosexual undertones in the song (Hello! It comes from the Village People! “They have everything for young men to enjoy – you can hang out with all the boys”), which probably also goes undetected by the average dancer trying to figure out how to form their arms into the Y, the M, the C, and the A…but we’ll park that theme for now. (I should also note that Willis of the Village People who wrote the lyrics suggests that the song is more about the Y being a place for urban youth to participate in sports, though later acknowledged the double entendres in the song and the fact that the Y was a popular cruising spot for young gay men, and that there was a reputation of the Y as a good place to stay.)
I refute the central point made in the song: that it is fun to stay at a homeless shelter. (As a nerdy side note, the McBurney Branch of the YMCA depicted in the music video does not function as a homeless shelter, but there are many YMCA’s that do). Depending on the quality of the shelter building, staff and programming it may be better than staying outdoors. But I don’t think shelters are fun.
But there are some very positive messages in the song too. Consider this stanza:
No man does it all by himself
I said young man, put your pride on the shelf
And just go there to the Y.M.C.A.
‘m sure they can help you today
I agree that letting people know that others are there to help is a very good message. I also like the outreach perspective in the song and the empathy that is created:
Young Man, I was once in your shoes
I said I was, down and out with the blues
I felt no man cared if I were alive
I felt the whole world was so jive
Lastly, I like the positive message about a person who even seems to be down and depressed still being capable of having dreams.
This is a fun song. A silly song. A popular song. A song that doesn’t require too deep of an analysis. You can catalogue this blog under “Music Trivia” or “Iain’s Been Too Heavy for Too Long” or “No One Has Suggested a Blog Idea to Iain for Some Time”. But next time it comes on at a social event, consider asking others around you what they think the song is about. Don’t be a downer about it; but consider the opportunity to raise awareness about homelessness, or why in the 21st Century young gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, queer, questioning, inter-sexed and two-spirited youth still leave home and become homeless – not unlike the premise of this snazzy ditty from 35 years ago. It doesn’t diminish the fun of the song. It simply expands the song beyond four minutes of uncoordinated aerobic activity.
Thinking Like a System
Much is afoot across communities trying to arrange homeless and housing services into alignment with a coordinated access and common assessment approach. Maybe this work is happening because people think it is a good idea (it is) but I suspect the greater impetus for many communities is that it is a requirement of HUD (also true). Other communities are in the process of updating 10 Year Plans. Some are creating or re-establishing inter-agency councils or steering committees or work groups to improve system delivery.
So let’s take a moment to examine what it means to be thinking like a system. It is my contention that there are a lot of people that are really busy trying to work on their system without actually thinking like a system.
The greatest influences on how I examine and think about systems come from Ralph Stacey (his Complexity Matrix is nothing short of brilliant) and Brenda Zimmerman (her work on Sustaining Social Innovation is top notch).
It is Stacey’s contention that Complex Adaptive Systems:
Consist of a network of agents that interact with each other according to a set of rules that require them to examine and respond to each other’s behaviour to improve their behaviour and thus the behaviour of the system they comprise.
Aha! Let us think of homeless and housing service providers as the “network of agents”. First of all, as Stacey’s definition suggests, they have to interact with each other. In other words, they can’t just exist in isolation or a silo.
Second of all, there is a set of rules that are involved. Is that just coordinated access and common assessment? That is part of it, but not the whole story. I believe that communities should create sectors of service to more clearly define what is expected from each type of service delivery, what it aims to solve, how it completes the work, the indicators we should look at, and the outcomes we should expect.
Thirdly, Stacey’s definition requires these “agents” to “examine and respond to each other’s behaviour”. This requires critical analysis and an outward orientation to the work. We need to look what is happening around us to best understand how we should behave. Sometimes this requires evaluation from an external party.
Finally, the changes we make are not just about making the individual “agent” better – though that is part of it. It is about trying to improve the behaviour of the system as a whole. Collectivism trumps individualism in this instance.
In summary, the lessons I take away from Stacey’s work in thinking like a system:
service providers are connected to a network of other service providers
the connectivity of the service providers requires a set of rule (standards)
service providers have to reflect upon their own role and function and then put that into the context of how to respond to other service providers
there is shared responsibility to improve the system as a whole instead of thinking it is just one person or one agency’s job
Zimmerman, in her brilliance, challenges us to think about the current state of affairs as we think about making changes happen. In thinking like a system, there is a great deal of wisdom that we can glean from Zimmerman when examining our starting point.
Consider an old growth forest. In the conservation phase of a forest we see big trees and a rich canopy. To me this is not unlike many communities that have been addressing homelessness. It has taken decades to get things established the way that they are. It is established. The big mature trees don’t let much sunlight penetrate the forest floor. The big mature trees consume most of the resources available. New growth is very difficult once the forest is well established. Not unlike mature service organizations that get the lion’s share of available funding and are so big that they eclipse new ways of doing things or organizations wishing to get started.
For decades we tried to put out forest fires as quickly as they started. Zimmerman reminds us that creative destruction isn’t a bad thing. Like a forest fire in an old growth forest – consider the likes of the giant sequoias – some species and new growth can’t occur unless there is considerable heat and some devastation of what was there before. Conservation in perpetuity is not in the best interest of a forest and it isn’t in the best interest of how we think about system either. I have no doubt that the 100 year old tree thinks it sucks to be burned to the ground (okay, so trees don’t think, but you know what I am getting at), but for the entire group of trees and all of the wildlife it supports, not to mention the offspring of the tree, it is a good thing. Housing and homeless systems exist to end homelessness, not to keep older established agencies in business just for the sake of keeping them in business or because they have always been there.
After a forest fire, the land is not limited by what was there before. New growth can start. It is a time of renewal and reorganization. There is no doubt that great opportunities exist below the surface. In thinking like a system we have the chance to also embrace renewal and reorganization. Why we want to do what we will do to end homelessness is not limited by what was there before. I am not suggesting that every organization has to cease operating. However, in the willingness to creatively destroy some ways of doing things they have released energy and resources that are now available for renewal.
The birth of new vegetation is a delightful sight after a forest fire has gone through. As we think like a system, we also need to celebrate new birth. Does every plant that starts to grow after a forest fire mature? Nope. There are natural forces that are at work that determine what not only survives, but thrives. A forest is never the same after the birth made possible through renewal. The forest does not exactly replicate what was there before. This is also important as we think like a system. We are not just trying to recreate what was there before and call it something different. It really has to be different.
So, as you go about working on coordinated access and common assessment, or as you go about updating your 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness, or as you go about working through your inter-agency councils or local steering committees ask yourselves whether you are truly thinking like a system. Are you examining the interconnectivity of the various agents and how that interconnectivity has to result in behaviour that positively impacts the system as a whole? Are you creating an environment where creative destruction is possible to allow for a new way of doing things?
Reception Is a Window into Your Organization
Housing and homelessness organizations tend to have one, if not two, primary windows into the organization as a whole. The first is reception. The second is outreach. This blog focuses on reception.
Managerially and operationally, I like organizations to think of reception as air traffic control, not as an administration or greeting function. While administration and greeting may occur within reception, it doesn’t matter what type of program you operate, the orientation has to be towards air traffic control.
Air traffic control knows all the air traffic in their general area. If it is on radar, it is asked to identify itself if it hasn’t already done so. Reception, at some level, needs to know who all is in their area. Anonymity doesn’t cut it.
Air traffic control knows which aircraft are seeking to land. In the context of homeless and housing service delivery, reception needs to know which people are accessing resources to “make a landing” versus those that have enough fuel to travel through and have alternate plans.
If there is a landing – even a temporary one to refuel – air traffic control knows about it. Airplanes don’t sneak into airports and just arrive at the gate. People should not be able to just slip into a drop-in or day program without connectivity to reception in housing and homelessness service delivery. And yes, that applies to “low barrier” programs too.
Upon arrival at the airport, ground operations – which may be organized and/or communicated through air traffic control – tells aircraft which airstrip to land on, where to vector, and which gate to park at. Reception has a duty to get inbound individuals/families to the people that can best assess their needs for the right programs at the right time to end their homelessness.
Air traffic control deals with competing interests of inbound aircraft, as well as dealing with issues of those that weren’t planning on landing, but need to. Reception, too, plays a vital role of managing competing interests. But this can’t be based upon emotion or intuition. It has to be based upon facts and needs. It is through reception that high performing organizations are able to facilitate the right type of assessment.
Air traffic control is the first point of contact with a specific airport. Reception is the first point of contact with a housing or homelessness serving agency. When the right information is provided, regardless of the conditions, there is a smooth landing and taxi to the gate at the airport. When the right information is provided by reception, regardless of conditions, there is smooth alignment of needs to programs that can meet needs.
Upon landing at an airport, airplanes and its passengers are further assisted by signage. There are clear directions of where you are and where to go. “Wayfinding” helps ensure that aircraft aren’t bumping into each other; that pilots know where the end of the runway is; that passengers know what terminal they are in; that people find their luggage (assuming it made it on the plane); etc. Any reception area worth its salt has to have clear signage and communication so that people know exactly where to go within reception to get the services that they need.
Here are some general suggestions, then, for your reception:
It is not a junior or entry-level position within your organization. Staff it with someone knowledgeable of all of your organization’s programs, and has likely spent time shadowing or working in each of them.
Offer signage in multiple languages that is easily understood. Avoid jargon that a newly homeless person or family would find difficult to follow.
Filling out forms and the like should happen when people are connected to the right program, not in reception.
Keep things moving in the reception. Do not create an environment where people can just “hang out” without connecting to service.
Experiment with the right staffing number to address the volume of people that are steered through reception. Keep in mind that the staffing volume will be greater during a transition program if your current reception does not perform these functions.
Manners go a long way. Respectfully determine why each person is at your organization. Even low-barrier services should be focusing on ending homelessness and reception should reflect that.
Case managers, case advocates, immediate support workers, etc. should take their cue through reception of which individuals to engage with that day and why when services can be provided without an appointment.