Rethinking “Imminent Risk of Eviction” Homelessness Prevention
I want you to research two statistics in your community:
1. The number of evictions in the last year.
2. The number of unique households accessing shelter in the last year.
Let me guess – the number of evictions is higher than the number of unique households accessing shelter, and it isn’t even close.
Many communities have financial assistance programs to assist households at imminent risk of evictions. The thinking is that through these efforts homelessness is prevented. It is commendable in theory. It is most often an incorrect use of resources in practice. Why?
Even most households that get evicted (not just at risk of “imminent eviction”) never become homeless. They figure it out. They transition to another place to live. It is bunk to think that all of these households end up as doubled up or hidden homeless.
This is one of the reasons why I think it is important to put “imminent risk of eviction” in quotes. The best and strongest indicator of whether a household will become homeless is previous homelessness. I think there are loads of households that face eviction. I think there are too many households that become evicted and that government benefits do not keep adequate pace with average rental costs. Nonetheless, drawing a straight cause and effect line from eviction notice to homelessness is precarious at best, and extremely naive.
Look at the data of unique households in a community that make use of eviction prevention (including rental arrears and utility arrears programs) longitudinally and you will see something interesting (which staff that operate these programs can tell you intuitively): whenever there is a time-out period for accessing the resources, the same households find their way back time and time again as soon as they are eligible to receive assistance again. What happened in the intervening period? Were they stellar tenants making all payments in between and coincidentally needed assistance as soon as they were eligible? No.
Another interesting thing you will see if you examine the data is rates of homelessness that occur when the pool of funds to assist households runs out in any given month or any given year. There is not a spike in the number of households that become homeless. There isn’t even a small blip.
Financial assistance programs like this type of eviction prevention assistance for those at “imminent risk of eviction” are a form of charity. They are NOT a form of effective program design or permanent problem solving. Most often they are a band-aid (and a lousy one) for structural issues related to poverty, and do not solve the permanent reason why the household needed the assistance in the first place.
Some cities have used Rent Banks for almost 20 years. The idea is that a household in need because they are at imminent risk of eviction for rental arrears borrows from the Rent Bank and pays back a nominal amount each month (say $20-$50) thereafter until it is all repaid. Unless the repayment is automatically deducted from some type of income benefit, the amount borrowed is very rarely repaid. Most often the money received is written off.
Furthermore, it is interesting to examine how communities structure their financial assistance programs for households at “imminent risk of eviction”. Most often the risk tolerance is very low. Screened out are very high need households with multiple, co-occurring factors. Screened in are very low need households with single risk factors. This runs contrary to how these programs should be considered. One would think that lower need households are more resourceful and perhaps have enhanced problem solving skills compared to higher need households that have more limited options, and perhaps diminished problem solving skills. Some communities even require that the household can prove employment income in order to qualify for assistance.
I would be remiss if it was not pointed out that there is another bias in the types of households that are assisted. Time after time in my travels I see “imminent risk of eviction” programs reserved exclusively for families. It is more rare to see assistance for single adults or unaccompanied youth – and when it does occur for these two groups the resource allocation is often considerably smaller.
Why do these programs exist? Hard to say with absolute certainty. I believe providers of these programs feel they are making a bigger difference than they are actually having by doling out the money. They can speak to the number of households assisted. They can speak to the amount of money allocated. They think this data shows how much homelessness has been prevented. It does not. Why? Because they do not have a control group of households that did not get assistance that they also monitored to see if they become homeless. If they had, they would find the ones that do not get assistance rarely become homeless. Again, they think there is cause and effect in the program where nonesuch exists. But it certainly is a feel good story to think homelessness is being prevented, and I believe that is the most compelling reason why organizations, faith groups, utility companies, etc. continue to do it.
So what should be done? I believe the first big step is to reallocate a whack of the money to more direct services like Rapid ReHousing and increasing vouchers and other supportive housing options. Then, with the smaller amount of money that remains, I would recommend it be used only with those households that have previously been homeless. That would be the primary eligibility criteria. While that may be sufficient enough, if you wanted to dig deeper (and maybe you do not) households with more co-occurring issues should be prioritized for assistance before others. Keeping people from returning to homelessness probably makes the most sense for “imminent risk of eviction” financial resources.
Does Rapid ReHousing Work? Well, it depends.
Seems there is no shortage of conversation and commentary about how rapid rehousing does not work, these days. NPR did a story on it. The Family Options Study findings from HUD paint a not-so-pretty picture. The Urban Institute released research that was a bit more favourable but also raised some flags too. Aside from those, people on the inside in various states have started to see certain trends related to Rapid ReHousing, calling into question what they initially touted as success.
All of this on some level is warranted. And on some level it drives me nuts. Let me explain.
From community to community to community there are different interpretations of what exactly Rapid ReHousing is, and as a result we can be calling something Rapid ReHousing when it really is not. There are no national or international standards. There is no consistent mechanism for evaluating whether one community is doing a Rapid ReHousing intervention, or another community is providing casual housing help with rental assistance.
It is my firm belief that Rapid ReHousing is a particular type of housing intervention. It is supposed to be time limited case management assistance – usually 4-6 months – with co-occurring financial assistance as it is warranted. It is intended for an individual or family with moderate acuity. That means they have a number of medium-level issues in their life or one or two big issues. When connected to community supports and mainstream services (critical to Rapid ReHousing) they stabilize in housing. Rapid ReHousing does not solve poverty. It does not take issues away. It houses and stabilizes.
Recently we released data regarding the SPDAT and various housing interventions. Collected and analyzed independent of OrgCode, it showed 92% of households where the SPDAT was used and moved into Rapid ReHousing were still housed – and this covers a five year period. Less than 69% of people that moved into Rapid ReHousing where the SPDAT was not used stay housed. Was the housing retention rate solely a result of the impact of the SPDAT? No. OrgCode also trained every single provider in each of the 12 test communities on how to deliver Rapid ReHousing in what we believe to be the proper way of doing the intervention. We provided policy and procedures to follow. We connected and did follow-up training. We shadowed staff in all 12 communities while in the field with individuals and families to coach and measure fidelity to practice. There was very limited variation in how the supports were provided. It seems that made a difference.
What do we believe to be the essential elements for Rapid ReHousing to be successful?
Moderate acuity households for the intervention.
Home visits and supports in vivo.
Choice in where the household wants to live relative to the amount of money they have (no choosing an apartment that they are unlikely to afford on their own when the subsidy ends).
Connection to mainstream and community supports from day one in housing.
Strong focus on employment whenever practical and possible from early on in housing.
Objective-based interactions in each engagement.
All goal-setting is related back to housing stability.
Structured, sequential and documented planning.
Crisis planning and risk assessment with each household after housed.
Honest and realistic budgeting with an eye to when the subsidy ends.
Rigorously following the five essential and sequential elements to housing stability.
Following the same philosophy as Housing First, for which you can watch an easy to understand video here.
We are doing ourselves no favours debating whether Rapid ReHousing works or does not work when it is not clear whether or not we are actually talking about the same thing. This is the fundamental apples to apples argument to be made if we are going to discuss whether or not it actually works – or does not. So before we buy into the hype of Rapid ReHousing working or not working, ask yourself what exactly was the service that was being provided. (And as an aside, you might review the methods used to evaluate Rapid ReHousing – there is a reason why the Family Options Study took so long to see the light of day.)
Transphobia, Discrimination and the Delivery of Homeless Services
Look around your community and you may find there are some services that identify as being Women’s Services or Men’s Services. You may even find a co-ed shelter that has a Men’s Dorm and a Women’s Dorm. Is that based upon biological sex? Or is that based upon self-identified gender? For example, if someone that is biologically a male identifies as a female, is she (an intentional use of a pronoun here) accepted and permitted within the Women’s Services and Dorm?
I am biologically male. I identify as male. I identify as heterosexual. I am overwhelmed by the amount of transphobia and discrimination within homeless service providers. Not all, to be sure, but enough that I felt compelled to write a blog about it. Too many services have no desire to consider service delivery based upon preferred gender identity. Instead, the default is exclusion, misgendering (assigning services based upon perceived gender rather than self-identified gender) – which can be accidental or intentional, and a lack of acceptance. While great strides have been made to counter sexism and homophobia (well, comparatively anyways), there still seems to be a considerable amount of fear of people that are transgender or do not subscribe to any other type of gender norm.
Identifying as a transgender person comes with considerable risks. There are considerable rates of violence and verbal abuse experienced by transgender individuals. There is also quite a lot of discrimination experienced in employment, access to health care, and education – and of course delivery in homeless services.
I am a proponent of serving people in the gender that they identify with, and not creating mechanisms to further discriminate against people. Let me, though, take on some of the questions and comments I have heard in my travels.
If you have a Woman’s Dorm and then you have a transgender person wanting to stay there, it makes all the women in the dorm upset. They don’t want that person (My Note: “her”) there.
This is an opportunity for education and teaching acceptance, as well as normalizing services to transgender individuals if the person identifying as female stays in the Woman’s Dorm. If you accept the premise that the other women are upset and then discriminate based upon their preference, how is that any different than, say, a dorm full of white people saying it makes them upset to have an Asian, Hispanic or African American person stay with them and wanting you to make concessions based upon the preference of the white majority in the dorm? You wouldn’t. Nor should you.
We have to protect the safety of the women. We can’t have someone like that in there. And when they don’t dress like or wear their make-up like a woman or take off their wig, the ladies get really upset.
Yup – “someone like that”. So what does it mean to be a woman, then? There are no shortages of stereotypes woven into this. I doubt there is a dress code or make-up code that all women must abide to in the shelter. Asking someone to keep an exterior appearance of matching stereotypes of womanhood is not a reasonable expectation for anyone.
We can accommodate and tolerate transgender persons through a special room we have.
Is exclusion really the answer? I am all for creating safe spaces. They may be warranted in some circumstances. Key to me, though, is that having a “special room” is a choice, not something forced upon people that identify as transgender. Also, I think we should try to champion for inclusion and acceptance rather than accommodation and tolerance.
It puts everyone else at risk. There is the risk of sexual assault and other types of violence.
Risks are present in all types of congregate settings. Lots of things can cause tension. How we manage a non-violent environment is important. How we create acceptance and integration and inclusion is important. Fear, in this instance, is not a compelling reason to NOT serve someone.
A lot of people we serve and a lot of our donors are Christian. We cannot offend their beliefs by serving them.
Organizations that are entirely privately funded can do what they want and serve who they want, within the broader structure of law. I would still argue refusing to serve people that are transgender is discrimination and warrants appropriate challenges.
If any organization receives public funding, then there can be absolutely no circumstance under which discrimination should be tolerated or supported. We should work with people that identify as being transgender to ensure trans-inclusion in how we design facilities and programs to better facilitate integration and complete acceptance.
Say What Volume 2
The blog I did outlining the outrageous things I had seen and heard in the first quarter was so popular, I present to you “Say What Volume 2” which shares my favourites from April, May and June.
1. “Our faith tells us to serve the homeless. That doesn’t mean we end homelessness. If there were no homeless then how could we live our faith? What you propose – housing people – is against my faith. I find the whole idea offensive and against God’s wishes.”
Thank you nice man in Florida who felt compelled to email me after I delivered training there. If there is good news, he and his church are praying for my soul, and praying that I learn to listen to Jesus in my heart and appreciate that God wants the poor to be with us always so that we appreciate the gifts and blessings that God gives to his believers. Whew.
2. “We realized with cats and dogs that spaying and neutering was the answer. It’s about time someone had the courage to say the same thing about the poor and homeless.”
This was said in a whisper to me by the Deputy Director of Human Services in a mid-sized city before I started a workshop in the Northeast. There was no indication from her voice that this was meant as a joke – not that it would have been a funny one. I think she wanted me to say something (being the “someone” that would have the “courage to say”). I must have disappointed her when I said no such thing.
3. “All harm reduction does is condone drug use.”
Nope. Though that is a common myth. I get why this person from Alberta was struggling a bit with it, as a former user herself. Trying to explain to people that harm reduction accepts that some people will not cease using substances, but that does not mean the use is being condoned is difficult for some people to wrap their head around. The person using the substance is making the decision to use. It is accepted that they have the right to make that choice. While we want to help them use in ways that are less harmful to themselves and the broader community, an understanding that some will continue to use regardless of knowing the risks it presents, does not mean that all substances are sanctioned for use in all circumstances.
4. “The reason we don’t have enough money for housing is Obamacare.”
Maybe you have been to, live in, or has seen a certain news channel that hates the Affordable Care Act and sees it as the root cause of all that is wrong in America? Now imagine someone trying to tell you that the reason that they cannot end homelessness is because they have no money for housing and the ONLY reason there is no money for housing is Obamacare. The problem of homelessness in America, according to this lovely soul, lies squarely on the lap of Obama – and he should be ashamed of how his policies have resulted in millions of Americans becoming homeless. (Seriously folks, you can’t even make this stuff up.)
5. “The reason the VA classifies your website as a cult is because you are a cult.”
The truth is, people that work at the VA cannot access the OrgCode website at work. I have been told on several occasions it is because the website has been classified as a cult. I have never seen it. I cannot confirm whether it is true or not. But I do make jokes about it when training VA staff. However, the last time I made the jokes there was a gentleman at the back at the end of the training who declared that we are a cult – making people believe lies about how to help the homeless.
6. “I don’t care what anyone says or any data people have, our transitional housing should be a national model and we should have more of it.”
This time from Maryland. Some people are very protective of their transitional housing. In this case, the person was trying to argue that neither HUD nor any other organization has been trying to shift the conversation away from Transitional Housing. He also believed it was possible to genuinely say you welcome people that use substances, when what it really means is forced abstinence and treatment as soon as they arrive.
7. “If you had done this work for even a day in your life you’d know that all you talk about are stupid fairy tales and lies.”
I find this incredibly amusing. Thank you California dreamer. It doesn’t happen too often that people think I have no practical experience. Most often I get the opposite reaction – people grateful that I have done the work and know what it is like on the ground day after day. I guess if people don’t like the idea of ending homelessness, though, one strategy is to suggest the person talking about how to do it has no experience working directly with program participants.
8. “Our pastor created this ministry to show us each where the pathway to sin leads.”
The pastor of a church group in Michigan created a feeding program that goes out onto the streets to hand out sandwiches, juice and clothes. They meet as a congregation before they go out, and then again when they get back. This is another example, though, of the state of homelessness being seen as a sinful. The pastor uses the get together after handing out food and clothes to walk through all of the sins that were seen, and how God wants no one to live in that much sin, therefore stay true to the Word of God or else you will become homeless.
9. “The only reason we have teenagers that are homeless is a lack of discipline in the home, and absent fathers.”
When pressed, this LEADER OF A YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATION, was adamant this was the ONLY reason. He then went on to explain to other service providers in his community how he knew this to be true by telling selective stories of the young men and women served through his program. When challenged by me about things like abuse, substance use, lack of acceptance of sexual preference or gender identity, extreme poverty or the like, he was completely dismissive suggesting all that does is try to dilute the conversation away from the actual issue.
10. “It takes a few years to build a relationship with the street homeless before you can even bring up the idea of housing.”
If I had a nickel for every time I have heard statements like this over my career, I would probably have over $100 by now. I contend that some people think building a relationship means becoming friends rather than creating professional trust. I contend that some people think providing socks, sleeping bags, food, etc is necessary in order to build a relationship, rather than seeing it as potential bribery for conversation or creating dependency. I also contend that too often street outreach workers are entry level positions rather than being the most trained, experienced staff with the greatest skill level. All interactions should be about ending homelessness when it comes to working with people living outdoors.
11. “That afternoon he visited with some of the families in residence and ended up physically restraining one of the residents because she was being loud. He put his hand over her mouth and pulled her away from the rest of the group.”
This was written to me in an email from someone I really admire who was flabbergasted by the events that had transpired that day when a “professional” did this while engaging with a family. More amazing is that others did or thought nothing of it, and his employer refused to even investigate. Physical engagement with program participants should be in exceptionally rare cases, and matters where health and safety is truly at risk. Being loud doesn’t cut it – especially when the being loud is not violent or threatening.
Stop and Think about the Homeless Children and Youth Act (even if you do not work with this population)
This is a special blog to discuss Homeless Children and Youth Act, S.256 in the United States given the urgency of beginning our discussions surrounding it. The regular blog returns on Monday.
Whether you work with unaccompanied youth, families, or single adults experiencing homelessness, I want you to stop and think about the proposed Homeless Children and Youth Act, S.256 and its implications. Frankly it is one of those pieces of legislation that sound awesome until you pull back the curtain. It is not mom and apple pie. There are implications to this that we need to dissect and consider from a funding, operational, and policy perspective. It is possible to think critically about the bill and still be supportive of ending homelessness amongst youth, as well as ending homelessness for children and their families. And yes, there are implications to communities and service providers that customarily do not work with youth or families. S.256 impacts all people experiencing homelessness, funders, service providers, and Continua of Care.
Here are the highlights of S.256:
The definition of homelessness expands so that all poor families living with others on a longer-term basis for economic reasons are included. What this means is that many, many more millions of additional families and youth become eligible for HUD homeless assistance.
Communities would be required to do counts of the number of families and youth doubled up for economic reasons.
Strategic use of HUD resources would revert back to a time where services were not guided by evidence because of who it demands be served and how.
Some of that you may agree with and some you may not. Consider that:
There are NO new resources attached to the bill and the nation is already short a couple hundred million to effectively serve existingunsheltered families and unaccompanied children and youth.
The bill is likely to be attached to other legislation meaning the route of usual discussion and debate in the political process is not there.
But that is not all that I am worried about.
I think the people at HUD have done an amazing job in recent years establishing a national agenda about population groups to serve and prioritize. In effect their policy and funding has moved us away from creaming and helped us get to the nuts and bolts of people that need services the most, not just those that want services the most. It has had the impact of getting service providers to elevate their game and learn how to best serve individuals and families with complex, co-occurring life circumstances, while remaining focused on housing. Data and evidence have become critical to communities learning how to best house and support people.
I fear that, if passed, communities will start to revert to a time where resources are aligned to families with lower and moderate issues prior to being used for those families and individuals (including unaccompanied youth) that have the highest needs and issues. I liken it to an emergency department of a hospital choosing to use its resources to help set the broken leg of the 8 year old that fell off her bike before helping the 57 year old that had a heart attack because children are the future, and the 57 year old is an overweight smoker who has had three previous heart attacks.
I have seen, in recent years, considerable improvement in how data is used to help understand homelessness in a given community and then reorient funding to address the deepest needs. S.256 moves us more towards an emotional response to the issue more than a data driven one, in my opinion. But data requirements that come with it, like understanding the number of households that are living in doubled-up situations on a longer-term basis for economic reasons, are labor intensive to even try to address and dang near impossible to do accurately. If you thought there may be some flaws with your Point in Time numbers, you ain’t seen nothing.
I also think the Act confuses poverty and homelessness. Are the two related? Yes. Are they the same thing? No. About 49 million Americans live in poverty, while at any given time about 600,000 experience homelessness (using HUD’s existing definition; unsheltered or staying in homeless programs). Those numbers are not even close to being the same. Almost all of the former number is housed, while all of the latter number is homeless. What will happen is homeless resources will be diverted to address households that are precariously housed, but housed nonetheless.
In the past few years a ton of work has gone into getting communities to work as systems. I fear S.256 gets us more back to silos and less into systems-thinking. Instead of looking at the entire homeless population comprehensively and organizing services by acuity, this legislation takes us back to what I have often referred to as “pet population” approach where decisions are not driven by data, but are inherently driven by feelings of a deserving and undeserving poor.
Would more resources help communities better meet the needs of unaccompanied youth and children in families experiencing homelessness? Yes. But let us be pragmatic and realistic and start with households that are unsheltered and languishing within shelter.
Are there many households living in poverty? Yes. But let us rethink income supports and government benefits, access to employment, and food security. It would be terribly unfortunate to use homeless resources to combat these structural issues. S.256 is misguided in wanting to address these fundamental problems through homeless resources, and without additional funding. I also feel it will let elected officials off the hook by not engaging them in the structural issues and not having to provide additional funding (which is one of the greatest measures of priority for a person in office – where they put your tax dollars).
Should we improve services to youth and families experiencing homelessness? Yes. I will submit that some communities have put the needs of chronically homeless single adults above the needs of all others and that is a problem. I argue that we need to look at the depth of needs of all people experiencing homelessness regardless of whether they are a single adult, family or unaccompanied youth and allocate resources accordingly rather than considering sub-populations in isolation.
I urge you to pause and think of the broader implications if this becomes law. We need a more thoughtful, involved process rather than tagging this onto an unrelated appropriations bill. Now is the time to contact your elected officials with urgency and purpose to let them know you support ending homelessness and this Act, while it sounds good, actually does more harm than good.
Time Sucks that Get in the Way of Ending Homelessness
I think homelessness should be ended with a sense of urgency, married with strategy and intelligent, effective programs. However, there are a bunch of things that get in the way on a day to day basis that suck up time and interfere with achieving results.
1. Useless Meetings – homelessness has never been ended in a meeting or committee. This is not to say meetings can have no value (they can) but make sure you know why are are meeting, for what purpose, and the intended result of the meeting. Also, don’t send multiple staff to a meeting from one organization when one will do.
2. Complaining – last I checked complaining about co-workers, other organizations, paperwork, or how hard it is to find housing did not actually solve any of those problems.
3. Gossiping – you may find it titillating to keep abreast of who is screwing who, who is about to be fired, or what client did what to whom, but I fail to see how that actually helps end homelessness.
4. Procrastinating – I think you will find action today beats planned action at some undefined later point of time.
5. Waiting for Something to Happen – whenever you have the ability to influence the timeframe within which things happen, you should, rather than waiting for others to make decisions for you.
6. Indecision – to not make a decision is actually a decision. And while you may be waiting for the perfect piece of data (or even wishing the thing you need to make a decision about just disappears) lives are lost during your time of indecision.
7. Always Answering Your Phone – YOU decide when it is best to answer YOUR phone and engage with the person calling YOU. Someone wanting to get in touch with you should not trump other important work you are trying to get done. Voicemail was invented for a reason.
8. Distractions by Email Pop-ups – remember when we did not have technology strapped to us all day long? Even if you can’t, allow me to remind you that it is possible for YOU to decide when to engage with email, not for an email notification to rule your behaviour. Turn off the pop-ups. Schedule your email check-ins.
9. Playing Email Pong – remember the classic arcade game Pong? I feel people use email that way. I hit it over to you. You hit it over to me. I hit it over to you. And so on. Call me crazy, but maybe a face to face conversation is in order, if possible, if all emails are a steady chain of back and forth.
10. Not Documenting Solutions – having the same discussions about the same issues over and over and over again is a huge time suck. Write down what was agreed to. Stay to it.
11. Being Caught up In the Incompetence of Others – you can control your own performance. You cannot control the performance of other people or organizations. Focus on being awesome yourself. Don’t waste your time lamenting how terrible another service provider is because you do not control what they do.
12. Manually Documenting Case Notes – newsflash: there are various apps you can put right on your phone that allow you to dictate your case notes. Then you just copy and paste them right into your HMIS or other data system. Go from hours of documentation to mere minutes.
13. Dog and Pony Shows – doing a series of small presentations on what you do and how you do it can eat up tons of time in any given week. Put your PR and educational stuff on a website, or pull together less frequent, but larger gatherings to explain what you do and how you do it.
14. Mistaking the Urgent for the Important – some people are busy all day, but actually accomplish nothing. The reason? They are caught up in crisis after crisis, or pressing issue after pressing issue. Being run off your feet but not getting anything actually done is a huge waste of time.