Unique Individuals & Length of Stay
My mind has been blown twice this month looking at shelter data.
The push that many of us have been trying to make is to know the people touching in your system of care by name, and to cross reference those same people by shelters, outreach, and other services, as well as your By Name List or Priority List. In the case of assembling priority lists for coordinated entry, as David Tweedie on the OrgCode team has pointed out before, once you dig into the data to look at it by people that touch your system rather than people on your list, you will quickly see that there are a number of people in your shelters or served by outreach that have not been assessed and therefore are unlikely to end up on a priority list for housing. Who you are serving and who you are housing may be two different groups.
But back to having my mind blown with shelter data.
In Community A - a city of over 500,000 people - as is the case of many communities, they ran their shelter data by shelter stays in 2017. What did they find?
Number of shelter stays 3,695
Average length of stay 12 days
Median length of stay 3 days
% people who leave before 14 days 79%
% people who stay 180+ days. 0.4%
Then they ran the SAME data but by unique individuals, and a whole different picture emerged. What did it show?
Number of unique individuals with shelter stays 408
Average length of stay cumulatively 114 days
Median length of stay cumulatively 87.5 days
% people who leave before 14 days cumulatively 9%
% people who stay 180+ days cumulatively 21%
Say what? Shelter stays painted a picture we are all familiar with - a large volume of short stays. Unique individuals resulted in a completely different understanding of the data. Once you started to understand cumulative engagement the world of sheltering looked completely different.
Bewildered, I had the chance to have Community B - a city of just shy of 300,000 people - run the same type of report just to make sure Community A was not an anomaly. What did they find?
Number of shelter stays 1,888
Average length of stay 14 days
Median length of stay 4.5 days
% people who leave before 14 days 83%
% people who stay 180+ days 0.8%
Like Community A, Community B then ran the data by unique individuals, and again a whole different picture emerged. What did it show?
Number of unique individuals with shelter stays 211
Average length of stay cumulatively 106 days
Median length of stay cumulatively 91.5 days
% people who leave before 14 days cumulatively 8%
% people who stay 180+ days cumulatively 26%
I am scratching my head. I want to see more data on unique shelter users versus shelter stayers. Is it coincidence that two communities in a row that I had contact with this month ran data that runs contrary to how we generally think shelters operate? Or were these legitimately outliers and the norm is something different? Would love to know what happens in your community when you run your data by unique individuals...let me know. We may be on to something here.
A Response to Iain’s Letter to His Younger Self
From time to time, Ann Oliva is taking over my blog as part of her Leader in Residence role with OrgCode. Despite having different leadership styles and career trajectories, Ann and I share a passion for cultivating leaders in the pursuit of ending homelessness and in leadership driven by values. I hope you enjoy reading Ann's guest blog as much as I did.
Last March, Iain wrote a blog post called "A Letter to Myself of 15 Years Ago" that I found particularly compelling for both the similarities and differences in our leadership experiences. I bookmarked the post with the vague idea that I might one day have the chance to respond with my own thoughts. I figure now is my chance.
Dear myself of 15 years ago –
Hi Ann. I have been thinking a lot lately about what advice I might give you as you find new ways to work towards your goals and dreams. You are stubborn and I am not sure if you will even take this advice – and to be honest I am not sure that you should. The journey I took is the one that made me who I am today – as you know I am a big believer in learning something from each and every experience you have, good and not-so-good. But I do think I have some important things to remind you of as you take that same journey.
I know you haven’t realized it yet, but you are a natural leader. Your willingness to raise your hand and challenge the status quo even when the hand you raise shakes, your ability to think through solutions based on a core set of values that don’t waver, and your desire to take risks when it makes sense will put you in a position to lead down the road. You will have obstacles ahead that make you question your role, your value and your impact. There will be days when you ask yourself just what the hell you are doing. Do not let those situations deter you. I know that you are a bit reluctant to embrace a role that puts you at the center of attention. You like to work behind the scenes, making things happen and letting others be the face of the work. That’s ok, but eventually you will need to step out and communicate with your team, your community, your stakeholders in a way that explains the why and the how of the work you create. Practice in smaller settings and work your way up to larger groups. Find a communication style that works for you and stick with it.
Learn everything you can from each and every leader you meet and work with. Learn what parts of his or her style work for you, and maybe more importantly tuck away in the back of your mind the things that you don’t think work – things that made you feel small or not valued by someone in a position of authority. Don’t do those things.
You are going to make mistakes – small ones and some big ones. This is part of learning and if you are not making at least some mistakes you are not doing it right. Do not let them paralyze you. Accept responsibility for them, apologize if you should, and move on. But be balanced in your approach to mistakes - don’t over-apologize, internalize too intensely, or take responsibility for mistakes that others should own. Accountability should be applied to yourself as well as those around you for it to be meaningful.
Leadership is not about power. If done right, being a leader means you are influencing others in a positive way. Figure out how to use your platform – whether that is with a non-profit serving those experiencing homelessness, or in the federal government, or anywhere in between – to influence those who are both up and down the chain of command. Because you don’t have to be the CEO to be a leader.
Be self-aware enough to see your own shortcomings and find people to have around you that fill those gaps. You are stronger and more effective when you are surrounded by smart, empowered people who share your goals and vision.
Be kind to everyone, but also be firm when you need to and communicate directly as often as possible. Try not to let your passion for the mission spill over into anger when things get tough or frustrating. But being kind does not mean backing down when you know you are right, or allowing yourself to be talked over, put down or insulted. Handle conflict with grace and respect, and others will likely treat you with respect. For those that don’t, be direct but do not expect what they are not willing to give. You learn to work around those people, or through them. Or become their boss.
Each and every relationship you have builds your network, and your network can make or break you as a leader. Be willing to share some of yourself with people, and learn about the lives of those around you. Nurture and tend to your relationships even when you are an introvert who just wants to go home and sit on the couch.
Try not to work every weekend and on vacations. Take a break when you need it, or 15 years down the road you are going to have to take four months off to recover, and it will take two months of that break to even start feeling human again.
One day, at a particularly trying time in your career, you are going to tell a close friend that you want to quit and start working at Pottery Barn to get away from the stress and responsibility that comes with command and leadership. She will turn to you and say – if you work at Pottery Barn you will just end up running Pottery Barn. So you might as well use your inclination towards leadership to have an impact on the thing you are passionate about. She is right. Be grateful for the privilege of leading others in this work that is so important to all of us.
In short, self of 15 years ago, leadership is hard and there is no magic potion that makes the hard stuff easy. But it is worth the effort. Remember to be brave. Never be anything but yourself, but don’t take yourself too seriously. Embrace your natural leadership skills and have some fun with it. See ya in 15 years.
Ann
3 Hopes for 2018
I have three hopes for 2018:
That we attach meaning to change;
That we think differently about constructing the future that we want;
That we unf*ck that which is known to be broken.
As we lean into a new year there is promise of change; and you know from previous promises of change that those are promises that can be broken. In 2018, then, I ask you not to lean into change in a technical sense, but to join me in embracing change in an emotional sense – to give change a meaning. It is my hope for this year that we spend more time finding and leveraging our motivation to change rather than just naming what needs to change.
If you want your motivation to work – and if you want to turn motivation into action - you have to attach a meaning to it.
What are you going to focus on? Creating residential stability? Improved diversion programming? Professionalized street outreach? Being an awesome shelter? Improving leadership? Now give it a meaning…a meaning that produces an emotion. Why that meaning?
What are you after? Don’t talk targets or goals…talk about the change you really want realized. How does the future look and feel differently if you realize this change? Why not realize the change you desire?
What is your map to get there? If you don’t have a map you will not arrive where you want to be. Point in the general direction then keep tweaking. Take action sooner rather than later. Remember imperfect action trumps perfect planning. Why wait?
What is going to fuel you? What will keep you going? What is the reward? How are you nourished? Why does that nourish you?
The second hope I have for 2018 is for new thinking in forming the future reality we want.
To that end, I would challenge you with these three questions:
Where are you looking to anticipate change?
You’ve got to know where to look to find that which you do not know. Maybe this means deeper conversations with thought-leaders. Maybe this is going to a state conference in a state other than your own. Maybe this is engaging with people outside of our sector. Focus where you look to understand change.
How do you understand trends and their impact?
Are you using your existing data to drive change moving forward, or do you only use your data to look backward at what has already happened? We focus too much of our time on what was, and not nearly enough energy creating what will be. We focus too much of our time on the current crisis of the day, and not enough time on building the systems that we need. If you do not understand trends and their impact you are surrendering your influence over the future that you want.
Are you courageous to give up the past - and are you open to reinventing your work?
Do what you have always done and get what you have always got. You need to DO different if you desire to BE different. Using the words of change does not result in realized change, without action. Being courageous enough to give up the past can also mean we need closure for past programs, mistakes and funding decisions we have made. Grieve your loss and move on with the future.
And my final hope is to unf*ck that which we know to be broken in many communities. The gentle task of unf*cking things is part science and part art. The scientific part is ensuring people have the technical know-how to make change happen. The art part is ensuring people have the resiliency and fulfillment to see the change through…to attach an emotional meaning to the change. While progress has been made in many communities, the top five things I would like to see unf*cked are:
5- Housing stability programs – keeping people housed
4- Street outreach – professionalizing the approach to focus on housing outcomes immediately
3- Homeless shelters – having an unrelenting housing focus
2- Diversion – whenever it is safe and appropriate to have people in a place other than shelter, to do so
1- Leadership – to ensure those in leadership positions have the skills to guide people to achieving a vision of ending homelessness; that leaders spend more time leading and less time managing
Grateful in 2017
It is the time of year to reflect on the past 12 months. I am grateful for many things this year. Here is my list:
1. Leadership
The importance of leadership development in ending homelessness really took a huge leap this year. I had the chance to facilitate three Leadership Academies - Grand Bend, Winnipeg, and Hawaii - as well as the Master Class in Arizona. I am so grateful that several hundred people participated in this professional development opportunity. And I am so very grateful that Ann Oliva is spending part of her time with the OrgCode team to advance leadership development within the homelessness and housing service sector.
I am already looking forward to the next Leadership Academy in October in West Virginia. You can get more information and register for that here.
2. Communities Making a Difference
There are several communities we have been working with that are making a huge difference in ending homelessness, and 2017 is when some saw huge leaps forward in their progress. I would like to make a special shout out to Bridging the Gap (Big Island, Maui and Kauai) who all saw reductions in homelessness and are proving it is possible to shift program delivery towards ending homelessness in markets that are highly unaffordable and have scarce housing options. They are proving that determination, creativity and leadership make a huge difference in ending homelessness.
3. My Home and Native Land
Big things are afoot in Canada and it is exciting. The 20K Homes Campaign is in high gear, pushing the envelope in the pursuit of housing 20K of Canada's most vulnerable homeless individuals. The Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness put on a stellar conference this year. Federal funding is aligning to Housing First in a way it never has before. And there is a huge investment being made by the Federal government of Canada to increase housing options and end homelessness.
4. Conferences
2017 was a great year to be part of conferences where the content seems to be getting better and better in the pursuit of ending homelessness. Florida, Michigan and Iowa were standout excellent state conferences this past year. The National Alliance to End Homelessness did not disappoint again in 2017. And as previously mentioned, the Canadian Alliance conference was top notch.
5. Overcoming Depression Again
2017 was a horrible year in my ongoing battle with depression, especially spring and summer. It was the worst it has been in many years. But focusing on wellness, being open with others with what I was working through, and staying the course helped me slowly but surely make my way out of it again. I am grateful to all of the support I received along the way.
6. The OrgCode Team
The band of merry misfits keep me going. They are smart and cheeky and so passionate about ending homelessness. They challenge me and inspire me. Look out 2018 - we will soon be planning for what we bring to the table.
Housing Focused Shelter
This week, I bring to your attention a more in-depth piece we have been working on regarding Housing Focused Shelter. You can download the entire piece here.
Shelters are a critical piece of a high functioning system of care. But in order to achieve the objective of ending homelessness, the shelter has to maintain a housing-focus in all that it does. Otherwise, they become warehouses of waiting, or we run the risk of therapeutic incarceration.
12 Reflections on Outcome Based Thinking & Ending Homelessness
We have had several assignments lately that have required thinking through how organizations are designed relative to the pursuit of ending homelessness. If there is a common theme amongst these projects it is that the organizations or communities are not designed to get the outcome that they wish they were getting. Furthermore, there are a number of things that get in their way of optimal success. So, I wanted to explore with you 12 ideas and strategies related to ending homelessness using outcome-based thinking.
1. Name the outcome you want
There is beauty in stating the obvious. This is one of those life instances. Name the difference you want to see if all you are doing to end homelessness is realized. You can do this by parts of the service delivery system (outreach, shelters, Rapid ReHousing, Permanent Supportive Housing, etc.) or in relation to other partners, or even the people that use the services.
The problem I see? We are quick to only point out the tasks without asking ourselves what difference there will be if all of those tasks are realized. And on the flipside of this, we rarely break down the outcome into enough meaningful tasks where it actually feels like progress is being made fast enough.
2. Take out the trash
Noise. Distractions. Garbage.
You have to take out the trash - get rid of the ideas, work and energy sucks that get in the way - if you want to have enough energy to achieve success. You have to decide what you are NOT going to pay attention to; what you are not going to do; what is not worthy of your attention.
Then deliberately and explicitly indicate your intentions. Taking out the trash is bold and necessary for communities to succeed – especially those that have been trying to be all things to all people for far too long.
3. Move from vague to specific – as fast as makes sense
You know how to move from vague to specific rather quickly in your personal life, but fail to put it into practice in a dedicated way in your work of ending homelessness. Let me give you an example from your personal life:
I am hungry
I want Italian food
I want pasta
I want take-out
I want the food from Volpe’s
See, you can go from being hungry to deciding what type of food and from where via take-out relatively quickly. Those are the sort of everyday quick decisions you make. They are generally fast. You know there are decisions in your life that may not be as fast as deciding what’s for dinner and from where, but that you still make relatively quickly.
Let me give you an example of moving from vague to specific in our line of work:
I want to end homelessness
I want to focus on unsheltered homelessness
I want to understand what our last five PIT Count and street outreach data shows
I want more people housed from living outdoors starting with the sickest and most vulnerable people that have been homeless longest
I want the people housed from outdoors to be housed quickly
I want our community priority for PSH in our coordinated entry to reflect the sickest and most vulnerable living outdoors
Get out of the mindset of everything being too big, needing extensive processing or considerable deliberation. Keep moving from vague to specific in every single part of your homeless service system. And yes, you can move from vague to specific on more than one area of interest at a time.
4. Name the moving parts
A pet peeve of mine is when I ask how someone is doing, and their response is “busy”. “Busy” is a state of being, not an emotion. What I think they are trying to convey is that they have lots on the go, though I don’t know how they feel about it.
What I have seen recently in the organizations and communities we have been working with is that they also seem to be in a perpetual state of being busy, but struggle to clearly articulate all of the things they are busy with – and they can’t seem to separate out administrative moving parts (for example: HR; budget), from operational moving parts (for example: staff schedule; ordering supplies), from project moving parts (for example: a new shelter diversion pilot; a discharge initiative with the local hospital). And because they cannot name all of the moving parts, they struggle to prioritize, to know where to put their energy, to take out the trash as I discussed earlier, and how to celebrate success.
5. Name what you are waiting for
A number of the things we do require input, sign-off, or other tasks and activities being completed by others. If you don’t name what you need from whom by which time, you might as well be waiting for Godot. The answers to what you are waiting for do not self-resolve. And let’s face it – what may be a priority for you does not mean it is a priority for the person you are waiting for, and that may or may not be outside your influence or control.
So, focus on what you CAN control. If you name what you actually need from whom and when, you have the ability to establish priorities and work flow around that rather than being in an unmanageable situation in spite of it.
6. Growth does not equal success
We have seen many organizations grow. And grow. And grow. Some of this is seemingly justifiable, but a lot of this is not. More staff and a big budget only makes sense if the existing staff and budget are used to maximum effectiveness. The problem these days is that every new initiative or new piece of regulation is interpreted as needing more staff rather than re-profiling existing staff differently.
We also need some creative destruction as part of the annual workflow – what can we commit to stop doing in order to free up the staff and money to do something new and innovative. In other words, we can continue to see innovation and champions of new ideas with the resources we have, rather than thinking innovation can only happen if we have more resources.
7. Don’t waste time chasing what others have
Competition kills progress for most organizations and communities. If you are naturally competitive, you would, of course, thrive when compared to others and constantly be in search of how you could have all of the resources that others have to do their work. But if you are not a naturally competitive person (which, let’s be clear, "competition" often translates to “be just like them, but better”), then the comparison mantra is a sham.
You need to be the best organization/community in YOUR context. Your best will be influenced by factors that are completely irrelevant in comparing yourself to others and then chasing after the resources that they have to do their work. Too many organizations and communities waste time and energy chasing what they don’t have without making sure they are doing dynamite work with the resources they do have at their fingertips.
8. Be a hope engineer through innovation
Innovators are hope engineers. They lead us to a place where we believe improvement is possible. They have no illusions of getting it right all of the time. Heck, what they really prove is that you can fail a lot with the best of intentions.
Engineers of hope use innovation to find solutions. They don’t waste time naming problems that they cannot fix or are outside their control to fix. They focus on that which they can actually influence.
This person is very different from the charismatic leader who keeps people’s spirits up in difficult times. That person can also be helpful. And many organizations and communities have generally optimistic people. What is missing in most of the places we have been working is innovators. “Some Other Place” is not the name of a community or organization, and they don’t always have the answer to the thing that needs innovation in your place.
9. Be bad at some things, and just own it
Let. Go. Of. Perfectionism.
It is about time we acknowledge there are some things that you, your organization, and your community just suck at. Own that shit. Don’t pretend it doesn’t exist. Don’t think that working harder is going to be the answer to sucking, because that could just mean more effort put into sucking larger.
Imagine the community or organization that had the chutzpah to say, “Hey, we really stink at figuring out day services, so we are going to stop working on that right now and put that energy into being better at Rapid ReHousing because we seem to be doing some decent work there and could get even better at it.”
At the personal level, delegate to the strengths of others. Publicly own that some elements of ending homelessness are not your strength. Ask for help. Don’t be ashamed that you are not amazing at everything. Nobody is.
At the organization level, if there is another organization that gets results better than yours over and over again, despite your program improvement efforts, then let go. It may be better that the other organization does more of that type of work with better results than you just getting your piece of the pie but sucking at it.
10. Take walks of gratitude
The heaviest thing to lift is your own spirits when they are down. This work is hard. You are bound to be rattled and pulled down from time to time. In most of our work lately we have struggled to find an intentional process of finding joy in the work and being grateful for what is working well.
We recommend the 10 minute daily walk of gratitude. Every afternoon take 10 minutes to go for a walk and just focus on that which you are grateful for in your community’s or organization’s work to end homelessness. The hard work becomes easier if you take time out of every single day to find something to be grateful for in the work. It will also make the down times less frequent, and the Herculean task of lifting your own spirits will be more rare.
11. Expectations influence experiences
You have heard of self-fulfilling prophecy, and this is really what the focus is here. Too many organizations and communities lately fail to realize that they expectations influence the experience – or another way of looking at it, attitude influences outputs and outcomes. Think your Coordinated Entry system is going to be messy out the gate? It will be. Think your PIT Count is getting stale without enthusiastic volunteers, then that is what you are going to get.
It is said that systems are perfectly designed to get the outcomes they get. I believe the same can be said for the emotional experience of our work. The lower your expectations, the worse the experience. When lives are on the line in our work it seems incredibly selfish to lower expectations.
12. Don’t fear a different, outsider perspective
Of course you don’t know the answers to all of your organization’s or community’s problems. Heck, you probably don’t even know the questions you would need to ask yourself to even think about the problems you have differently. You and your colleagues may have spent hours upon hours in meeting after meeting; established subcommittee after subcommittee. But if you don’t have fresh thinking or an alternate perspective that comes from having a different, outsider perspective engage with you, you will be at a loss to see all that you need to see, to know all you need to know, to think all you need to think – and fail in some instances to isolate a number of possible solutions to what confronts you. Let go of isolationism. Find that local person that doesn’t know your business well to ask the questions or engage in problems differently – the local outsider. Or bring in someone from a different community to help you gain a different perspective on the problems you have been unable to solve.